Hyve Buzz and Hyve Storm: First impressions

Hyve, a new Indian smartphone company co-founded by ex Apple India executive Sharad Mehrotra, recently launched its first two smartphones - Buzz and Strom. While the Buzz is priced at Rs 13,999, the Storm bears a price tag of Rs 8,499. We had a chance to go hands-on with both of the smartphones. Here are our first impressions of the Hyve Buzz and Hyve Storm.
Design
The company’s flagship, Hype Buzz comes in three colours - twilight black, midnight blue and sunset wine.It has a plastic body with a curved back design that’s similar to some of the phones in Nokia’s Lumia series. The volume rocker and the power button are weirdly located at the back towards the left side. This placement isn’t really appealing and makes accessing the buttons harder. The phone seems good on paper but when you actually hold it, it feels bland and less than premium.

Hyve Storm, on the other hand, comes with an aluminium frame and plastic rear panel. It is available in two colours - snow white and mystic grey. To be honest, the Storm looks better than the Buzz. The volume rocker is located on the left and the power button on the right. The phone doesn’t have a fingerprint sensor though.
Display and camera
Hyve Buzz sports a 5.5-inch Full HD display of 1080x1920 pixel resolution and having a 2.5D arc glass design. On the other hand, Hyve Storm comes with a 5-inch IPS LCD display. Both devices run Android 5.1 Lollipop, with the company saying that an upgrade to Android 6.0 Marshmallow is planned. Both phones also have 13MP rear cameras and 5MP front-facing snappers.Hyve Buzz has 3GB RAM and 16GB internal storage, which is expandable up to 128GB via microSD card. Hyve Storm comes with 2GB RAM and 16GB in-built storage that can be expanded up to 64GB through a microSD card. Another point worth mentioning is that the Buzz is water resistant, while the Storm is not.
What we think
Both phones seem good, at least initially. The user interface is nice and snappy due to the use of stock Android and the specifications are well-rounded for the price. However, design is not the Buzz and Storm’s strong point.
It’s true that the flagship is water resistant, but there are other water resistant phones in the market that use plastic body and still manage to look good.
But the two phones seem really promising overall, especially considering the fact that they come from a new brand.
However, it’s too early to make a call. To find out whether the Hyve Buzz and Hyve Storm are really worth the money they are asking, stay put for our detailed review.