ZTE Geek smartphone announced with 2GHz Intel Clover Trail+ processor

Chinese smartphone maker ZTE has introduced the ZTE Geek smartphone. This smartphone was unveiled at Intel Developer Forum (IDF), being held in Beijing. ZTE Geek packs in Intel's new 32nm Atom processor Z2580. Intel had announced this processor at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2013. Lenovo was the first company to announce a smartphone - Lenovo K900, which is based on Clover Trail+.

ZTE too had issued a press release in March announcing that it will be releasing a smartphone running on Clover Trail+ and it has now taken the wraps of this smartphone. Apart from the 2GHz dual-core processor, ZTE Geek packs 5-inch display with 720p resolution and 2,300mAh battery. The smartphone will run on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) out of the box.

ZTE Geek comes with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. For camera, there is an 8-megapixel rear shooter and a 1-megapixel one on the front. Connectivity options include 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and wireless charging.

ZTE has so far not indicated when its Geek smartphone will start shipping and at what price.

ZTE had recently launched its Grand Memo smartphone. This smartphone packs a 5.7-inch screen, a 13-megapixel camera and a 3,200mAh battery. The company is offering two versions of this smartphone. The Grand Memo being sold in China is powered by a Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064, while European version has a Snapdragon 800 variant with LTE support. Snapdragon 800 variant comes with a 2GB of RAM while the S4 Pro version offers 1GB RAM.

ZTE Grand Memo runs on Android 4.1.2 out of the box and is skinned with ZTE's MyFavourite UI featuring 3D animation.

Oh ZTE you cheeky monkey. Towards the end of day one at IDF in Beijing, we stumbled upon this awkwardly titled Android Jelly Bean phone that is the Geek at ZTE's booth. Needless to say, this is yet another phone powered by an Intel processor -- a 2GHz Clover Trail+ Atom to be exact, which is what Lenovo's K900also has. The rest of the device isn't too shabby, either: you get a nice 5-inch 720p display with Gorilla Glass, along with an 8-megapixel main camera, a 1-megapixel front-facing camera, 8GB of storage space, 1GB of RAM, 2,300mAh battery and wireless charging. Radio-wise we see UMTS 900/2100 courtesy of Intel's XMM 6260 chip, and there's also the usual lot of 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE and GPS.

Design-wise the Geek takes a huge step away from the Grand X IN and shares a similarly clean look with the Grand S, but without the black eye around the main camera. This particular unit had a glossy white finish as well, but we'd prefer a matte finish for a more premium feel. Since ZTE admitted that it had to rush this prototype for exhibition at IDF, we'll come back to the build quality once we see a final retail unit. Until then, check out our hands-on video and the press release after the break.

ZTE Geek key specifications

• 5-inch display with a resolution of 720x1280 pixel
• 2GHz Intel Atom Z2580 dual-core processor
• 1GB of RAM
• 8GB of internal storage
• 8-megapixel primary camera with LED flash
• 1-megapixel front-facing camera
• 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and wireless charging
• 2,300mAh battery
• Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean)

ZTE Geek price in Inda: The price of the mobile was not confirmed. If you want to buy this killer mobile, you have to wait for some time.

#nwplyng app review

In the present age of check-ins, we live an online existence. With mobile devices that are 'connected' all the time, we check-in into places, movies, books, TV Shows and also music. The idea is to share your activity and discover what your friends and the people around the world are indulging in.

#nwplyng, an app for Android and iOS is a recent addition to this category of applications and services. We spent some time with the application and here is our review of the same.

The concept
The concept of the application is pretty simple and involves around share what music you are listening to. You share this with a community, much like how GetGlue does for TV, movies and sports. This sharing is powered by social media and the entire experience is gamified. Curious? Read on to know more.

Getting started
As you start the app, it lets you login only through your social accounts on Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare. Once that is done, the sharing marathon begins. You have a feed much like most social networks work. Follow people and discover music. Listen to music and share it with the world.

Press the hashtag on the top right to begin sharing. A list of the top 10 shares pops up. You can either share one of those or click on the search button and search for a song. If you are listening to a song already, press on the mic and the application will recognize the song automatically. This song recognition API works similar to popular apps such as Soundhound and Shazam.

Once you have selected the song you wish to share, the app links the YouTube video for the song and lets you add a description. You can also add an image or location to the check-in. You choose whether you wish to share it on your Twitter/ Facebook/ Foursquare accounts and then click on share. As you share, your activity appears on your respective social media and #nwplyng account.


The interface
The major highlight about the app is the interface. It's slick, neat and pretty intuitive. Another positive point is the fact that unlike many other popular apps, it looks and works exactly the same on both Android and iOS. The developers have thus brought in uniformity on the platform. Check-ins appear in a card like interface with an option of liking or commenting. There is no lag and the transition between different features is smooth.

Song recognition
The song recognition on the application works rather well. We tried a mix of 30 English and Hindi tracks and the app was able to recognize 27 out of the lot. The 3 misses included old Mohammad Rafi numbers and a track by Akon. One impressive bit was the apt recognition of instrumental tracks as well. However, in noisy environments, the recognition can be a bit of a hit and miss.

A gamified experience
Much like how one earns point and medals in a game, your journey on #nwplyng is filled with records and levels. As you share music, you move up the ladder of levels along with making records and earning badges for the same. One record could be for your first share, while the other could be for sharing multiple songs of the same artist or album. It's like a game and the passage to victory is greater activity on the platform! The entire idea of gamification is what actually makes #nwplyng different from the rest of the herd of social check-in applications.


Social Media integration
We did mention the fact that the app works heavily on social media integration. If you decide to post a check-in on Twitter, the tweet appears with a #nwplyng hashtag. You can search the hashtag and discover what everyone is listening. As far as Facebook is concerned, the check-in is posted on your timeline through the #nwplyng Facebook app. Depending upon what you want, you can place a #nwplyng section on your Facebook timeline. The app also lets you find friends from your social networks and follow them on #nwplyng.

A Foursquare for Music?
Check-in applications have been a common phenomenon and Foursquare happens to be the most popular on that front. The #nwplyng app draws parallels from location based check-in app on various grounds. A significant similarity is the badges on Foursquare that take the form of records on #nwplyng. Another commonality between the two is the feature that lets you either favourite/ like or comment on a 'check-in'.

The hits
The hit for the app is the interface and the idea. It will be a popular platform for music lovers that are passionate about sharing and discovering music alike.

The social media sign in is quick and an account is easy to setup. A quick search on Twitter for #nwplyng will let you discover interesting music that people are listening to.

The gamification of the idea is just an added incentive to stick to the community. Interesting graphics, witty descriptions and titles/ records/ levels are positives as well. For example, the 'Air-Guitarist' level comes with the description "Don't lose hope. Even Hendrix started off air guitaring". Humour is always a plus!

The misses
The major miss is the limited idea of discovery. A way to know what artist, song or album is trending in the community might be a better way to discover content.

The YouTube linking does not always work as expected. During our usage, a Teri Ore from Singh is King got mixed up with a Saathiya from Singham. Also, the absence of an original track on YouTube will certainly mean the inability to share the song.

As what seems to be an inspiration from Foursquare, the app can actually add other significant features from Foursquare such as the idea of lists. Having a feature to create lists of tracks you would like to explore might come in handy.

Lastly, though social sign in is undoubtedly a smooth process, giving the user an option to create an account without linking it to a Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare account should also be there for those who prefer to remain private.

Verdict
All in all, if you are music lover and are looking for ways to discover new music, do check out #nwplyng for Android and iOS.

LG Optimus L7 II dual review

LG Mobiles has been trying to woo Indian customers with its affordable L II series of smartphones. These smartphones comprise of LG Optimus L3 II dual, L5 II dual and L7 II dual and were first showcased at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2013. The company had tasted success with its earlier L series of smartphones and it is aiming to repeat the history with its LII series as well.

Priced at Rs. 18,650 LG Optimus L7 II dual is the most expensive smartphone of this series. The company also has a single SIM version of this smartphone, which is dubbed LG Optimus L7 II but in India so far only the dual-SIM version is available in the market.

In the recent past, there have been plenty of affordable Android smartphones launched that are under the price bracket of Rs. 20,000 and through this review we try to find out if LG Optimus L7 II dual will be make its mark or not.

Hardware/ Design
In terms of looks LG Optimus L7 II dual has a very run of the mill looks. It has a rectangular build with curved borders. The entire body is made of plastic but at the same time it does not look cheap.

The back panel of LG Optimus L7 II dual has a textured finish, which was missing in its predecessor, the LG Optimus L7 dual. The front is taken up by the 4.3-inch IPS (WVGA) touchscreen. Just below the screen are the four capacitive buttons for Back, Home, Menu and SIM-switch button. With the help of SIM-switch button you can easily swap the SIM before making a call or sending an SMS. It comes in very handy in terms of managing SIMs as one does not have to go to settings and change SIM functions in order to make a switch.

However, these capacitive buttons on the smartphone are not backlit, which makes them difficult to use in the dark.

On the left panel is the volume rocker button. Just above the volume rocker is the "Quick button", which is a physical button that you can customise to set a function or an app that you use the most. This button is quite conveniently placed and comes in quite handy. The right panel is the power/ standby button.

Display
The LG Optimus L7 II dual comes with 4.3-inch IPS 480x800 pixel (WVGA) display, which has a pixel density of around 216ppi. In the recent past, we have seen some companies launch HD smartphones at the same price point. In any case, most smartphones in the range of Rs. 15,000 price points come with at least a qHD display and so are disappointed with the display resolution of LG Optimus L7 II dual.

We were easily able to read the text on this smartphone, however watching videos or pictures is not a pleasant experience. You can even see slight pixelatiom on the display while watching videos and pictures.

The viewing angles of this smartphone are average but the colour reproduction is not very good. The under sun light visibility is passable. However, the screen is a finger print magnet and needs to be cleaned frequently.

The touch sensitivity of the screen is good, but in our experience it is a tad bit oversensitive and because of this we would end up terminating our calls accidently.

Software/ User Interface
The LG Optimus L7 II dual runs Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) and the smartphone has been heavily skinned. The Korean smartphone has added its own Optimus UI 3.0 layer on top. One of the major advantages of this skin is that the customisations and UI extras that LG is offering with its flagship phones such as the Optimus G, are also available on this smartphone in the same or a lighter avatar.

LG also allows you to customise the Lock screen giving the ability to select four app shortcuts and a clock or calendar. Swiping anywhere else on the lock screen will take you to the last screen that you were on, before the smartphone went on standby. You can choose the animation effect that you would want to use on your smartphone when you swipe from one home screen to another or when you unlock the phone.

LG gives you the option of choosing from four different themes - Optimus, Biz, Cozywall and Marshmallow. All these four themes offer a different icon set, home screen wallpaper and app drawer background. These themes are a quite bright and fun. Amongst these themes, the Marshmallow theme seems designed for young girls and looks straight out of fairy tale books.

LG Optimus L7 II dual comes with five customisable home screens that you can fill with apps and widgets. The Korean smartphone maker has also skinned the notification tray and has included toggles for various settings including for sound, data, NFC, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Hotspot among others. It also features a shortcut for system settings, and a control for changing screen brightness.

LG also added its site of "Q apps" on this smartphones that includes QMemo, QTranslator and QSlide. QMemo app stands for Quick Menu and helps users to scribble notes on a blank page or on top of a screen shot. QTranslator app is a real-time translator. With this app you can scans text, which are in a different language using your camera.

Apart from these, LG Optimus L7 II dual also has Backup, Cell Broadcast, File Manager, File Share, LG TV, Memo app, Polaris Viewer (for office documents), Remote Call Service, Safety Care, Smart Care and Task Manager. This smartphone also comes with LG's own app store - SmartWorld, which can be used to download apps.

As we already mentioned that the LG has added a swap key to help manage both the SIM effectively. Even on the software side, LG has added a few touches that help the users conveniently manage their two SIMs. For example, there are two different colour schemes throughout the menus indicating which SIM card is in use. The primary SIM card is represented in blue colour and the other SIM is showed in magenta. This helps in clearly demarking which SIM is in use and seems quite thoughtful add on from LG's side.

Camera
The LG Optimus L7 II dual comes with an 8-megapixel auto-focus camera with a single LED flash. There is no dedicated camera key on the smartphone, but we did not miss it much as this smartphone, just like the Optimus G, can also take pictures with voice commands like 'cheese', 'kimchi', 'LG', 'Smile' and 'Whisky'

Pictures clicked through this camera are average in the broad sunlight but the edges appear to be slightly burned out. The colour reproduction of the pictures is satisfactory.

This smartphone also comes with a burst shot feature that enables you to take six quick continuous shots. However, moving images clicked are blurry and also there is a slight camera lag while taking pictures in the burst mode.

The experience of using video recording through the rear camera is average. You can capture videos of 480p at 30 frames per second.

The LG Optimus L7 II dual also comes with 0.3-megapixel front camera for taking self-images and making Skype calls. Images and videos captured through this camera are very grainy.

Performance
LG Optimus L7 II dual packs in 1GHz dual-core processor along with 768MB of RAM. Though the smartphone is able to perform day-to-day task without much hiccups, it is not ideal for multitasking for playing heavy games.

The experience of playing popular games such as Fruit Ninja, Temple Run 2 and Angry Birds is breezy. LG Optimus L3 II dual did not support the game Subway Surfer but the same is supported by this smartphone.

The smartphone comes with 4GB of internal storage, which can be expanded via microSD cards of up to 32GB. Furthermore, only 1.78GB memory is user accessible.

The LG Optimus L7 II dual comes with the native Android browser as well as Chrome and we found that it renders webpages well. The phone doesn't come with Adobe Flash pre-installed.

The speaker on the phone delivers good quality sound at high volume levels both through the speaker as well as the earphones. The call quality of LG Optimus L5 II dual is good too. The phone is a dual-SIM GSM phone with dual-standby.

The LG Optimus L7 II dual comes with a 2,460mAh battery and based on our experience, it will easily last a day and a half with medium usage.

Verdict
LG is trying hard to make its mark in the Indian smartphone market. However, we feel that the company has not really been able to nail the segment with LG Optimus L7 II dual, with the display being especially underwhelming.

We recommend having a look at the Nokia Lumia 720 (Review| Pictures) if you do not mind a Windows Phone 8 offering. Priced at Rs. 18,999, the Lumia 720 is an attractive proposition. The other option that you might want to look at is the Samsung Galaxy Grand Duos (Review| Pictures). This is slightly expensive than the LG Optimus L7 II dual but has great media capabilities. However, the display of the Samsung Galaxy Grand is not great either. Apart from these one can also look at the Micromax Canvas HD (Review| Pictures), which is a good value for money proposition.

Price: Rs. 18,650

Pros

• Solid build
• Good battery performance

Cons

• Underwhelming display

Ratings (Out of 5)

Design: 3
Display: 2.5
Performance: 2.5
Software: 3.5
Camera: 2.5
Battery Life: 4.5
Value for Money: 2.5
Overall: 2.5

Gionee Elife E3 Review

Gionee is a China-based handset maker that has now entered the Indian market. While the economy Android smartphone segment is already flooded with offerings from Indian handset makers such as Micromax, Karbonn and Lava, among others, there's always room for new entrants if they're able to offer products that deliver good quality and bring a differentiated experience.

The Gionee Elife E3 promises to offer power-packed hardware specifications including a 720p display and a quad-core processor, at a budget price in a slim form factor. Does it deliver? We try to find out in our review.

Build/ Design
The Gionee Elife E3 phone sports a slender 7.9mm frame and fits easily in your hand unlike a large number of new Android budget phones. It falls a few centimetres short of being a phablet as it features a 4.7-inch screen.

The phone comes in four different colours - White, Black, Pink and Blue. We had a Blue colour phone as our review unit. Its 4.7-inch screen dominates the front of the phone. The three capacitive buttons - Menu, Home and Back, are located just below the screen while the earpiece, a 2-megapixel front camera and the usual sensor are placed above it.

A thin blue coloured frame surrounds the front bezel. The volume rocker key and the Power/ Screen lock key are also blue in colour and located at the right side of the phone, while the left side is all clean. The 3.5-mm headset jack and the Micro-USB port sit at the top. There are no ports at the bottom of the handset.

The back features a removable cover that sports a rubberised matte finish though the shade of blue used gives it a metallic look. It feels good to hold the phone and we did not notice any creaks or wobbles. The back also features the 8-megaixel rear camera that sits right at the top with an LED flash. The camera lens is pretty small compared to other phones in the market and doesn't take up much space. You'll also see some Gionee and DTS sound branding at the back.

As we mentioned the back cover is removable and hides the battery compartment, a microSD card slot, a micro-SIM slot and a conventional SIM card slot.

Overall, we'd say the phone is one of the better looking budget Android smartphones we've seen in the recent past.

Display
The Gionee Elife E3 comes with a 4.7-inch IPS HD screen that has a resolution of 720x1280 pixels, packing 312 pixels per inch, which is pretty good and graphics and text appear sharp. The viewing angles were also good, and the under-sun visibility on the phone was decent. The screen is not very reflective. Videos and pictures looked good and we found the screen to be bright and vivid.

Software/ Interface
The Gionee Elife E3 runs Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean. The handset maker has put a custom 'Nova' skin on top of the UI and offers themes that let the user customise the phone's home screen, app icons, phone dialler and messaging apps, and even the lock screen. This is similar to mobile phones from other Asian companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi, which is famous for its MIUI custom Android software. However, Gionee also lets users select a theme that is close to the stock Android experience though a number of UI elements still remain skinned. Since we prefer the 'Android' theme, we'll mostly talk about UI features part of this theme.

With the 'Android' theme, you'll also get lock-screen widgets, an Android 4.2 feature. You can choose from the Clock, Camera, Gmail, Google Now and Messaging widgets in addition to widgets offered by third-party apps installed on your phone. These widgets offer glance-able information from the apps and allow users to perform certain app actions even when the phone is locked.
 
The phone allows you to choose different wallpapers or backgrounds for the phone's lock screen, home screen and even for the app launcher.

The Gionee Elife E3 offers nine customisable home screens that can be filled with app shortcuts and widgets. You can reduce the number of home screens to a single screen as well. A pinch gesture on the home screen brings up this option.

The notification tray features a settings shortcut and a clear all notifications button, along with expandable notifications (expanded with the two finger pull gesture). It features the same setting toggles shortcut that's found in stock Android for quick access to Airplane Mode, Battery status, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Data connection, Data usage, Audio Profiles, Brightness, screen backlight Timeout, Auto Rotation, Power saving mode and Alarm clock. 
The option to wirelessly mirror the phone's display with an HDMI enabled device through a wireless display adapter is also present. This is essentially an Android 4.2 feature.

The phone features three capacitive buttons for navigation - Menu, Home and Back, for respective functions with Home button doubling up as the task switcher on long press. We'd like all manufacturers to switch to the three soft controls that are included in the Stock version of the OS. One major gripe with these buttons is that they don't light-up in the dark even when the screen is on until you press one of them.

Android 4.2 Jelly Bean also offers Google Now, which needs to be initialised for the first time, before use. For the uninitiated, Google Now is a voice-based information assistant and an extension of Google search. You can ask questions and the tool returns answers or search results. It uses 'cards' which are essentially small boxes that offer different sets of information ranging from weather forecast, directions, traffic information, scores, appointments, and currency conversion, among others. Google Now collects information based on the user's behaviour, location, and even e-mail, to offer information automatically.

The phone's Settings menu offers a tabbed interface with Common Settings in one tab and All Settings in the other one. 

Gionee has also bundled some apps with the phone including UC Browser, which is the phone's default web browser, File Explorer, Facebook, Twitter, NQ Mobile Security - a mobile security app, V5 Music player, WhatsApp, Yahoo Cricket, GameZone - a games store to download new games, Fishing Joy game, WeChat, Notes, an App Manager, a Torch app (to use the LED flash as a flash light), a Compass app, Kingsoft Office, a Weather app and V9 search app.

Some of the native apps offer extended functionality. For instance, the Music app allows you to put a sleep timer, if you like falling asleep while listening to music. The phone dialler allows you to record voice calls. Most Android phones don't offer this feature though this functionality is offered by some third-party apps that have certain limitations and don't offer good quality recordings. The phone also allows you to set a sleep timer to turn the phone off/ on or in Airplane mode.

There are a few rough edges here and there. The bundled game has a Chinese interface and some native apps had incorrect spellings. 

Camera
The 8-megapixel autofocus shooter takes decent quality images in daylight. However, we observed that pictures taken in low-light conditions did not come out that well. Pictures taken indoors with less light were also grainy.
 
The phone can record HD videos and we found that the quality of videos captured through the back camera was good. It also offers EIS or Electronic Image Stabilization to minimize distortions caused by shaking of hands while shooting a video. Unfortunately, just like the Zen Ultrafone 701 HD, the camera saves videos in the archaic .3GP file format.
 

The phone comes with a customised Camera app and allows you to capture photos in HDR and Panorama modes as well. It comes with the usual controls including settings for Exposure, Colour effect, White balance and ISO, among others. The phone's camera also supports continuous shots taking up to 99 shots in that mode, smile detection and face detection. It also comes with a Phone Booth setting that lets you superimpose fancy picture frames with photos. This feature takes us back to 2007 when this was a standard feature! In addition to this it also features Colour effects or filters.

The 2-megapixel front camera takes above average shots and is great for video calls. Overall, we feel that the phone's good for casual photography but don't expect professional quality photos.

Performance/ Battery Life
The Gionee Elife E3 is powered by a 1.2GHz Mediatek MT6589 quad-core processor. It has 1GB RAM onboard, and PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU. The phone offers 16GB of internal storage, which is expandable by another 32GB via a microSD card. It's worth pointing out that most budget Android phones offer 4GB internal storage. While storage can be expanded by using a microSD card, most phones don't allow users to install apps on external storage without rooting. 

With Android Jelly Bean, the overall experience of navigation through the interface was impressive, thanks to Project Butter and the phone's quad-core processor. We did not experience any lag while launching apps, playing games, scrolling web pages or switching between apps. It is safe to say that performance wise, the phone trumps most dual-core processor powered phones in this price range and matches the performance offered by the Zen Ultrafone 701HD which we reviewed recently.

We were able to play full-HD clips smoothly and the phone supported formats like .AVI and .MOV, natively. The speaker on the phone delivers decent quality sound at high volume levels, but there's some muffle when the phone lies on its back, as the speaker grill is located on the back. The headphones that come with the phone offer average quality sound output though they look good in the Red and Black colour. The phone also offers FM Radio and FM radio recording. It also offers Audio Profiles to quickly switch between different sound settings.

Call quality was good. The phone was also able to get a GPS lock easily while using the Maps app.

The Gionee Elife E3 comes with an 1,800mAh battery, and based on our experience, it will not last you a full day with medium to heavy usage, including 1-1.5 hours of phone calls, two e-mail accounts with push notifications, screen at maximum brightness, playing some music and video clips, Twitter notifications and WhatsApp chats, and you'll need to charge it after 8-10 hours of use. It's also worth pointing out that we had turned off Wi-Fi and auto-brightness, and the phone was hooked to a 3G network. Altering these settings might help in running the phone for a longer duration, depending on your usage pattern.

The phone's underwhelming battery life is a problem area but it also offers a Power Saving mode that limits Processor use and turns of data sync with the phone's screen. You might be able to get some extra hours with this setting at the expense of the phone's functionality.

Verdict
At a price of Rs. 14,999 the Gionee Elife E3 is a competent budget smartphone that delivers good performance. In addition to its 720p display, the major selling point of this phone is its slim profile and the fact that it runs the most recent iteration of Android. We hope that the phone doesn't disappoint when it comes to offering OS updates in the future. Our major grouse is with the phone's underwhelming battery life. Another issue we're concerned about is after sales service. Although the company appears to have set up service centres at all major locations in India, one can't deny that it's a new player in a market that's home to established budget phone brands like Karbonn and Micromax.
 
You could also look at the Zen Ultrafone 701HD (Review | Pictures) that costs about Rs.3,000 less and offers a great experience though it comes with a lower internal storage capacity of 4GB. The Micromax Canvas HD (Review | Pictures) is also a decent option though we're not big fans of its build quality.

Price: Rs.14,999

Pros

• Good build quality, slim profile
• Bright display
• Good performance

Cons

• Underwhelming battery life
• Capacitive touch buttons' backlight doesn't light-up with the screen in the dark
• Camera performance could have been better

Ratings (Out of 5)

• Design: 4
• Display: 3.5
• Camera: 3
• Performance: 4
• Software: 4
• Battery Life: 2.5
• Value for Money: 3.5
• Overall: 3

Karbonn S5 Titanium review

The Karbonn S5 Titanium is the successor to the S1 Titanium featuring an upgraded 5-inch qHD display and an 8-megapixel rear camera. The phone was launched for Rs. 11,990, around Rs.1,000 more than the S1 Titanium's launch price. The S1 Titanium is now available online for Rs. 9,990. Is it worth spending Rs. 2,000 more to buy the S5 Titanium? We try to find out how the phone fares in all departments in our review.

Build/ Design

The Karbonn S5 Titanium looks a little different from its predecessor and is thinner. It also looks more refined compared to the S1 Titanium. However, it features the same rectangular slab form factor with rounded corners. The phone comes in White and Deep Blue colour variants and we got a Deep Blue phone as our review unit.

The front of the phone features the 5-inch qHD display, three capacitive touch buttons for navigation, and the front camera lens, in addition to the proximity sensor and the earpiece. The bezel is not that wide on the sides and doesn't take up a major part of the front unlike the S1 Titanium.

The Power/Screen lock is located at the right side of the phone, while the volume rocker key is located on the left side. The 3.5mm headset jack and the Micro-USB port sit at the top.

While Karbonn has mostly taken care of our gripes with the S1 Titanium's design in the S5 Titanium, the back of the phone is still made of plastic and is extremely glossy. You could use it as a mirror but it's a fingerprint magnet and it'll be full of smudges as soon as you start using the phone. The 8-megapixel rear camera lens is located towards the top along with a flash. There's some Karbonn branding towards the bottom.

The back cover is removable and hides the battery compartment. The two SIM card slots and a microSD slot are located just above the battery compartment.

Display

The S5 Titanium comes with a 5-inch qHD IPS screen that has a resolution of 540x960 pixels and pixel density of 221ppi, which is decent, and graphics and text appear sharp, although a 720p screen could have taken it to the next level. The viewing angles looked good. However, it's really difficult to read or take pictures in sunlight, as the screen is extremely reflective. Videos and pictures looked good but colours appeared to be a little saturated just like the S1 Titanium's screen.

Software/ Interface

The Karbonn S5 Titanium runs Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. The interface is the same as that of the S1 Titanium and you can read about it in detail in our S1 Titanium review. 

We like the fact that Karbonn has removed the redundant Search button and switched to the standard three button navigation.

Camera

The phone features an 8-megapixel autofocus shooter that takes good quality images in daylight. However, at times we observed that they were a little over-exposed. Pictures taken indoors under artificial light also came out well but suffered the same issue.

The camera app is a little different from the stock Android camera app and unlike the S1 Titanium, doesn't feature the capability to simultaneously use the rear and the 2-megapixel front camera. The camera app features settings for white balance, exposure, aspect ratio, face-detection, red eye reduction among others. It also offers a Panorama mode but leaves out the HDR mode which was present in the S1 Titanium's camera app. There's a speed shot mode as well as the normal mode takes time to click photos.

The phone is also capable of shooting 720p video and we found the recording quality to be decent.

The front camera also takes decent photos and can be used for video chats as well as for self clicks.

Performance

The Karbonn S5 Titanium is powered by a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8625 quad-core processor. It has 1GB RAM onboard, and Adreno 203 chip for processing graphics. There is 4GB of internal storage, which is expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card.

With Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the overall experience of navigation through the interface was impressive, thanks to Project Butter and the phone's quad-core processor. We did not experience any lag while launching apps, playing games, scrolling web pages or switching between apps. It is safe to say that performance wise, the S5 Titanium trumps other dual-core processor powered phones in this price range.

The phone also offers FM Radio unlike its predecessor, which gives you another reason to choose this phone over the S1 Titanium.

We were not able to play full-HD clips, but the phone supported formats like .AVI, natively. 720p videos can be played but stutter. The speaker on the phone delivers average quality sound at high volume levels, but there's some muffle when the phone lies on its back, as the speaker grill is located on the back. The headphones that come with the phone offer average quality sound output.

Call quality was good.

The phone comes with a 2000mAh battery, and based on our experience, it will last you a full day with medium to heavy usage, including 1-1.5 hours of phone calls, two e-mail accounts with push notifications, screen at maximum brightness, playing some music and video clips, Twitter notifications and WhatsApp chats. It's also worth pointing out that we had turned off Wi-Fi and auto-brightness, and the phone was hooked to a 3G network. Altering these settings might help in running the phone for a longer duration, depending on your usage pattern.

Verdict

The Karbonn S5 Titanium is a worthy upgrade to the S1 Titanium, offering a better build, improved camera, albeit stripped of some features and a bigger screen. It also offers FM radio if you like tuning in to your favourite local radio station. We'd recommend buying the S5 Titanium over the S1 Titanium though it will cost you around Rs. 2,000 more at this point in time.

We also recommend you to take a look at the Zen Ultrafone 701HD that comes at the same price point and offers Android 4.2 and a 720p display along with a better build quality.

Other quad-core processor phones in the budget range include the Micromax Canvas HD and the Xolo Q800.

Price: Rs. 11,990

Karbonn S5 Titanium: In Pictures

Pros

• Decent performance
• Good camera

Cons

• Plasticky back which is a smudge magnet
• Reflective screen

Ratings (Out of 5)

Design: 3.5
Display: 3
Performance: 4
Software: 3.5
Battery Life: 3
Value for Money: 3.5
Camera: 3.5
Overall: 3.5

Intex Aqua i-5 review

While Intex has been making feature phones for a long time, it was only recently that it forayed into the smartphones segment. The company is currently offering 12 mid-segment smartphones under its Aqua range and has drawn out plans to launch 20 more smartphones in the coming quarter. The company is also gearing up to promote its smartphones with a new marketing campaign that suggests that it's serious about selling them.

The Intex Aqua i-5 is yet another budget Android smartphone, with which the company promises to deliver a feature rich package at an economy price. Does it have what it takes to stand tall in a segment dominated by the likes of Micromax, Karbonn, Xolo and Spice? We try to find out in our review.

Design/ Build
Over the last couple of months, we've seen a deluge of large screen (5-inch and onwards) phones from Indian handset makers and a number of them look identical bearing the same form factor, design elements and even materials. The Intex Aqua i-5 is not really much different except that it's slimmer compared to other budget smartphones in the market.
 
The phone is 8.8mm thin and weighs 155 grams but doesn't feel very bulky. The phone comes in Black and White colour variants and we got a Black one as our review unit.

The front of the phone features a 5-inch display with the three capacitive touch buttons, namely Back, Home and Menu located just below it. Strangely, the Menu button is marked like the 'Task switcher' button that we see in stock Android and HTC's recent Android phones. Also, the markings of these navigation buttons are not visible when the phone's backlight is off.

The earpiece, a 2-megapixel front camera lens and the sensor array are all placed above the display, along with some Intex branding. A chrome frame separates the back cover and the front panel.

The power/ screen lock button is located at the right hand side of the phone towards the top, which is a little inconvenient. We feel it could've been positioned a little bit lower. The button appears to be made of chrome plated plastic and does't offer good tactile feedback. The volume rocker key is located on the left-hand side at almost the same position.

There are no ports at the bottom while the Micro-USB port and the 3.5mm headset jack sit at the top of the phone.

The back features a removable cover that sports a glossy finish and is susceptible to smudges. The 12-megapixel rear camera lens is located towards the upper side of the back and protrudes out a bit. A small round LED flash is located just next to it. There's some more branding and a speaker outlet towards the bottom.

Opening the cover reveals a battery compartment, above which are slots for a conventional SIM card, a micro-SIM card and a microSD card. You'll need to remove the battery to swap SIM cards.

Display
The Intex Aqua i-5 comes with a 5-inch qHD IPS screen that has a resolution of 540x960 pixels and pixel density of 221ppi, which is decent, and graphics and text appear sharp, although a 720p screen could have taken it to the next level. The viewing angles looked good. However, it's difficult to read or take pictures in sunlight, as the screen is extremely reflective. Videos and pictures looked good and colours appeared natural.
 
User Interface/ Software
The Intex Aqua i-5 runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, the latest iteration of the OS at the time of penning this review. Intex has skinned some UI elements of the OS and also offers a second theme that offers a different icon set. Even the default theme that offers stock icons has undergone some changes with Intex choosing a White colour for the status bar and the notifications tray and the Settings menu. 

You also get lock-screen widgets, an Android 4.2 feature. You can choose from the Clock, Camera, Gmail, Google Now and Messaging widgets in addition to widgets offered by third-party apps installed on your phone. These widgets offer glanceable information from the apps and allow users to perform certain app actions even when the phone is locked.

There are seven customisable home screens that can be filled with app shortcuts and widgets. The notification tray also features a settings shortcut and a clear all notifications button, along with expandable notifications (expanded with the two-finger pull gesture). It features the same setting toggles shortcut that's found in stock Android and adds some of its own as well, for quick access to Airplane Mode, Battery status, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Data connection, Data usage, Audio Profiles, Brightness, Screen backlight timeout and Auto rotation.

The phone also offers another Android 4.2 feature, Daydream, that displays photo albums or the clock while the phone's charging. The option to wirelessly mirror the phone's display with an HDMI enabled device through a wireless display adapter is also present.

Android 4.2 Jelly Bean also offers Google Now, which needs to be initialised for the first time, before use. For the uninitiated, Google Now is a voice-based information assistant and an extension of Google search. You can ask questions and the tool returns answers or search results. It uses 'cards' which are essentially small boxes that offer different sets of information ranging from weather forecast, directions, traffic information, scores, appointments, and currency conversion, among others. Google Now collects information based on the user's behaviour, location, and even email, to offer information automatically.

Intex has also bundled some apps with the phone including games such as Carrom 3D, Chess and RacingMoto, Documents To Go, a File Manager app, Firewall for blocking unwanted calls, a Flashlight app, Facebook, Skype, Opera Mini, NQ Mobile Vault app for password protecting messages and call logs, and WhatsApp, in addition to an app that's called Intex Zone which allows you to select an option to record all calls automatically, and Intex Play which is the company's own app store.

Camera
The Intex Aqua i-5 comes with a customised Camera app and allows you to capture photos in HDR, Face beauty mode, Panorama modes, Auto scene detection, and best shot modes in addition to an EV bracket mode for taking multiple exposure photos. The app also comes with the usual controls including settings for Exposure, Colour effect, White balance, Scene Modes and ISO, among others. The phone's camera also supports continuous shots taking up to 16 shots in that mode, smile detection and face detection. Some of the options in the camera app's interface are not self-descriptive which makes it a little unintuitive for new smartphone users.
 
The 12-megapixel autofocus camera takes good quality images in daylight. However, we observed that pictures taken in low-light conditions did not come out well. Pictures taken indoors with less light were also a little grainy. Colour reproduction was pretty accurate though.

The phone can record HD videos and we found that the quality of videos captured through the back camera was good. It also offers EIS or Electronic Image Stabilization to minimize distortions caused by shaking of hands while shooting a video. Unfortunately, the camera saves videos in the archaic .3GP file format.

The 2-megapixel front facing camera also takes decent quality shots with good lighting conditions and is great for video calls. Overall, we feel that the phone's pretty good for casual photography.

Performance/ Battery Life
The Intex Aqua i-5 is powered by a 1.2GHz Mediatek MT6589 quad-core processor. It has 1GB RAM onboard, and PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU. There is 4GB of internal storage, which is expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card.

With Android Jelly Bean, the overall experience of navigation through the interface was impressive, thanks to Project Butter and the phone's quad-core processor. We did not experience any lag while launching apps, playing games, scrolling web pages or switching between apps.

However, we were not able to play full-HD clips and the phone did not support formats like .MOV natively, though third-party apps available on the Play Store easily fixed that. The speaker on the phone delivers decent quality sound at high volume levels, but there's some muffle when the phone lies on its back, as the speaker grill is located at the back. The sound output is also a little low compared to other smartphones reviewed recently. The headphones that come with the phone offer average quality sound output. The phone also offers FM Radio. It also offers Audio Profiles to quickly switch between different sound settings.

Call quality was good, during our testing process, however, we experienced issues using 3G data. We tried using two different SIM cards, a micro-SIM and a conventional SIM card of two different networks, but experienced intermittent connectivity while using 3G data for browsing.

The phone was able to get a GPS lock rather easily while using the Maps app.

The phone comes with a 2000mAh battery, and based on our experience, it will last you a full day with medium to heavy usage, including 1-1.5 hours of phone calls, two email accounts with push notifications, screen at maximum brightness, playing some music and video clips, Twitter notifications and WhatsApp chats. It's also worth pointing out that we had Wi-Fi and auto-brightness turned off and the phone was hooked to a 3G network. Altering these settings might help in running the phone for a longer duration, depending on your usage pattern.

Verdict
The Intex Aqua i-5 is a decent option if you're looking to buy an Android smartphone that costs less than Rs. 12,000, offers a quad-core processor and runs the latest version of Android. Intex is offering a flip cover and screen guard along with the phone, making it a complete value for money proposition.

However, the Aqua i-5's QHD display is a little inferior compared to 720p display of the likes of Zen Ultrafone 701HD.

Another issue we're concerned about is the phone not getting a reliable 3G connection in areas where other phones with the same SIM card were able to latch on to a 3G network. The phone was constantly switching between 3G and EDGE.

Do check out our reviews of Karbonn S5 Titanium (Review) and the Zen Ultrafone 701HD (Review) which are available in the same price range.


Intex Aqua i-5 in pictures

Price: Rs.11,690

Pros

• Good build quality
• Good performance
• Runs Android 4.2

Cons

• Low resolution qHD screen
• Problems connecting to 3G network
• Power key does not offer good tactile feedback

Ratings (Out of 5)

• Design: 3.5
• Display: 3
• Camera: 3
• Performance: 3
• Software: 4
• Battery Life: 3
• Value for Money: 3
• Overall: 3