New Delhi: Phones from the second-rung manufacturers are often eyed with suspicion regarding their build quality and features. But the times are changing, manufacturers such as Karbonn, Spice and Micromax are fast coming up with devices that combine good features with attractive pricing.
Recently the Karbonn A7 came in for review. It is priced at Rs 7,490 and comes in Ivory White colour. I will stop short of putting the phone on my recommended list because of its low internal memory, but it does come with features that the more celebrated manufacturers sell for about double the price.
The dual-SIM Karbonn A7 has decent looks and is also light in weight. This ergonomically designed phone is comfortable to hold and does not look cheap in your hands. Though it has three touch keys for home, option and back at the bottom, but there is a dedicated physical key for Google search, which can be an advantage for those who surf a lot.
It is a dual SIM-Android phone - SIM 1 has 3G Support and SIM 2 has 2G Support. The phone has an 8.9 cm (3.5-inch) capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 320x480 pixels, which produces satisfactory results.
The phone runs Android 2.3 operating system and is powered by an 800MHz processor. Multitasking on this phone is not a pain; the phone easily lets you perform three to four functions at a time. The biggest disappointment is its low internal memory. The tech specs sheet mentions that the phone has an internal memory of 512MB, but the user-accessible is only a measly 177MB.
However, the memory can be expanded up to 32GB using a microSD card, but the catch here is that some of the apps only get installed on the internal memory of the phone. So, it means that at a point of time, when your phone’s internal memory will be out of storage space, you will have to choose between the apps you want to keep on your phone. My advice is to opt for an Android phone which has a minimum of 512 MB user-accessible internal memory.
This dual SIM phone has a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash that produces fairly good results in both low-light and bright-light conditions. Users cannot zoom in or zoom out with volume up and down keys located on the left side of the phone. Zooming in and out using the volume rocker button is a standard practice now. In fact, the phone offers touch-based zoom in and zoom out controls. But the camera is unable to capture quality videos. It also has a front camera which delivered satisfactory results.
The phone comes engineered with an impressive speaker that is reasonably loud and produces clear audio. The call quality on this phone is also pretty good.
The Karbonn A7 comes engineered with a 1420 mAh battery. The phone takes around 2.5 hours to get fully charged and can easily last for 16-18 hours when put to normal use.
Other features include Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth and FM Radio.
Pros
+ Reasonably priced
+ Responsive touchscreen
+ Decent looks
+ Camera captures good images
Cons
- Poor video recording
- Low internal memory
Rating: 2.75/5
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