Feb 02, 2010 05:58 PM
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There are not a lot of reviews or information about karbonn mobiles on the internet.
I have bought a karbonn mobile kc 750 and will briefly describe the product.
The specifications can be viewed at the karbonn mobile website.
- Hardware - although the phone is very light in weight for a candy bar, the material used (plastic) is not very great. The key pad is squeaky at times and overall has the plasticky feel which i think is not going to last very long.
Removing the battery cover is a two hand and skill needy job. And again i do not think it is going to last very long.
The phone has a small pull-out antenna at the bottom end for the fm radio (could be better if was placed on top though), but overall reception of fm is good and the antennae really helps. The speakers are mighty loud. I can compare it with my hp laptop speaker when at max volume. The camera is 3 mp. Picture quality is acceptable. Although i have seen better pic's from 2mp camera's.
When the phone is connected to the pc, a webcam option appears on the phone. The pc suite, though not included in the phone, can be downloaded from karbonn mobile website.
A flash is absent. Video recording is normal vga.
Inbuilt storage stands at 25 mb's and micro sd upto 4 gb is acceptable.the charger doubles up as a usb chord to connect to the pc. No pc suit required / included and as easy as a pen drive.
Battery life is not very great (no cdma + gsm is), but the 1050mah ensures more than one day backup with normal phone and audio usage. I tested the full charged battery by playing fm radio through speakers with audio level set at 2, which is loud enough for an average room. It played for 6 hours before the battery died. The phone did not heat up anytime during the test.
- Software - from the use so far, the software seems stable for a dual sim (cdma + gsm). No hanging problems so far. And the response is without any delay. The menu layout and working is mostly like symbian used in nokia n-series phones. Although there is no way of customising the menu.
There are 3 themes loaded by default to choose from. And about 10 wallpapers. Wallpapers are good and high resolution and make use of the screen in a good way. Although wallpapers have to be in a 240x320 format.
Personal pictures taken from the digital camera are displayed in the centre of the screen and use about half the screen leaving space on top and bottom. Instead of converting the images, i crop the edges out and they are displayed on the complete screen. Also images above 1 mb can not be used as wallpapers. It supports most audio formats, although i have tried only mp3. The audio player finds all the music from the phone and memory card and turns them into a playlist. Mp3 songs can be set as ring tones.
One can select different ringtones for cdma / gsm. Also custom ringtones and photo calling options for contacts is available. Making calls is easy, thanks to dedicated gsm and cdma call buttons. Call logs are also maintained separately. Its a dual standby device so when you are on a call on sim 1, and you get a call on sim 2, it rings and you have to treat it as a different phone altogether (no call waiting for sim2 if sim1 is on call). T9 replica is present for text input (called smart text). Although i did not like the fact that i could not set regular "abc" as default when composing a message. Phone book is merged and it displays all contacts from phone + sim1 + sim2 together and i do not think i have any control over it. Hence most numbers appear twice / thrice on the list. Phone can hold 1000 contacts.
Vcard is included and hence easy to send contacts via text/bluetooth.
Comes with 2 games , although the existence of java means any 240x320 game will work like a charm.
Pros - stable software, speaker sound, crisp display, fm antennae, java, webcam,
Cons - plastic quality, camera quality, no customization due to new os(themes, icons, etc).
Overall i find the phone satisfactory for an average user like myself. Music on the go with fm, not so bad camera, gsm + cdma, not bad battery life, and above all, easy to use interface for rs.6000 makes it a good buy in my book.
I hope this review helps future buyers.
