When I bought a budget Indian smartphone for 2,800 rupees (Dh167), I had very low expectations.
But I was pleasantly surprised when I took the Karbonn A51, made by the country's third-largest smartphone manufacturer, out of the box. White in colour, at first glance it really looks quite nice and feels quite sturdy. It is actually not dissimilar in shape and size to my current phone, an Apple iPhone 4. No need to be embarrassed when you use it in public.
Some of the other Indian budget phones I looked at felt plasticky and cheap, so this one had a slight edge over them. When you look at the build quality more closely, however, there are obviously compromises. The back cover is just a thin piece of plastic that snaps off for access to the battery and SIM card holders.
The screen is noticeably not as good quality as premium phones, but it is sharp enough to be quite acceptable – not terrible by any means.
In terms of its usability, the touch-screen is good. The phone runs an Android operating system and you can swipe and select as easily as you could on any more expensive phone.
Its real failing for me – and why I would struggle to use the phone long-term – is internet access. It only supports 2G, which I found painfully slow when it comes to browsing and trying to do anything more complex than sending an email. I managed to download and use WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, but they ran more slowly than I am used to.
The built-in memory filled up once I had downloaded a couple of apps. It actually has expandable memory up to 32MB, so this is surmountable and you would need to buy an SD card to boost the storage, but the amount will still not get you very far – even the simple Adobe Reader app can take up one-fourth of the expandable storage space.
The camera on the phone takes absolutely awful photos. I would have expected a better performance from its 3.2 megapixel specification.
What I did like was that the phone takes two SIM cards, which is a feature I don’t have on my more expensive phone.
Murali Retineni, the executive director of Celkon Mobiles, another popular budget smartphone maker in India, explained that the cheapest models are meant to serve as an entry into the smartphone market for users.
“Low-cost smartphones are witnessing traction with the students, as they do not want to spend much on phones,” he says.
And for the price, who’s complaining?
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