Karbonn Sparkle V – The Android One Smartphone Review

I still Remember the google I/O 2014 where sundar pichai did announced a completely new line up of devices especially for India, To penetrate the number of users of smartphone and to make more people online. In start 3 companies were announced those were Micromax, Karbonn , Spice and later on after the launch of these devices 3 more companies were added up those were Xolo, HTC and Asus. We were lucky to have Karbonn Sparkle V in our test. When the device did launched we were pretty much disappointed with the specification they offered But after my first impression I was shocked by this amazing device. Lets keep it Aside and Talk point by point.

What is Android One ?

Android One is a budget line up of smartphones by Google currently only in India. Google Thinks budget segment is where customer switch from feature phone to a smartphone, and a stock as well perfect android experience is not been delivered to such customers. Android one is like cheap nexus device where Google depends on hardware for company and official updates are directly pushed over by Google. These android one line-up of smartphone are guaranteed to get Android Lolipop update as well as future updates too.

Specification of Karbonn Sparkle V

• 4.5 inch 450 x854 pixels (218 PPI display )
• 1GB ram, 4GB internal memory  expandable uoto 32GB via MicroSD card
• 5MP rear camera , 2 MP front
• Mediatek MT6582 Quadcore processor
• Android 4.4.4 Kitkat out of box Upgradable to Lollipop
• 1700 Li-Po battery

Hardware Aspect

The karbonn Sparkle V has complete plastic body, not slippery but perfect to fit in hand also due to 4.5 inch display ease to use with one hand. The front side top had a ear piece which completely looks like the Nexus 5 aside to 2 meagapixel camera, the call quality was good  and Huge bezels normally seen in this phones. The phone is quiet slim 10.4 mm which is Ok at side perfectly placed lock and volume locker easily to reach quiet a good quality too. At the back it had a purported  camera quiet a bit adds a thickness and making it unstable when phone is placed with screen on upper side. The back has a signature written Android One which makes the phone gives lots of meaning and advantages of it. Speaker grills are also present which produced decent amount of sound.

 

Experience and Performance with Kitkat

Well to be frank unexpectedly the karbonn sparkle v is amazingly smooth, we never expected the karbonn phone to be this smooth, or we never seen such faster phone from an Indian company which as proper tweaked and enhanced , perfectly cooked, Android kitkat experience which feels a reason to buy a device. The experience is as equal as that of any nexus device just imagine a budget device that too Indian brand as smooth UI as that of Nexus. Also promised for future updates makes it a key reason to buy and I had never seen any karbonn phones getting next android update probably the first phone which will be getting the next android update. Google really proved Android experience can be smooth in all possible of hardware.

If you talk something of the performance of the karbonn sparkle v then it would never disappoint you, smoother gaming performance was experienced by us. We even played Asphalt 8 at recommended settings smoother and amazing graphics intensive. It scored well in Antutu benchmarks with about 18495 which is surprisingly  higher than Moto e (12445) and even than Moto G(16944). Everything was surprising for us, its smoothness, its performance, its benchmarks and even somehow never expected from camera too it was surprising.

In a better way its shown in the video review below.

Camera

Well Uptill now there’s only one budget device which is been always recommended was the Moto e and Moto e never had a good camera it was always fixed focus. We were expecting the same thing with the camera of Karbonn sparkle V but again we were surprised that it had auto-focus with same 5 MP sensor. Google camera was the default camera app in karbonn sparkle V, Some may like it some may not. Which really captured good images. Not really good as high-end  smartphone does but good than any other smartphone even in low light conditions with flash it really did a great job. You can view some of the samples below.

Battery

The Karbonn Sparkle V does comes with Li-Po battery instead of Li-ion battery, specification wise these both battery aren’t different but Li-po battery are slimmer. So while looking at the specification you would had thought that 1700 that’s very low. Even surprisingly even that’s a very good and well optimised by google. At normal 3G and Wifi with normal messaging and emailing we got about 1 day and 4 hours of battery life till complete drain. That’s really important for the one who does lots of emailing on the device he would never be disappointed with this performance and in every aspect this device really impressed us a lot.

Video Review

Final Verdict

Finally I think except not so pretty build like that of Moto e , It has almost all capability to perfectly compete moto e and I think at a price bracket of 6,000 rs it will be the only device which I will be recommending. I think Indian companies will grow to a more further extend. Really there huge more now karbonn mobiles are capable to do now. I think there deal to come up with Android one device is pretty good. Talking about the bad point of the Phone, If google really thinks to penetrate in the Indian market with such device then They should be made more available offline rather than Online, because India has penetration of internet just less than 20% that’s low and out of that 20% some still doesn’t trust e-commerce due to their bad experience. If you make some physical stores or tie up with stores like croma, vijay sales , reliance digial, universalcell sync then it will make you more popular.