Detailed Review

Design:

Among the Indian manufacturers, Karbonn mobiles are tough competitors to other domestic brands. A1 Plus which is priced at Rs. 4990 has a good design and is among the best low budget Dual Sim Android smartphone. The dimension of the handset is 114.5 mm x 60.6 mm x 13.8 mm in height, width and depth. It has a capacitive touch screen and the screen size measures 3.5 inches diagonally. The device is beautifully designed and the body is good fitted too. On its top is a 3.5 mm earjack port in the middle and the power key next to it. On its bottom is a USB/Charging port in the middle and the mouthpiece alongside it. The right depth is left bare, whereas the left side has volume controls. Above its screen is earpiece in the middle with front camera on its right and sensors on its left. The below portion of the screen has capacitive touch keys for home, back and menu. The back side has a camera lens around the top and near to it is a speaker grill. The body of the phone is all in plastic material with aluminum ring and is handy too.

Interface/OS:

The Karbonn A1 Plus runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system. This phone is power backed by 1 GHz Qualcomm processor and 256 MB of RAM. When tested, the device functioned smoother but, delayed in multitasking and swapping applications because of its slower 256 MB of RAM. The UI (user interface) is simple and easy to personalize.

Camera:

The Karbonn A1 Plus comes with an impressive 3 megapixels main camera but lacks with LED flash light. It has a front facing camera for video calls and has good features too. When tested, the outdoor images were good and the indoor shots were impressive with artificial lights support but the colours were not rich. The camera captures the picture fast and the overall camera performance is fine.

                                            

Memory:

Karbonn A1 Plus comes with in-built 512 MB user accessible memory with 256 MB of RAM. The memory can be extended up to 32 GB through micro SD extension slot.

Battery:

Karbonn A1 Plus comes with a powerful standard Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery which has done full justice to this device. It delivers the stand by time of up to 72 hours on 2G and up to 50 hours on 3G. The music playback time is up to 8 hours and the Talk Time from the battery is up to 5 hours on 2G and up to 4 hours when on 3G. The overall battery performance was great with average daily use.

Audio/Video:

Karbonn A1 Plus delivers good audio quality and has a FM radio with RDS. It supports MP3, 3GPP, MP4, SMF, WAV, OTA and Ogg vorbis audio playback supported formats. 3GPP, MP4 and AMR are audio recording supported formats. The video quality of the phone when tested was up to the mark with this 3 Megapixels snapper. The video playback and recording formats are 3GPP and MP4.

Features:

Karbonn A1 Plus from is in-built with all basic Android smart phone features and applications and you can purchase or download latest android applications to your phone. In-built it has many social and other apps like, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc. The list of pre-loaded application include: Google Search, Google Talk, Google Mail and Google Calendar. For connectivity and communication you have multiple options like USB High speed 2.0 and Micro USB support with Native USB tethering. WiFi and WiFi Hotspot functionality is also there. aGPS is in-built in the device and you have a WebKit web browser too. Bluetooth technology helps you pair with other devices and share data with them.

Conclusion:

The Karbonn A1 Plus is a good smart phone in this price range offering Dual SIM functionality, Dual Camera and many other exiting features. This phone certainly has edge over others its segment. Its 1 GHz processor, 3 megapixels camera and Android 2.3 version as its main key features give it edge over its competitors. But its week 256 MB RAM can be disappointing at times which delays in multitasking and swapping applications. However, that cannot be blamed in this price range as the overall performance of this device is satisfactory.

So, we give this phone 4 star rating.

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