Reviews

Karbonn A15 review

Price: Rs. 5,900

Rating: 8.125

• Design: 8
• Looks: 8.5
• Performance: 7
• Price: 9

Summary:

The Karbonn A15 is the new budget smartphones killer. It comes with same specifications like others in this price segment but with improvements like ICS, 512MB RAM and 4 GB internal storage.
A15 - the best pocket friendly choice.

The Karbonn A15 comes with 1GHZ processor, 512MB RAM and 4GB internal storage running on the ICS Android 4.0 OS with a 4 inch WVGA screen for under Rs. 6k. Specification wise it clearly beats other smartphones in the same price bracket of Rs 5-7k.

• The A15 box 

  You will surely find the box quite bigger than the small phone.
   Inbox consists of the A15 handset, earphones, micro USB to USB data cable, power adapter, user manual, service center booklet and a free scratch guard.

• Design 

  The handset looks pretty decent and elegant, its all black that seems to be a trend following in all Karbonn smartphones. The front side panel is glossy black and the rear side have black matte finish.
  The handset is very comfortable to hold, thanks to its compact design. There are 4 dedicated touch buttons on front side, power button on top, the volume rockers on the left and the micro USB slot on the left side. On the rear you will find the 3MP camera (without LED flash and no front facing or secondary camera.), karbonn logo and speaker out. There is light, proximity and G-sensors.

• Inside the Hood 

  The Karbonn A15 is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM7627A (Snapdragon S1) ARMv7 Cortex A5 processor with Adreno 200 GPU. The RAM is 512MB and 4GB internal storage. There is 581MB storage assigned for apps (of which about 503MB is available) and 2.56GB for user storage. Of the 512MB RAM users get over 200MB to 225MB free.
  The Smartphone supports 3G with HSDPA support of up to 7.2 Mbps, 2G, Wifi, GPS with A-GPS and Bluetooth. Wifi direct, hotspot also supported along with USB and bluetooth tethering. The handset runs on Android ICS and supports Dual SIM with standby mode.
  The display screen is 4 inches supporting resolution of 800×480 pixels with 2 point multitouch (not multi-touch). The battery is of a decent 1420 mAh capacity.

• A15 Performance 

  The Smartphones performs better than Micromax Ninja3 and also better than Micromax Ninja4. As it holds a decent 512MB memory and a good 503 MB storage space there is plenty of room for more action on the Karbonn A15.
  The touch is smooth and responsive, website text rendering is pretty good with a mild lag. I installed many apps (including the benchmark tools and a few games) and all of them worked pretty well without any lags.
  There is an option to choose the SD card as default install location for new apps. However only a few apps are actually installed directly on the External SD card and most of the applications get installed on the phone memory (i.e. 503MB space) and you will have to move it to SD card manually.
  The WVGA resolution and ICS OS is the best one can expect from a phone under Rs 6k.

• Benchmark scores

         Quadrant – 1924 ~ 1871.
         AnTuTu – 4125 ~ 4152.
         NenaMark2 – 20.4fps.
         LinPack – Single (37)  – Multi (35).

• Camera 

  The Smartphone lacks a front facing camera. The rear camera is a fixed focus 3MP resolution without flash that can record videos in VGA resolution.

• Entertainment 

  This handset comes preloaded with DSPManager app that enhances the sound output of the headset, loudspeaker including bluetooth headset.
  Remember you cannot play 720p movies on this handset. You can watch low resolution movies (not more than 640×480 pixels resolution), or you can try to convert the movie files in supportable formats.

• Games 

  You can play many games without any problem, but don't expect the phone for playing HD games due to low RAM and memory space. And also its a single core processor.

• GPS 

  Got the fix on google maps using GPS within 5~6 seconds. The GPS is without A-GPS support. However there is an option when checked will use the Wi-Fi and mobile networks for approximate location in case GPS satellite signal fails.

• 1420mAh Battery 

  The battery seems pretty good, can easily last for over a day with moderate usage.

• Karbonn A15 review 

  Instead of buying phones like Micromax Ninja 3 or the MMX Ninja 4, better go for the Karbonn A15. For normal users it is the best option, can run many apps and games without any issues. The 3MP camera output is not that great but good enough. But the phone lacks in video calling support due to absence of a front facing camera.

Final verdict!

For under Rs. 6,000 this is a good and decent buy. GO FOR IT.