Karbonn A9 Dual Sim Android Phone Review
Karbonn has been a low key company from the get go, but their recent Android endeavors have led them into the spotlight. The A9 is one such example that has got Karbonn a lot of attention in the market. Lets see how it holds up.
Build Quality, Design and Hardware
The phone is surprisingly well built. With a sleek shell, and a thin 11 mm side edge, the phone fits very well in the hand and looks good doing it. The plastics used in the construction of the outer shell are of superior quality and have a nice and robust feel to them.
The design of the A9 is far better than several other devices in the same price range. The phone fits well in the hand and is comfortable to use. The display on the A9 is a 3.8 inch Capacitive Multi Touch with a 480 x 800 px resolution. The A9 has a 5 MP camera with auto focus and led light, there is a front VGA camera for video calling as-well. The battery is 1600 mAh and the internal memory is 1GB . The A9 has a 1 GHz processor and 512 MB of RAM.
Display, Camera and Multimedia
The camera is a 5 MP AutoFocus camera with decent image capture capability, video quality is poor and still in VGA format, the least we expected is a 720p video capture. Low light performance is poor and not a lot can be expected of the basic camera app included with the phone.
The display is a nice and vivid display with a nice resolution. 480 x 800px on a 3.8 inch screen looks crisp and there were no complaints with the display. The touch screen is fast and responsive and touch is accurate.
Audio and Video playback on the phone is great, audio is loud and video playback is smooth. Most formats are supported out of the box and others can be added with the use of several plugins, codecs and apps from the Google Play store.
Phone, Messaging and Networks
The device is a great phone, with a good earpiece and a receptive microphone. There are two sim card slots one for 3G and one for a standard 2G sim. Swapping b/w sims is easy and choosing a default sim allows you to always call or message using that card.
Messaging is easy as the screen is responsive and seamlessly shifts into landscape. You can use the included unmodified keyboard or download one of the many custom keyboards from the Google Play store.
Network was erratic on the A9 where we faced call droppage during our daily commutes, the phone performed well in a stable spot.
Battery Life:
- Talk Time 3G network(data off): 5 Hours
- Talk Time 2g (data off) : 6 hours
- Internet : N/A
- Music : 10 Hours
- Video : 4 hours
- Talk Time 3G network(data on): 4.5 Hours
- Talk Time 2g (data on) : 5 hours
- Internet : 4 Hours
- Music : 9 Hours
- Video : 3.5 hours
- Talk Time 3G network(data off): 5 Hours
- Talk Time 2g (data off) : 5.5 hours
- Internet : 4 Hours
- Music : 9 Hours
- Video : 3 hours
Conclusion
One of the best phones in the price bracket, with dual sim capabilities. The Karbonn A9 has truly impressed us by being not to loud. Good looks and a good mix of hardware on the device and inside it make it a worthy option.
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