Karbonn A15 Review

INTRODUCTION

Since the evolution of Android, Indian manufacturers have been on a roll. New handsets are launched almost every month by companies such as Micromax, Karbonn, Lava, iBall etc. Although, initially, the offerings made by these companies couldn't rival the ones from global brands such as Samsung, HTC, LG, Sony, etc., with time, there has been a vast improvement in the quality of products being offered. Not only does the price attract but the features are not half bad as well.
A 4 inch Android smartphone powered by a 1 GHz processor and 512 MB RAM priced at around Rs. 6000. Sounds too good to be true?
Enter the Karbonn A15. 

Key Features

• 4" WVGA TFT LCD display - 480x800 pixels 
• Qualcomm APQ8064 Snapdragon S1 MSM7627A chipset 
• Single-core 1 GHz processor and Adreno 200 (enhanced) graphics 
• 512MB RAM 
• 3.1 Megapixel Fixed Focus camera with VGA video recording. 
• No led flash 
• No Front camera 
• Quad Band 2G and Single Band 3G with data speeds upto 7.2 Mbps DL and 5.76 Mbps UL - SIM 1 & Quad Band 2G - SIM 2 
• 4GB storage with microSD expansion slot 
• Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct 
• Bluetooth 
• GPS 
• Proximity Sensor, Light Sensor and Gravity Sensor 
• 1420 mAh Battery 
• Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) OS 
• SAR Value - 0.595 W/Kg 

UNBOXING THE KARBONN A15

The Karbonn A15 has almost everything that you may need inside the retail box to get started – The handset, battery, screen guard, micro USB cable that doubles up as a charging cable for the A/C adaptor, single piece headset and a warranty card with the list of authorised service centres in India.

There’s no microSD card bundled with the phone.

 

DESIGN & BUILD QUALITY

The phone houses a 4 inch WVGA capacitive TFT LCD display. Above it is the earpiece and next to the earpiece are the proximity and light sensors. Beneath the display there are 4 capacitive keys – Home, Menu, Back and Search which have subtle backlighting to them. The keys are haptic feedback enabled. A microphone sits below the home key.

On the left side of the A15 we find the volume rocker and micro USB port. The volume rocker is quite solid and feels nice to touch.







The right side of the device is completely bare. So is the bottom side.

On the top side we find the 3.5mm headset jack and next to it is the power key.

The back of the device houses a 3.1 MP Fixed Focus Camera. There is no LED Flash. On the bottom side we find the Karbonn logo and the speakerphone grille just below it.






Underneath the battery cover, we find a 1420 mAh battery, the micro SD card slot and the dual SIM card slots. SIM 1 supports both 2G and 3G networks while SIM 2 slot supports only 2G networks.
Overall, for the price, the handset looks pretty decent and the build quality is quite good.

SIZE COMPARISON

L-R - Samsung Galaxy SII, Karbonn A15, Samsung Galaxy Y, Motorola Defy

DISPLAY

Good Display plagued by poor viewing angles

The Karbonn A15 features a 4 inch LCD display of WVGA resolution (800x480 pixels) and pixel density of 233 ppi. Auto Brightness is available as the phone houses an ambient light sensor.
The onscreen images are quite crisp with good colours(for the price) and nice contrast. Viewing angles are quite poor though since the display is not IPS. The colours get washed out very quickly when the phone is tilted from the top even very slightly. Although, the same behaviour is not observed when the phone is tilted from the bottom or sideways.
 

USER INTERFACE

Karbonn A15 runs Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box. Karbonn has made very minimal customisations to this phone and has preinstalled a few apps.

The phone has a five-pane homescreen configuration and a standard set of widgets are included.
The notification bar has 7 toggles which include Wi-Fi, Data, GPS, Rotation Lock, Brightness, Bluetooth.
The app drawer is pretty standard with 2 tabs. The first one is the apps tab which lists all the applications installed on the phone while widgets are listed under a separate tab.
 

PERFORMANCE

The Karbonn A15 is powered by a Qualcomm MSM7627A chipset, which packs a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A5 processor, 512MB of RAM and Adreno 200 (enhanced) GPU. It comes with 4GB of internal space out of which a total of 581 MB is reserved for Apps while 2.57 GB is available to the user.
Out of the 512 MB RAM, 388 MB is usable, out of which only ~180 MB is freely available to the user. You have to be a little cautious with managing applications as the phone will start lagging as soon as more & more RAM is depleted.
The CPU performance is quite average which also results in slight lags in ordinary operations like navigating through the user interface, launching apps, etc.
Games like Temple Run, Angry Birds, etc. run lag free though the phone has difficulty coping with more high-end games like Dead Trigger, NFS Most Wanted, etc.
Here are some of the benchmarks –

On NenaMark2 the Areno 200 powering the A15 scored  20.3 fps

TELEPHONY & MESSAGING

 Although the earpiece does not output loud volumes yet the in-call sound was fairly decent. The phone offers nice reception and no dropped calls were experienced during the testing period.

The dialler is pretty bare-bones  There are 2 call buttons on the bottom for either SIM card.

The dialler is just the first tab of the phone app, the other two being the Call log and the Contacts tab.
The dialler is fixed to a portrait mode even if auto rotation is turned on.






The speakerphone’s output is neither too loud nor too quiet. You will have no troubles hearing your phone ring in most places except in extremely noisy outdoor surroundings.

There is nothing special about the messaging app. Auto rotation does not work here as well. The phone refuses to rotate to landscape mode while reading as well as composing texts. 




A quick workaround is to download a 3^rd party app such as GO SMS Pro from the Play Store.
 

GALLERY, VIDEO & MUSIC PLAYERS

The default view of the gallery is Albums. It lists all the folders with Photos and Videos in the phone.  Getting inside an album displays all the photos or videos in a rectangular grid, which is horizontally scrollable.

The Stock Video Player plays MP4 files and some DivX files upto 576p resolution.A 3rd party player such as MX Player or dice player solves the limited codec support problem. 720p videos either crashed or stuttered way too much to be played on the device.Also, MKV files above 640x480 resolution somewhat stuttered which was not the case with AVI or MP4 files which could be played till 720x576 resolution.Music player is pretty standard again. It played most formats. The phone supports an equalizer which comes in the form of DSP Manager. Here is how the stock Music Player looks -

AUDIO QUALITY

The audio quality is nothing to feel good about though. Even after using a better set of earphones, the sound quality was very dissatisfying with bass frequencies being cut off, and some noise. Overall, a very mediocre performance in this department.
 

CAMERA INTERFACE

The phone is equipped with a 3.1 MP fixed focus camera that captures photos with a maximum resolution of 2048x1536 pixels. There is no LED flash so taking stills in low lights is problematic.
The viewfinder takes most of the screen with the panel to the right for some of the controls – the gallery shortcut (which is a thumbnail of the last photo taken), the virtual shutter key and the camera mode switch.

The rest of the controls are overlaid on the right side of the viewfinder. They are the front/back camera toggle, a virtual zoom slider and the settings shortcut. The setting shortcut brings out options to control exposure compensation, capture sound, scenes and finally, more settings (photo resolution, face detection, color effect and anti-banding options are available here).Panoramas are easy to shoot - you just hit the shutter key and start panning left or right, the phone will take care of the rest. It will warn you if you're going too fast, but has no problems if you keep it in place for a while.

IMAGE QUALITY

As far as image quality is concerned, the Karbonn A15 produces photos which are barely passable for even Social Networking. Low Light performance is miserable and you’re better off not using the camera at night, at all!

VIDEO CAMERA

Due to the limitations of the processor, the Karbonn A15 only manages to shoot videos upto 640x480 pixels(480p).
The interface is identical to the still camera interface. There are options to change the video resolution and toggle capture sound. The various video resolutions in which the device can shoot are VGA(640x480 pixels), QVGA(320x240) and QCIF(176x144).

The video quality is reminiscent of the still image quality. It will suffice for sending videos as MMS but is not worth framing memories.
 

CONNECTIVITY

The phone supports 2 SIM Cards. The 1^st SIM Card slot supports 3G as well as 2G networks with 3G speeds maxing out at 7.2Mbps downlink & 5.76Mbps uplink. The 2^nd SIM card slot supports only 2G networks.
EDGE is supported on 2G networks for both the SIM slots.
The phone has no problems with receiving incoming calls even when data on the other SIM is being used.
Local connectivity includes Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi direct, Wi-Fi Hotspot and Bluetooth.
The phone has no Wi-Fi reception issues and I could browse the internet comfortably from a distance of 10 metres over a Wi-Fi g signal.
Sending & receiving files over Wi-Fi direct failed when paired with a Samsung Galaxy S2. However, no problems occurred when files were sent or received over Wi-Fi direct with another Karbonn A15
PS – Over 2G networks I would constantly max out at 150 Kbps speeds with this phone whereas with a Samsung Galaxy S2 I would get around 200+ Kbps speed in the same spot.
 

WEB BROWSER

The stock web browser on the phone has always been brilliant but here due to the limited processing power the browsing experience degrades from being fabulous to just good. It is still miles ahead of Symbian browsers though but there are lags when trying to double tap, pinch to zoom or scroll webpages. Mobile Websites pose zero problems though.
After having side-loaded Adobe’s Flash player from XDA-Forums, it worked just fine with YouTube 360p videos.
I would suggest you to stick with Opera Mini whenever and wherever possible, in order to encounter a lag free browsing experience.
 

BATTERY LIFE

The phone is powered by a modest 1420 mAh battery which barely keeps the phone alive for a day when both SIM cards are used. If you use the phone moderately then be prepared to hear the phone cry out for some juice by evening.
 

CONCLUSION

Karbonn has really done a commendable job with the A15. It beats phones which are priced almost 50% higher than it. At a price range of INR 6000(even less if you find a good deal online), it is absolutely worth every single penny you pay for it.



The closest competitor to the Karbonn A15 is the Micromax A68 - Smarty 4 phone. It is powered by a MediaTek MT6575 procesor which is slightly superior to Karbonn A15’s Snapdragon processor. Also, the GPU is a PowerVR SGX531 which is definitely better than A15’s Adreno 200. The Micromax A68 can capture and playback 720p videos due to the more processing power. It also has an IPS display which the A15 lacks and a 5 MP FF camera which should be slightly better than that of A15. However, it lacks 3G, GPS and Wi-Fi hotspot functionality. The phone sells for a price of around INR 6500.
Among the more known brands, Sony Xperia Tipo Dual offers a similar functionality with a better screen quality in terms of viewing angles(albeit lower resolution), better customizations, support and camera. Tipo Dual sells for around INR 9500.

Karbonn A15 will keep the casual user happy. It gives no big reason to complain for the price it sells. Is you can just keep your expectations reasonable, you won’t be disappointed.