Spice Mi-300 – Spice it up with Android’s lifestyle apps Review

Overall, the Spice Mi-300 is a feature-rich 3G touch-screen phone that gives you a taste of everything at a very affordable price of Rs. 9,990. However, it is a costly compromise in terms of the overall performance, where Videocon’s ZEUS stands tall with a sublime performance across all the tests. The only exception being the bundled earphones test, where the Spice Mi-300 holds its edge over the ZEUS. If you are not a performance hungry user and looking for the best bargain under the hood, then Spice Mi-300 promises to be a big bang for the buck!

[RELATED_ARTICLE]The Spice Mi-300 is no sleeker than Videocon’s ZEUS, but also feels slightly heavier than its counterpart. The astonishing fact is the striking resemblance between the two cellphones in terms of the form-factor, design aesthetics of the LCD screen and the positioning of the buttons & keys. The volume rocker button, the camera button, the 3.5mm audio jack, the USB power port, the power button, the home-screen special function buttons and the call function buttons are all placed on identical locations on both Spice Mi-300 and Videocon ZEUS V7500. The only exception being the presence of the trackball on Spice Mi-300, which was missing on the ZEUS. As if to compete neck-to-neck, the 5MPl camera & the flash LED find their place exactly at the same location on the back-panel of the Mi-300, although in this case the battery compartment is not segregated from the camera compartment. Sliding the battery cover downwards reveals one GSM WCDMA SIM card slot and one microSD memory slot which yet again copycats the design aesthetics of Videocon’s ZEUS.

A thin steel-grey metallic strip decorates the contours of the body and the volume rocker button, camera button and the power button are out-dented on it. The glossy black finish on the front panel and a matte black finish on the back-panel add stark contrast with the dazzling steel-grey strip sandwiched between the two.

Spice Mi-300 has a neat and stylish touch interface. Although, its processing speeds are a bit slower than the ZEUS, it compensates with a rich array of lifestyle applications like: Ibibo, Railinfo, RoadSync, SMS filter, spice sangeet, wapedia (mobile encyclopedia), socially and much more. You could drag the application icons to the home-screen and create as many shortcuts as you desire for quick access. You could also delete the shortcuts by dragging the icons back onto the arrow header on the menu interface. A cute little animation which triggers the recycle-bin icon with a glowing red colour, indicates the deletion process. The other notable feature is the status bar located at the top of the screen which includes: battery status, Wi-Fi signal status, memory card status, SIM-card status and mobile network signal status. Although, you could have up to five customized home-screens, you could only activate one wallpaper at a time, which remains common to all the home-screens. You could also choose amongst a set of Clock widgets for one of your home-screens.

In addition, it incorporates a few technologically interesting features like G-sensor and E-compass which can be calibrated for accuracy. The G-sensor was originally used to align the orientation of photos taken from the integrated camera, to enable the user view the right orientation without tilting the screen. However, it is now incorporated into the accelerometer which adjusts the view, as per the orientation of the display. Also, it could be used to detect vibration shock and falling. At the same time, the E-compass coupled with GPS acts as a motion sensor for directional assistance.

Read on to know the performance, specifications, conclusion, ratings and performance test results in the next page…

Performance

[RELATED_ARTICLE]The Spice Mi-300 had a modest outing in the signal reception and voice clarity test. It showed evidence of background noise and distortion across zones two & three, when we subjected the cellphone to environmental noise. The hands-free clarity was very ordinary, if not mediocre under noisy environments. The loudspeaker too failed to live up to the expectations, producing a lot of sound distortion and noise feedback across zones two & three. The device earpiece and speaker volume had their limitations, and yielded distorted sound under high volumes. The camera did a decent job producing sharp and crisp shots both indoors as well as outdoors. However, it performed really well in the multimedia test delivering excellent lows and mids, while also maintaining good treble & bass balance. The display quality was satisfactory, but the legibility of fonts and icons under bright sunshine was questionable, often blurring out the images & text.

Conclusion

Overall, the Spice Mi-300 is a feature-rich 3G touch-screen phone that gives you a taste of everything at a very affordable price of Rs. 9,990. However, it is a costly compromise in terms of the overall performance, where Videocon’s ZEUS stands tall with a sublime performance across all the tests. The only exception being the bundled earphones test, where the Spice Mi-300 holds its edge over the ZEUS. If you are not a performance hungry user and looking for the best bargain under the hood, then Spice Mi-300 promises to be a big bang for buck.

Specifications: SIM (GSM WCDMA); Display: 3.2-inch, Screen resolution: 480 x 320; Memory: microSD expandable up to 32GB; Battery: 1230mAh, Talk-time: up to 3 hours for WCDMA and up to 4 hours for GSM, Standby-time: up to 250 hours for WCDMA and up to 300 hours for GSM; Dimensions: 114.9 x 56.8 x 12.6; Weight: 114grams;

Ratings:
Features: 7.5
Performance: 6
Build Quality: 7
Value for money: 7.5
Overall: 7

Contact: Spice mobiles limited
Phone: 180030077423
E-mail: contactus@spicemobile.in
Website: www.spice-mobile.com
Price: Rs. 9,990

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Vinod Yalburgi