Spice Mi-355 Stellar Craze Review

Targeting the customers who look for cost-effective yet powerful Android devices, Spice has recently launched three Android smartphones – Mi-425, Mi-355, and Mi-500. While Mi-425 has already marked its triumph in the indigenous souk, the Mi-355 –Stellar Craze - is getting ready to hit the market with vigor. Let’s see what is good and what is bad in this smallest and cheapest dual-SIM Android phone in the series.

Quick Spec - Rundown

·         Dual SIM (GSM+GSM)

·         Android v2.3 Gingerbread OS

·         800MHz Snapdragon Processor

·         3.5″ Inch capacitive touchscreen display

·         Rear Camera: 5.0 Megapixels - Front camera: 0.3 Megapixels

·         Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB

·         GPS Navigation

·         Preloaded Netqin Anti-Virus

·         1420mAh Battery

Spice Stellar Craze Mi-355 hands-on video

Esthetics

The phone radiates elegance with a clean glossy finish, rectangular profile, and sturdy feel. The phone seems to be optimal to hold in your palm. The device sports a silver color bezel, which enhances the look and makes it similar to iPhone. Spice could have bestowed its customers with a bigger screen in the given real estate; the current 3.5 inch screen leaves a lot of free space on top and bottom face of the mobile.

At the top of the front face, you can see the proximity sensor and a VGA front camera for video chat. A 3.5mm audio jack assumes its position on the top along with lock/power key. Volume rocker is given in the left hand side, while a micro USB port is given at the bottom side. The right hand side is wholly bare.

The interior of the phone looks well designed with two SIM card slots aligned side by side. Having a hot swappable SD card slot would have added some convenience to users, unfortunately it is not.

User Interface

 At the bottom of the screen four capacitive keys have been given: home, accessing options, back and Google search key. Long pressing home key opens recently opened apps to give quick access to frequently used apps. You can pull down the notification bar from the top and have quick access to notifications; you can also control Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, screen rotation and much more from your notification bar! 

You have five homescreen to make use of. Adding shortcuts, widgets, folders and wallpapers is so simple; you just need to long press the screen and add your favorite widgets. Apps can be accessed easily by flipping menu screen horizontally. At the bottom of the touch screen, you can have access to alpha-numeric dialer, contacts, messaging, and app drawer.

You can retrieve separate call logs for Master and Slave SIMs. You have separate calling buttons for Master and Slave SIMs and call logs, which again can be separated for each SIM - an exalt for a dual SIM phone.

Touch & Display

As I said earlier, the  screen looks small in the given front space of the device. Images and text look incredibly crisp on the screen that has a resolution of 320 x 480 and color depth of 262K. The default wallpaper that illustrates water droplets on a grey background makes it even more similar to iPhone, while you can pick any live wallpaper and set on it to match your moods.  Screen visibility on sunlight is middling, when the brightness is maximized, but the screen looked as dark as a slate, when the brightness is lowered. Very smooth touch response is the most virtuous aspect I found in this device. It supports multitouch gesture, which makes Internet browsing and gallery viewing a pleasure.

Camera

The Stellar Craze Mi-355 comes packed with two cameras, which, in the given price bracket, is a big achievement. The 5MP back camera comes with dual LED flash and 4x digital zoom. Images clicked in well-lit conditions looked satisfactory. But the power of the dual LED flash not seems to be adequate to light up objects in poorly lit conditions. It has a number of additional camera features like exposure adjustment, scene modes, picture size adjustment, picture quality adjustment, color effects, and anti-banding. As far as the video recording capability is concerned the video given below will speak vociferously for it. A VGA front camera has been provided for video chat.

Sample photos

Music

I would not call music the main forte of this handset, yes, it does not pack a punch like the high end Sony models. But it does sport a pretty strong speaker that, according to me, is at least three times stronger than the same of Samsung Galaxy Y ( I used to have the handset once), which will cost you around thousand bucks more than this mobile. And for quality of sound, you have the liberty to connect a high definition headset all the time. By all means, the Stellar Mi-355 passes the acid test in the music genera.

Connectivity

The phone comes with dual-SIM connectivity. The Master SIM supports 2G as well as 3G, while the Slave SIM supports only 2G. Like any other Android phone, Spice Mi-355 also comes with connectivity options including GPRS, EDGE, 3G, WI-FI and WAP. It supports Bluetooth v2.1 and USB to transfer data locally. The device has integrated GPS with A-GPS support. Aircel users may get the additional offer of 100MB data usage free each month for the period of 12 month with every Stellar device.

Processor/ RAM/Memory

The device comes with an 800MHz Snapdragon processor. For a device in the six thousand range, the processor looks decent. It comes with a dedicated GPU that helps play graphics more smoothly.  140MB phone memory is available for users to download and install apps.

Battery

Specs sheet promises that the 1420mAh Li-Ion battery gives talktime of 4 hours and standby time of 200 hours. I really don’t know how to measure these parameters rationally. But certainly I found this battery performance above standard, as a single full charging lasted me one and a half day of average use, which included calling, Wi-Fi browing, music  and gaming.

Messaging

The Android keyboard enables faster typing both in the vertical and horizontal view. The copy and paste can be done just by pressing and holding to select words, stay in selection mode, and copy text for later pasting. After composing the message, you can easily select Master or Slave SIM to send from.

OS and Apps

The phones come preloaded with Android Gingerbread version 2.3.6. The USP of the Stellar is the Mobile Antivirus by NQ Mobiles, which comes preloaded. Recently Spice had a tie up with NQ Mobile for proving security services its Stellar Series. In addition to the common Google apps like YouTube, Google Maps, Google Talk and Google Search, many apps come preloaded such as News & Weather app, Spice Gang,  Whats App etc. Unlike the previous Android models from Spice, the device is not loaded with bizarre apps that are rarely used by users. No worry of wasting precious memory. Other features include anti-theft and Vault- privacy lock for apps like, photos, videos, SMS and call logs & secret contacts. Users can update the virus/malware database for a period of six months absolutely free.

In my final words, I would like to draw your attention towards the high points of the Mi-355. Highly crisp display, front camera, strong speakers and powerful battery are strong enough propositions for an Android phone in the Rs. 6500 range. Go, get your Stellar Craze today!

Spice Stellar Craze handset would be available at Online store www.saholic.com and over 50,000 Spice shops across the India.

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