The next set of Android One smartphones are gearing up to hit the Indian markets by end of this year, according to a latest report from the Press Trust of India (PTI). Handset makers Karbonn, Spice and Intex will launch their Android One devices in the country by December this year.
Continue reading “Next batch of Android One smartphones coming to India by the end of December”
Along with Micromax and Spice, Karbonn launched its first Android One smartphone last week. Dubbed as Karbon Sparkle V, the phone is priced at Rs 6,399. We unboxed the smartphone recently. We had already seen photo galleries of the Spice Dream UNO and Micromax Canvas A1 smartphones, here we have the photo gallery of the Karbonn Sparkle V. Continue reading “Karbonn Sparkle V Photo Gallery”
One of the many significant announcements at the recent Google I/O developers conference was Android One. The program was formally unveiled with one central goal in mind, reaching the next 5 billion people in the world. These are the ones without a smartphone, mostly in emerging markets like India, China and so on. Google will be partnering with companies in the supply chain to provide a turnkey solution for many OEMs that are currently driving the budget smartphone segment in emerging markets. Android One involves a combination of affordable reference hardware, handpicked by Google, and stock Android software, with updates directly from Mountain View. The first three OEMs to sign up for this program are from India, which has familiar, but rather important, implications for the budget smartphone market.
Continue reading “Here’s why Android One is great for the budget smartphone market”
Google just unveiled its new program called “Android One” at their I/O developer event today, in San Francisco. This program, which involved creating attractive low cost Android smartphones using reference hardware and stock software, already has three members. The three OEMs who are the first companies to sign up for Android One are Karbonn, Micromax and Spice, all Indian smartphone manufacturers well versed in making budget smartphones running Android.
Continue reading “Micromax, Karbonn and Spice are the first Android One program members”
Google’s Android and Chrome chief took to the stage to unveil “Android One”, a new program for developing markets, using which OEMs can produce really simple low cost Android smartphones. Sundar Pichai detailed this effort to convert the masses of feature phone users to smartphones in developing markets, at the Google I/O developer event today. The program will include a set of hardware reference platforms, with stock Android being the default experience that will reach the consumers. This is certainly a bold move by Google to tackle OEM skinning and is actually taking over from the process that is currently been going on in the Mediatek space.
Continue reading “Android One unveiled: Reference hardware and stock Android for cheap Smartphones”
Celltick, popular for its Start and LiveScreen, today announced its partnership with Karbonn Mobiles to launch an intelligent interface for Android consumers based on Start. The company already announced that OEMs can partner with them to create own flavor of Start. Celltick will create a custom interface based on its Start application, that becomes a default start screen interface to Karbonn’s Android smartphones. Continue reading “Karbonn to introduce new start screen interface for its smartphones based on Start by Celltick”
One of the main reasons that Windows Phones haven’t sold as much as Android smartphones is because of the lack of manufacturers. At launch, Microsoft had only a handful of manufacturers and as Windows Phone grew, the number of manufacturers shrunk and at one point, Microsoft bought out Nokia, which was probably the only company making Windows Phones.
Continue reading “Microsoft partners with 9 more manufacturers for more Windows Phones”
As the market gets flooded with large display devices at ever more appealing price points, buyers are spoilt for choice. While the likes of Micromax and Spice are the elephants in the room, Karbonn isn’t far behind either. The brand new Karbonn Titanium S5 Pro brings a large display, above average performance to a very appealing price point. Read on to find out our opinion of the phone. Continue reading “Karbonn Titanium S5 Plus Review”
The Karbonn Titanium S5 Plus is one of the latest budget devices to enter the Indian market. The phone is powered by a 1.3Ghz quad core processor and is paired with 1GB of RAM. The display is a 5 inch panel with a resolution of 960×540. Being paired with a relatively low resolution display removes one of the bottlenecks for the lowly processor and helps it achieve decent performance. We put the phone through our benchmark suite. Here are the results. Continue reading “Karbonn Titanium S5 Plus Benchmarks”
You might have seen us reporting on various marketshare reports each month coming from a company called IDC. Usually, the company provides a wider perspective of the global market for mobile phones as well as smartphones, but this time, they have focused on the second fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, India. We saw in June that the overall shipments of Smartphones in India was at just 6.1 million devices, but in a quarter, it has risen to 9.3 million shipments, according to IDC. And over half of the shipments were from local players like Micromax, Karbonn and the others, with the former taking the no. 2 and 3 positions of the Top 5 Smartphone vendors in the Indian market respectively.
Karbonn Mobile has announced a partnership with Hungama.com, one of the leading digital entertainment company in South Asia to offer Hungama Music App on the latest Karbonn Smart devices. This would let the customers enjoy music, videos, and live radio entertainment on the Karbonn Smart devices. The app has international, Bollywood, Regional (Telegu, Bhojpuri, Tamil, Malayalam and others) and South Asian music & videos entertainment. It offers unlimited content free up to 30 days on Karbonn Smart devices. Continue reading “Karbonn partners with Hungama to pre-load Hungama Music App on latest smartphones”
Karbonn has announced that they have tied up with Vodafone India to offer free data on purchase of the Karbonn Titanium S5 and the Smart A12. This would let the Karbonn Titanium S5 buyers enjoy 1GB of 3G or 3G Unlimited Internet Plan free for 3 Months on Vodafone. First time Vodafone 3G customers using Karbonn A12 would get 500 MB of 3G and 2G Internet Plan free for 2 months. The company partnered with Airtel earlier this year to offer similar data packs with select smartphones. Continue reading “Karbonn ties up with Vodafone, offers bundled data with Titanium S5 and Smart A12”
We got to unbox and review the Karbonn Titanium S5 recently and found it to be a good enough phone for the price. Since we had the Micromax A116 Canvas HD lying around, and also since there are a lot of similarities in the form factor and somewhat the price, we decided to compare them both. Here is a detailed in-depth look at the comparison of Karbonn Titanium S5 vs Micromax A116 canvas HD –
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RpehhDhbUU
Continue reading “Karbonn Titanium S5 vs Micromax A116 Canvas HD”
Karbonn is one of the few Indian smartphone manufacturers who have managed to make a mark in the market because of their focus on good build quality and specifications. Their latest handset, the Karbonn S5 Titanium is a 5 inch behemoth that combines the big screen experience with an affordable price tag but will this be sufficient to make it appealing to the masses ? Read on to find out. Continue reading “Karbonn S5 Titanium Review”
A couple of months have passed since the launch of the Karbonn Titanium S1, with its nice mid range offering. It had a 4.5 inch qHD screen, but Karbonn has felt the need for a bigger screen we guess, and now it has launched the Karbonn Titanium S5 with a bigger 5 inch screen. With it almost mimicking the specs of the Titanium S1 except for the 8 megapixel camera, the 2MP front camera and the battery, it is clear that Karbonn is really catering to demands. It has a 1.2 GHz Quad core processor, presumably the Snapdragon S4 Play, which was the first chipset that added support for dual SIM and was a Quad core processor at the same time. This is the same as the Titanium S1. The device runs on Android 4.1 JellyBean.
