The smartphone industry is booming with bigger and better smartphones with high end specs. The local companies are competitively realising devices of this cadre to challenge the leaders in the mobile industry. The catch? Lower prices to lure buyers towards these handsets. Spice has launched the Stellar Pinnacle MI 530. We did a hands on review of the device and have a look what we think about the device.
Design:
The Spice Stellar Pinnacle is designed to steal looks. The 5.3 inch size phone doesn’t miss anyone’s eye. The device has nice rounded and smooth edges. The front surface has a flat shinny surface with no physical buttons. The only cut on the surface is for the earpiece. The back plastic cover has a metallic brown finish, something that’s not quite common in smartphones.
The top edge of the phone has the power button, the microUSB port and a 3.5 mm audio jack. The right edge has a volume control button and a dedicated camera button. The back panel hosts the 8 megapixel camera with dual LED and the speaker. The device has an overall designer feel.
The 5.3 inch IPS display with 960 x 540 pixels resolution is a treat for all movie lovers. The resolution along with the fairly big screen size does justice to any HD video. The display automatically adjust the screen brightness depending upon the surrounding lighting.
Hardware:
The Spice Stellar Pinnacle has a dual core 1.2 GHz processor under the hood. The device has a fairly decent RAM of 1 GB and like most high end devices has 16 GB of inbuilt storage. The memory can be further expanded up to 32 GB with the microSD card. The phone has two slots for SIMs which can be operated simultaneously. The device also has a dedicated graphics card, which helps in rendering games smoothly giving it an enhanced feel.
User Interface:
The Spice Stellar Pinnacle runs on Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS and has a very smooth user interface. Even the slightest touch is detected which both a good and bad. The smartphone supports multi-touch and can be pinched to zoom.
Camera:
Without HDR
The rear camera of the Spice Stellar Pinnacle is a huge 8 megapixel, something which is standard in smartphones now. The autofocus lens helps in capturing the frames properly to give good pictures. The device also has the HDR which gives a crisper image by combining various intensities of the same image. The camera is provided with two LED flash bulbs which make it possible to click good pictures in low light conditions. While the camera gives amazing quality pictures outdoors, the picture quality indoors is a bit low.
With HDR
The Spice Stellar Pinnacle could easily be the first device, even among top range devices like the Galaxy S, to offer a 5 megapixels front facing camera. The camera gives clear and high video quality for video calls and chats. But again light intensity plays a very important role with this camera. The video is of poor quality in low light conditions.
Performance:
The 1.2 GHz processor keeps up to its standard by giving a steady performance. The 1 GB RAM doesn’t create any issues while overloading the processor with apps. Though this sometimes causes the device to heat up mildly. HD games sometimes have a momentary lag but the other games usually run smoothly.
Battery:
One good feature of the Spice Stellar Pinnacle is the long lasting battery. The 2550 mAh battery last for nearly 7 hours on full internet use and offers approximately 4 hours of talk time. Spice claims that the device has nearly 700 hours of standby time on full recharge.
Connectivity:
The smartphone comes equipped with Bluetooth 4.0 which provides amazingly high speed file transfer. It is Wi-Fi enabled and can serve as a hotspot to share internet. The USB storage mode transfers files at an average of 21 MBPS. The GPS tracks the location very accurately and is very useful in navigation.
Pros:
The features about this phone which have totally impressed us are the 5 megapixels front camera and the long lasting battery which gives you to surf the net and use social networking apps without being interrupted. Also the screen size is something that anybody who uses the phone to watch movies would highly appreciate.
Cons:
The one thing which was disliked by us was the power button being placed at the top. Considering the size of the device, it would be easier to reach if placed somewhere to the bottom right like other phones. Another suggested improvement would be to make the thickness less given the length of the device, to make it easier to hold the device.
Conclusion:
The Spice Stellar Pinnacle is an amazing Android phone which doesn’t disappoint. Especially for a customer who would like to own a phone like the Samsung Galaxy S without having to shell out too much the Spice Stellar Pinnacle is the perfect choice.
Specifications of the Spice Stellar Pinnacle MI 530:
- Dual SIM
- 5.3 inch qHD display
- 960 x 540 pixels resolution
- 1.2 GHz dual core processor
- 1 GB RAM
- 16 GB internal storage
- 32 GB expandable memory
- 8 megapixel rear camera
- 5 megapixels front facing camera
- 2550 mAh Li-ion Polymer battery
- Google Android v4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich
- GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi enabled
- Dimensions: 152 x 79 x 10.3 mm
- Weight: 196.3 g
