The Android fever is catching up India. Samsung has released a range of Galaxy branded mobile phones featuring Android 2.1 OS, Olive has come out with its Olive Pad Android Tablet and now it’s the turn of Spice Mobiles. Spice Mobiles introduced Mi-300 featuring Android 2.1 Éclair OS with advanced features such as Touch Screen, 3G (Actually 3.5G), WiFi and Assisted GPS Navigation (turn by turn Navigation). All these priced at a mere Rs.9990. We understand from its website that is an introductory offer and the actual price is Rs.16999. Just what you need to step into the new 3G era that India will go through soon.
Spice Mi 300 Specifications
(Where ever possible, I’ll compare it with Nokia 5800 device which is priced some where around Rs.14000 mark since that is the standard Smart phone that most people seem to be using in India).
Screen and Size
Spice Mi 300 has a 3.2 inch Capacitive touch screen (3.2 inch resistive Touch screen for Nokia 5800) and has a larger width than Nokia 5800.
Mi 300’s dimensions read 114.9×56.8×12.6 mm where as Nokia 5800’s is 111×51.7×15.5 mm (Height, Width, Thin, in that order)
So clearly, Mi 300 has a bigger touch screen area and yet is a thinner mobile (but still a mere 480×320 pixel resolution where 5800 has 640×360 resolution). Mi 300 has Multi touch support with Pinch to zoom feature which isn’t present in Nokia 5800.
Camera and Media
Mi 300 has a 5 MP camera at the back with LED flash light which Nokia 5800 has a 3.2 MP camera with LED flash. But, Nokia 5800 also has a front camera used for Video calling which isn’t present in Spice Mi 300.
Connectivity
As said earlier Mi 300 has WiFi, 3G and also Bluetooth, GPRS/EDGE, a Data Cable.
Applications and OS
Nokia 5800 is based on Symbian S60 5th edition OS where as Spice Mi 300 has a Google Android 2.1 OS. Which is better? Clearly Android is proving to be superior to Symbian, till now.
With Android OS, you can download and install hundreds of Apps from the Android Market place in your mobile. And since it is a Google product, you can now get all your favourite Google products right on your mobile, starting from Gmail, Search, Maps (see Google Maps Navigation in India) etc.
Memory
Spice Mi 300 has an Internal Memory of 156MB which is almost double that of Nokia 5800 which has 81MB. External memory of Spice Mi 300 can be expanded up to 32GB with the use of a Micro SD card.
So from all angles, Spice Mi 300 looks like a superior mobile to Nokia 5800.
Just a small worry before you set out to buy this one that you just can’t be sure how seriously the manufacturer’s take of pushing OS updates to this mobile. Nokia 5800 has been released year’s ago and still you receive Software updates which show the commitment of Nokia on this device.
Also, Spice and Nokia, two extreme brands where one is far superior to the other in terms of Support and Quality of service and the other is just budding. You can easily guess which is what.
i bought mi300 few days ago. its touch is superb but when i update in android 2.1 it has become little slower otherwise its internt is wrkin fast rather than before. after updatinng its wi-fi stopped working ,i m gonna take it to the sevice center.
i bought Mi-300 last month.
it has some problem when using internet and headset.
once it was repaired by spice. now same thing will happen to my mobile.
once again it is in service center.
who cares…android 2.2 froyo has not received good reviews. There’s not much difference b/n 2.1 and froyo. What I’m concerned about is the hardware. However, in the world of changing technology, its safe to put rs.9999 on mi-300 rather than putting rs.27000 on galaxy S. The reason is simple…they r both gonna be obsulete in the next 3 yrs. I’m sore spice mi-300 will work for at least 3 yrs.
‘Froyo has not received good reviews’. Really? I’m hearing this for the first time. People are dying for Froyo.
Battery is very poor. EDGE connection stops working. Need to put phone in Airplane mode and then back to normal mode to make EDGE working again.
If your browse and connect frequently then it is poor phone. Otherwise good value for money.
When you produce such cheap Dual Sim mobiles phones just to compete with those terribly cheap Indian companies and then produce smart phones like this with Android OS, the least you can expect from public is a belief that you are a Quality mobile manufacturer.
Tell if I’m wrong.
if u found this type of product in this kind of price then u should not tell this thing. FYI
they used Qualcom processor. If u dont heard the name of the company, then u not tell Quality mobile manufacturer.
Well, Qualcomm is no doubt a quality Processor that most Advanced Manufacturer’s like HTC use for their Mobiles. But there is still a difference between HTC and Spice. In my view, all Pranav was saying is regarding the ‘brand name’ and not the Quality of Spice Mobiles.
Take my case, I’m thinking of buying a Galaxy S which is priced around Rs.27000, but this mobile of Spice at Rs.9990 is really tempting considering it has most of the features that Galaxy S has. But still, I’m hesitant to buy this mobile from Spice for the simple reason that Galaxy S is from Samsung and Mi 300 is from Spice Mobile and this what I guess Pranav was referring to.
No doubt that Galaxy S is the winner here but Spice mi300 not like any Chinese type phone. I already using Spice Mi 300. Main thing is the how much you spend for a mobile. Because technologies are changing every days. I thing u can get a almost good laptop within 27000(price of Galaxy S).
But I wanted a ‘Mobile’, not ‘Laptop’ and not even a ‘Tablet’, the OlivePad Android tablet seems to be with in this Rs.27000.
i intersted in Mi-300, this good ya not good, plz reply
I bought this phone 10 days ago.
And this is an awesome phone. Android ROCKS!!
The touchscreen is amazing.
Only problem is the camera quality.I compared its camera with xperia mini and xperia is far better.
They are gonna provide android 2.1 in the first week of oct.
…….and it’ll stop there. It doesn’t have the capability to handle 2.2 and hence forth.