Karbonn A9+ User Review

Recently i have brought a new mobile phone and this was my first Android phone, so naturally before buying i started lot of search for affordable dual sim phone. in this quest i was able to get lot of details relating to current models and few upcoming models at that time.

finally i have decided my requirements and budget, so basically i was looking for 4 inch mobile with decent power and should cost less than 10k, and at that time the choice was limited to few handset with the mentioned requirements. i have waited few weeks once i got to know that many local hand set manufacturers are planning to roll out dual-core handsets. and finally i selected and brought the Karbonn A9+.

specifications :

Android ICS [4.0.3]
Dual-sim , 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Scorpion, Dual Core
4 inch WVGA, 800 x 480 Pixels IPS screen
5MP auto focus camera with flash
400MB RAM /2.5GB ROM
1420mah Battery
Rest similar to any midbudget features.

look and feel

The handset which i brought is perl white back color and front is dark black with screen glossy finish, the overall look reminds of the premium look and fit and finish is up to mark, the screen which is of 4inch gives the overall phone size to big feel.
front there are 4 touch buttons. and on the top there is 3.5mm jack and power/lock/unlock button. on the left hand side volume rockers , while the back of the phone employs a 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash and a slot for speaker and apart from these there is nothing else on the physical body of the mobile phon.

The box comes with Mobile, charger, usb cable, warranty card,manual, head phone,scratch guard

Image Courtesy : techtree.com





working

 The android OS which ships with this phone is ICS and with updated to 4.0.4 [minor update] and there is very little customization has been done to the ICS by Karbonn so ideally you will be using native Android version.
the Screen is big and bright and the resolution is excellent and this is the best part of this phone, the viewing angles on the screen are extremely good due to IPS screen, put the screen brightness to max and there is no problem in reading the screen in direct sun light.
the touch is smooth and responsive and slight touch is enough, the keyboard supplied [native] is very responsive and easy to type and best thing is the word perdition is exact and precise. so typing messages is very easy.
the down point of this phone is its 4 didcated keys which are present at the bottom of the phone, they need more pressure touch to operate , not all of them but the back and home keys need more pressure touch than the rest.
the back cover fits properly but makes some quirky sound, there is no other negative aspects.

Camera

Another best part of this mobile , the 5MP camera is really good, i can surely rate it as mid performer and the pictures comes crisp and sharp without any color loss and the brightness and focus is good.
using 3rd party camera apps will greatly increase its performance, i have used camera 360 and LG camera pro , in both of this the camera perform much better in all aspects and there will be lot of option to tweak the camera.
the Video recording also has very good results , one can record 720P videos with easy and video comes out very well, by default the saved video will be in 3GP format, but using LG camera pro i was able to save it in mp4 format and now i made mp4 format as default.
flash is provided by LED and it has limited range and just enough for taking close up shots, the macro photo shoot is also easy with this.

Sound/Call quality

The call sound quality i must say is way way ahead and its very clear and loud one will really like this. the sound quality is decent if not awesome. speaker sound level is enough and there is no distortion. the provided headphone is medium quality there is nothing say about them.
there is no call drops any time in 3 month usage and no issues w.r.t sound or call quality.

Performance

The handset comes with qualcomm dual core processor with ARMv7 architecture which is clocked at 1.2GHz and total RAM is around 400mb.
most of the major apps and games will run very smooth and there is no worries, although RAM is little less but it won't bother.
due to its multitouch is limited to only 2 touch points ..many multitouch games might not work.

playing semiHD movies is no issue at all , it plays very well [720P] and to an extent it will play the 1280x520 videos just fine, but it will not play full HD videos.

some of the scores from test apps

nenamark2 – 33.8 fps
quadrant – 2788
antutu – 5617
cpu – 1152mhz
multitouch - 2

The Mobile builtin Wi-Fi works without any hassle and there is no need to go for complex configurations, just connect to wi-fi by turning ON the wi-fi in mobile.

The GPS works really well it will catch signal within 5 sec without any wi-fi or data , just by pure GPS satellites.
the SAR value is around 0.6


video of Unboxing Karbonn A9+

Video of benchMarks Karbonn A9+

Sample Pics From Camera 

From Native Camera

 From LgCamera app

 From Vignetti app

The Native Camera app won;t give the best picture and the Best i got from LGCamera Pro app, and also Using LG Camera app one can save recorded Videos in mp4 format.

 basically its a good dual core mobile phone for the money. [now retailing under 8.4K in some stores]