Olive Telecom is one of the few Indian companies that have sprung up lately in order to tap in the huge Indian mobile handset market. They do not have a vast product lineup as compared to Nokia, Samsung or LG but with the products on offer, they sure are turning some heads. At least that’s the case with their new AAA-battery powered phone. The V-G2300 aka FrvrOn (forever on) is touted as India’s first hybrid phone.
Olive has kept the packaging to a minimum. A small box consists of the handset, AAA battery, mini-USB charger, earphone, warranty card and a handy manual.
FrvrOn is a candybar phone with a very simple design. The plastic chassis holds a 1.5-inch screen and rubberized keypad on the front while the bottom sports a miniUSB port (yes, a miniUSB!) for earphones and charging. Being an entry-level phone, the phone does not have a camera, volume rocker buttons or memory expansion slot. The phone’s basically made for one thing – talking. As far as call reception is concerned, the voice quality is acceptable. The phone also allows conducting calls over the phones loudspeaker, which is not the loudest by any means but fares well in a quiet environment.
Operating FrvrOn is a no-brainer. Just hit the center button and you’re acquainted with the menu, which gives you access to SMS messages, call records, contacts, settings, FM Radio, Network, PIM apps, couple of games and the SIM toolkit menu. If you’re wondering about the storage capacity – the phone can store up to 100 SMS messages and up to 200 contacts.
While you don’t really expect much from a phone at this price range, Olive has thrown in FM Radio and two games (Tetris & Sudoku) to keep us entertained. The FM Radio works after attaching the bundled earphone that acts as an antenna. The phone allows the user to preset saved FM stations, hear them on loudspeaker and even function in the background.
Moving onto the phone’s highlight, that is, charging via AAA battery. To give you a brief background, the phone integrates a 600mAh Li-Ion battery with a single AAA battery slot besides it. Charging from the AAA slot is as easy as putting batteries to a wall clock. Pop in the battery in the slot, hit the left soft key on the phone and activate the AAA charging. The AAA battery basically gives power to the Li-Ion battery and is denoted with the battery icons on the top right side of the screen. The horizontal battery icon signifies the phone’s Li-Ion battery whereas the vertical, slim battery icon (in green) denotes AAA battery’s power. The AAA battery gives the phone a short battery boost, which means you won’t be able to use your AAA battery to charge your phone completely (you can use PC to charge the phone though). The charge AAA battery provides is enough to carry out a single or maybe couple of short duration calls. Another thing to note is that FM Radio can’t be played when the phone’s charging on AAA battery.
The phone’s battery capacity maybe on the lower side but it is rated to give up to 3 hours of talk time and up to 100 hours of standby time. With our usage of about an hour of calls, about an hour of games and FM Radio, the phone needed to be plugged at least once a day.
To sum this up, I would say that FrvrOn is an interesting attempt by Olive and though it is highly debatable of doing away of the AAA battery slot for a larger capacity battery, this nifty feature makes it more attractive than the rest of the lot in its price range.
It retails for Rs. 1,699.
Rating:
Pros: Cheap, AAA charging feature
Cons: Lower capacity battery, can’t play FM while charging via AAA battery
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