Idea Cellular is one of the few companies that sells its own branded handsets in India. And though the space is crowded with Indian and international brands, Idea’s CMO Sashi Shankar maintains, they’re not in the market to grab a market share.
Instead, it’s the services that Idea wants to push. After all, 3G is where the money is. This week, Idea launched their fifth handset dubbed Ivory and invited us to play with the handset for a brief time.
Interestingly, Ivory is a rebranded Alcatel One Touch 930D device, which means except for the software customisation, the hardware is the same.
To regurgitate, Ivory is a dual-SIM device that supports 3G on the first SIM and EDGE on the second. And before you ponder, the phone is unlocked, which means if you don’t want to use an Idea SIM, the phone should work just fine. It runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS and features 1GHz single-core processor along with 512MB RAM, 3.5-inch HVGA (320×480) display, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, 1300mAh battery and a microSD card slot that is already fitted with a 2GB one.
All said and done, how does the phone perform? To cut the long story short, there’s a bit more to be desired on the hardware front. The build quality is decent for a 7k phone but is a fingerprint magnet. The display is small given how big today’s Android devices are going and the viewing angle of the display isn’t something to write home about.
It has a 2MP camera that with the help of software optimization bumps the image resolution to 3.2MP. The noise in the pictures is evident and admittedly, it’s satisfactory since I’m not expecting high quality pictures found in the high-end devices.
Also, to note is a big center button on the front for My Favourite apps. You can add your frequently used apps for quick access.
The phone is priced at Rs. 7,390, which in retrospect, is few hundred bucks more with a device that boasts similar features.
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