Spice Stellar Mi-497

Overview

Low Cost KitKat Based Dual SIM Smartphone

By Sukhleen

Spice Mobility is one of the fastest growing mobile manufacturing company in India. It is listed in NSE / BSE and has 4 % - 5 % share of the mobile market. Its Spice Stellar Mi-497 is the newly added product in its budget smartphones segment. Its box contents includes a handset, battery, handsfree, charger, USB cable, user manual and a warranty card.

Design and Display

Wrapped in decent looks, it comes with a big IPS capacitive touchscreen of 4.5 inches which gives a resolution of 480x854 pixels. Its dimension figures includes a height of 131.5 mm, width of 67.6 mm and thickness of 9.5 mm. This not so thick gadget weighs only 123 grams and thus easily fits in one's hand. Overall, it has an impressive design with three soft touch buttons highlighting the front panel.

Hardware and Software

Spice Stellar Mi-497 is an absolute mini powerhouse offering latest and high end configuration at a small price value. It has a 1.2 GHz Quad Core processor working under its hood which has been paired with 512 MB RAM. Complimenting the powerful processor, is the latest Android v4.4 KitKat Operating System which comes assisted with 4 GB of on-board storage and can be expanded up to 32 GB with a microSD card. Spice offers 2 GB of free storage on Spice cloud also.

Telephony and Messaging

It operates on 2G GSM 900 / 1800 MHz and 3G HSDPA 2100 MHz network frequencies. This is a dual SIM device and comes with the dual standby support. On the messaging part, there is SMS, MMS, Email and Instant Messaging facility. Also, there is a Push Mail support, which will keep you notified of your new mails and messages. Other features that would enhance the basic functions of the phone are voice memo, voice mail, caller group, flip to mute etc.

Camera

The smartphone scores well in the shooting cam department. It offers a nice 3.2 MP rear camera with zooming, LED Flash, Geo-tagging and auto-focus capabilities. Camera can be turned into a video recorder which is capable of recording videos at 480 pixels with 30 frames per second. It takes decent pictures at a resolution of 2048x1536 pixels. Also, there is a selfie friendly 2 MP front camera which also takes fine shots.

Entertainment

There are abundant goodies to keep you entertained in your leisure time. There is a music player, video player, sound recorder, FM radio, embedded games and editors for both images and videos. Also to make the full use of Android environment, there are many downloaded applications and social networking sites like Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, OLX, Getit, Gmail, Google Play, VAS apps and many can still be downloaded.

Connectivity and Battery

User can connect with the web using its connectivity options like GPRS, EDGE and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n. You can also use Bluetooth or microUSB as the medium of sharing files. GPS system with A-GPS support is also there to help you out in navigating through unknown places. Li-ion battery of 1650 mAh has been fitted in the device to ensure uninterrupted longer usage of phone. It ensures a talktime of up to 6 hours and standby time of up to 220 hours.

Shades and Price

The phone can be purchased in White color at a price of Rs 5,999 approximately (may vary).