Karbonn Mobiles, one of the Indian handset brand, has launched four feature phones in the price bracket of Rs 2,900 to 4,500 and are full touch phones with screen size between 2.8 inch and 3.5 inch.

Shashin Devsare, Executive Director, Karbonn Mobiles says, “We, after a strong market research, realized that a huge demand and supply gap exists in the smart feature phone category. There are very few options available, and that too at very high prices and the market is in great need of good multimedia feature phones at reasonable prices. So we decided to come up with a range of smart feature phones with interesting applications and amazing features.”

The costliest among them is, K 1616. It features a large (by feature phone standards) 3.5 inch HVGA (480×320) capacitive touch screen. Other features include a 3D User interface, G-Sensor (which aligns the screen in portrait and horizontal modes depending on how you hold your phone, proximity sensor, a 3.2 MP camera, it comes with EDGE support (slower than 3G but faster than GPRS). Also, Karbonn has introduced a new Application store, K Zone, which is also available on this phone. The phone is priced at Rs. 4599.

The second phone is the K 1818, which comes with a 3.2 inch WQVGA (432×240) screen, it has similar 3D user interface like the K1616, other features of the phone are similar to K 1616, the memory is expandable to 8 GB. The phone is priced at Rs. 3699.

K1515 which is next in line feature the same screen size as K1818, with better Resolution but lower feature list, including a smaller 2 MP camera and GPRS support only (K1818 supports EDGE).

Other features include FM Radio with recording, 8 GB expandable memory and multi-language support (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada and Bengali), the phone is priced slightly higher at Rs. 3799, due to a better screen.

The cheapest in the list of new phones is the 2.8 inch screen totting K1010, and features a smaller 1.3 MP Camera, 8GB expandable memory, GPRS for web browsing, schedule FM recording and phone backup. However there is no support for K Zone apps, and in line with its low end features its priced lower at Rs 2899.

G’Five Mobile, a Chinese handset brand, has launched four new dual SIM dual standby models. Two of these are entry-level handsets while the other two are multimedia handsets available at prices ranging from Rs 1429 to Rs 2459.

G115 and G116 are the entry level models priced Rs 1,429 and Rs 1,649 respectively. G115 sports a 1.8 inch display, digital camera (VGA), bluetooth, music and video player, wireless FM, loud sound, expandable memory up to 4 GB and dual torch. whereas, G116 features in addition to the features available in G115 has a long lasting 1450 mAh battery and expandable memory up to 16 GB.

In the multimedia range G’Five has launched G233 for Rs 2, 169and G505 for Rs 2169 for Rs 2,459. G233 has a 2.2 inch display, dedicated music key, digital camera (VGA), Hindi keypad, torch, FM radio, music and video player, 3.5 mm universal audio jack, Bluetooth, 1000 mAh battery & expandable memory up to 8 GB.

G505 has a integrated speakers for loud sound output. It has a 2.4 inch display, dual digital camera (front and rear), FM radio, music and video player, bluetooth, 1050mAh battery and expandable memory up to 4 GB. Both G233 and G505 have a free 2 GB Memory card bundled with them.

Arshit Pathak, managing director, Kingtech Electronics India Private Limited, a group Company of G’Five International, said, “Consumers now are expecting a much better multimedia experience. All the features like camera, expandable memory, short range wireless connectivity are present by default in every G’Five handset. Our focus is to offer larger screen, not just loud but better sound and better video playing capability.”

In the past couple of months G’five has launched projector phone, a range of Analog TV phones, 2G phone with video chat, the Movie King range which comes loaded with 20 full-length movies besides videos and ringtones and the G20 gaming phone with 1000 pre-loaded 16-bit games.

Josh mobiles, one of the Indian handset brand, has launched a touch and type phone ‘JB 325.’ This dual SIM phone has a 2.2 inch touch screen and a multi-tap keypad.

Other features of the phone include FM, camera with video recording, Memory card up-to 4 GB. The phone has Dual language support (Hindi and English), one touch mp3 player sound and video recorder. The phone comes with GPRS support and also has a LED torch.

The phone can store 500 contacts in the phone and 200 in SIM card. The phone comes with a 1300 mAh battery that according to company claims will give a 3 days standby and 5 hrs talktime. The phone is priced at Rs 4899.

Considering the variety of smartphone models available in market today, zeroing on one is definitely not the easiest thing. Different shapes, form factors and colours certainly can confuse anyone when more than five handsets are literally thrown in front of him.

Even after buying some of the better smartphones, several continue to remain unhappy with the performance of their handsets. Possessing any latest smartphone will certainly make you cool for few hours or days, but the in-ability to make the best of all the features will not give good return on your investment in long run.

Here are the top five quintessential factors to consider while buying a smartphone.

Hardware Features

In India, the hardware features remain the major influencing factors while buying the smartphone. Are you one of those who insist on the smartphone to possess a dual-core mobile Processor or merely for the 12-megapixel camera?

However, we recommend you not to judge any smartphone simply on the basis of its specification unless you wish to brag around about them.

Users owning a QWERTY keypad based handset are quite reluctant to buy a touchscreen device and hence handset makers have rolled out the smartphones featuring touch and type input methods. Do give the design a good thought.

Today, the smartphones come with fresh all features that you can practically think of under the sun and then some more to surprise you. When it comes to actually feel, design and hand grip, nothing can give you better idea than using the device personally.

List down the features you intend to use the most. For instance, imaging enthusiast can consider a smartphone that offers great imaging quality along with pleasing music experience and focus the smartphone options offering the best quality for those features. Do note that not every handset will offer best of all worlds. Universally perfect handset remains a theoretical concept like the perfect market.

Operating System Platform

A modern day smartphone is expected to do almost everything that a laptop can deliver. All thanks to the fierce competition, the smartphone operating systems today are now made user friendly, engaging and robust. Loaded with unique eye pleasing user interface and user experience, the smartphone operating systems badly thrive to turn your smartphone into an ultimate computing device while you are on the move.

Mobile operating system developing companies spend hours of research, man power and money to constantly and consistently improve the end user experience. Against that, the consumer must decide to be up for a learning challenge or look out for an easy to adopt operating system.

Each smartphone operating system is at several stage of its own life &#151 maturing or nascent. Currently the smartphone operating system options available are &#151 Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS, Windows Phone, and Symbian. The last one continues to struggle for offering flexibility to compute, the first four are busy engaged in providing best possible user experience.

Every operating system has a demerit and demerit of its own. Each offers the basic features expected and differ on the same grounds with separating user interfaces as well as user experience.

So one has to evaluate the features that would be utilised the most and the respective operating system offers to accomplish that seamlessly.

Applications and software services

Coupled along with the operating system, there is an entire eco-system of apps as well as services. Most smartphones carry an OS or large set of apps that are based on cloud services along with different native experiences. Select operating systems offer consistency of user interface in the Apps while others offer flexibility to remain experimental with almost every third app.

At the end of the day or week, one would use maximum five apps exhaustively on the smartphone unless that’s the part of his/her job &#151 to test Apps on smartphones.

Consider the quality of App offering and not the numbers. Also take note of how frequently do apps get the updates from the individual developers.

Price

India is a price sensitive market where the consumer behaviour has always and can surprise anyone when it comes to pricing &#151 usually lower. The mobile market has been divided into entry-level, mid-range and high-end broadly in terms of price.

There’s a group of folks who buy a freshly launched handset immediately while some would wait for couple of weeks/months for prices of the same to drop down. Rest potential buyers merely wait for others to purchase and tell whether the handset is worth buying or not. Fixing a budget always helps in narrowing down the options to be considered from.

Data Migration

Quite a lot of smartphone buyers leave out the important process of Data Migration from the decision and completely rely on their company’s IT guy to do the needful. Eventually, the IT guy will have to use Google, scout several forums and eventually go through several guides to get the data migrated partially or completely.

Moving all the account details, photos, videos, contacts, messages and other data that has been residing on your current mobile phone to smartphone is not that easy like buying a new handset. Though this is one of the important factors, loads of people miss out on it. In that case, you can make use of our guides to migrate around data between smartphones.

Majority of the modern day smartphones support the Microsoft Exchange Server and one can backup email, contacts and calendars using ActiveSync. However, not everyone will be syncing their smartphones with personal data to the corporate Microsoft Exchange server. So one needs to look around for alternatives such as Google Sync to back up the contacts as well as calendar and restore it in the new devices. Unless the user is aware of all that, life becomes a hell with the new smartphone without your old contacts, calendars, and email settings.

The aforementioned five core points are few of the essential factors which if carefully considered will help you buy a handset that you will enjoy for years. At the end of the day, it is indeed difficult to narrow down and point at one perfect phone that offers every possible thing out of the box. However, just like the different needs and requirements, the perfect phone would also vary from person to person.

It is no shame to list down the features expected and compare them with options available. After all, you would be spending your hard earned money in it. Ideal way for buying a smartphone is research on models for the features that really make you feel worthy for upgrade and then go to mobile maker run Experience Zone shops for a more personal experience with the handset. Ask as questions to the salesman but don’t cheese them out before making the final decision to buy a handset.