Spice Devices, a recently launched brand from Transsion Holdings is looking to make a mark in sub 8,000 category with the introduction of its flagship product Spice V801.
The Spice V801 offers decent specifications which are at par with other smartphones in the similar price range, and the company is selling the smartphone in the offline market. Here's our review of the Spice V801 smartphone.
Design and Display
The design is an aspect where the Spice V801 smartphone shines. It is a perfect blend of outstanding style, features and offers fully optimized performance for its users. It aims at providing an inclusive yet all-new powerful and superior digital experience with faster multitasking capabilities to today’s web-savvy, hyper-connected generation.
The smartphone has a polycarbonate body. At the back of the phone, you can see two compartments- one with a regular matte finish and the other one with a glossy finish which also has the fingerprint sensor and rear camera module.
The phone looks very good in person than in the images, and the best part is the phone is not slippery. With an 8.3mm thickness, and weight less than 160 grams, the Spice V801 offers decent in-hand feel. The exclusive blend of glossy and smooth matte finish with a streak of gold embellished in the middle makes Spice V801 a perfect eye-catcher.
The phone also comes with a fingerprint sensor technology which resides at the back of the phone that provides the user with secure, smooth, accessible and effortless functionality while navigating through the device. At the launch event back in September 2017, Spice Devices highlighted the fingerprint scanner used on the Spice V801. As per the company, this scanner can unlock the device in just 0.1 seconds, and the claim is true. The scanner is not only fast, but it's accurate too.
The front of the phone is dominated by a 5-inch HD display with three capacitive keys below the display. The volume rockers and power button are located at the right, and the power button comes with a nice texture on it which makes the overall in-hand feel of the phone decent. Also, the buttons are tactile enough.
Talking about the display, the Spice V801 comes with a 5-inch HD display which gets enough bright in daylight conditions. Spice has added a feature called 'Sunlight display,' which makes the display even bright when you're in bright sunlight conditions. Further, the software on the phone also offers a night mode which reduces strain on your eyes when activated.
All-in-all, the design of the Spice V801 is unique and the display is one of the best in the price range.
Spice V801 Specifications
Let's begin the review with the specifications of the smartphone. The Spice V801 comes with a 5-inch HD display with a resolution of 720x1280 pixels that also has a 2.5D curved glass on top. The smartphone is powered by the MediaTek MT6737 SoC, which is a quad-core SoC with all the four cores clocked at 1.25GHz. Graphics in the device are taken care by Mali T720 GPU.
The chipset is accompanied by 3GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, which can be expanded up to 32GB with a microSD card. This dual-SIM smartphone comes laden with Android 7.0 Nougat on top and even has a fingerprint sensor at the back of the phone.
The phone measures 8.3mm in thickness and offer all the connectivity options such as 4G LTE, VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS. This entire package is backed by a 2700mAh battery.
Camera
It is equipped with 8-megapixel autofocus rear and front camera with LED flash, the Spice V 801 enables the user to effortlessly take beautiful panoramic, wide-angle view images. In good lighting conditions, the V801 captures images with good details and true to life colours. Also, the flashlight does the work to lighten up the object when there's no light on offer.
The 8MP front-facing camera is also a promising one, and the addition of an LED flash to the front camera is a great move by the company. There are not many selfie phones in the market, especially under Rs. 8,000. Here are some of the camera samples shot with the Spice V801 smartphone.
Hardware, Performance, and Software
The Spice V801 is backed by a powerful 3GB RAM & 16GB internal memory expandable up to 32GB offering a rich and hassle-free multitasking experience to the user. It is powered by the MediaTek MT6737 SoC, which is an entry-level chipset with all the four cores clocked at 1.25GHz. During heavy games, the Spice V801, the Mali T720 GPU comes into play.
The performance of the phone is decent; all the basic tasks such as making calls, social media browsing, streaming YouTube videos were fine. Games such as Asphalt 8 and Dead Trigger 2 ran very well on the phone without any issues.
There's 16GB of internal storage in the smartphone, and the device even has a microSD card slot for storage expansion. Thankfully, you can insert two SIM cards and a microSD card at the same time by removing the back panel.
This smartphone comes with a 2700mAh battery, which lasts for a complete day with a single charge. The screen-on time offered by the phone is close to four hours.
The software side of things, the Spice V801 comes laden with Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box. There are some software tricks added by Spice here such as three finger drag screenshot, double tap to wake, gesture controls like draw C to open Camera application, etc. All the features are designed well and I did not face any issues using them.
The performance was snappy, thanks to the software optimisation by Spice. There were no app crashes or any other issue on the smartphone.
Connectivity options in the smartphone include 4G LTE, VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, and GPS. The device also comes with ViLTE support.
Spice V801 Review: A Great Buy!
With the Spice V801, the company delivered us a good smartphone. The V801 has a unique design which no other smartphone has in the said price range, good looking display, promising performance with near stock Android, and capable cameras.
Also, the phone is priced aggressively at Rs. 7,999. So, if you're looking for a unique looking smartphone, up-to-date software then you should consider buying the Spice V801 smartphone.
