Spice V801: Value for money device but camera needs improvement

New Delhi: Chinese communications firm Transsion Holdings earlier this year announced an agreement with domestic handset manufacturer Spice Mobility to re-launch the Spice brand in India.
To compete in the ever-growing Indian smartphone market, Spice has now introduced a new handset, the "V801", in the budget category.

Priced at Rs 7,999, the high point of Spice V801 is its fingerprint sensor.

Here`s what works for the device.

Spice V801 comes with 5-inch HD IPS 2.5D curved display that offers decent touch response.

The upper half of the rear has glossy plastic finish while the rest has a matte texture that ensures a good grip.

The display offers decent sunlight legibility.

The smartphone sports 8MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture, auto-focus and advanced image processing.

The device also offers different picture modes such as `Beauty Mode` and `Facemask` .

There is an 8MP front camera with flash for selfies.

The volume and power keys are placed at the right edge. A micro-USB charger port is placed at the bottom edge while a 3.5-mm headphone jack is placed at the top.

The phone has two bottom-firing speakers. However, only the speaker on the left is functional while the other is a dummy.

On the battery front, the dual-SIM device has 2700mAh non-removable battery.

After using the device for a week, we found the battery could last for a day-and-a-half on moderate use.

The battery lasted almost a day with heavy use on a single charge.

The device is powered by 1.25Ghz quad-core Mediatek processor coupled with Mali T720 GPU. It performs tasks faster and consumes less power to render smooth overall experience.

The smartphone runs the Android 7.0 Nougat operating system (OS).

When compared with Xiaomi Redmi 4 that comes at a price of Rs 8,999 for 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage variant, Spice V801 offers same 3GB RAM and 16GB ROM at Rs 7,999.

The internal storage can be expanded up to 32GB via a microSD card slot.

What does not work.

The camera performance is not great and the pictures looked a bit over-saturated. Also, the videos captured through the rear camera lacked detail.

Conclusion: At this price, Spice V801 is a value-for-money phone. However, Coolpad Note 5 Lite C that comes with 5-inch full-HD display poses stiff competition to this handset.