People have big demands, big expectations but would expect a small price for the same. It is not possible always in the current market, but Spice has done its maximum efforts to provide the users with some high specifications in the device which is priced at the same level with the mid-range devices of the other brands. They brought in the Spice Mi-500, also named the Stellar Horizon with a screen which is larger than that of the latest Galaxy device, i.e. the Galaxy S III. The Mi-500 comes with the 5-inch capacitive touchscreen, and 1 GHz processor, and 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.
Going on with the review of the Mi-500 device, let’s discuss each in various aspects:
Design, Display and Form Factor
The design is too simple and neat, with no external buttons except the volume keys. A perfect tablet shaped device with sharp edges on all the sides, the silverish dull side rims provide a good built quality look to the Mi-500 device. The front part of the Stellar Horizon has a front camera, the earpiece in the center and just adjacent to it, are the proximity sensor and the brightness sensor. The bottom has got three touch-sensitive buttons that indicate Menu, Home and Back functions. The right panel has got volume jack keys, and left is plain with no buttons.
The top has got the 3.5mm headset jack on the left side, half of it on the top and half being a part of the back cover, and similar is the placement in the center for the MicroUSB cable slot. The top right side has the power/lock key. We liked the removable back cover because of its glossy white color, and being totally similar to the devices like the Galaxy Note which has the similar back cover. The box had come with a flip cover just like the one that the Galaxy S III and Note II from Samsung come with, needing to remove the back cover and place the flip cover.
Overall, the design is quite neat and Spice did manage to keep the design simple and look a bit professional, unlike their other devices which have the funky type of colors, and which looked less professional always.
Operating System, Internal Specs and Performance
Powered with the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS, the version 4.0.4 has the interface look very standard and easy to use, with a lot of options to play around with, but nothing too hard and hidden for users to keep wondering what could be done. The same lock screen with a circle having a camera shortcut, so that you don’t need to unlock the screen if you just wanted to use the camera. There are multiple home screens, but they can be browsed one after the other, and there is no pinch-to-bring-together all the lock screens at a single place.
Something impressive in the entire interface is the Notification panel with the separate tabs on the top, which have shortcuts to most of the common options of the phone. The various tabs include Brightness, Screen Timeout, Auto-rotation and Color in the first one, the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and Data Network in the second tab which is exclusively for the connectivity options. The third tab has the phone profiles, and the last one has the Smart Bright option.
The app lists and widget section is similar to that of the Motorola Droid Razr, where the widget pages automatically continue after the app pages and you don’t need to click on a separate section for the same.
The Mi-500 has got a 1GHz Dual-core processor, a 4 GB ROM + 512 MB RAM and an internal memory of 4GB which can be expanded to 32GB using the MicroSD card. This being a dual-SIM phone, it has another good advantage in comparison to other high-end branded devices which lack the concept of Dual SIM mobile phones. Performance of the phone was pretty good, and it worked pretty well on a little of multitasking, and we don’t expect more than that in a 1GHz device with other high-end specs putting a lot more load on the processor.
Camera and Battery
The Spice Mi-500 is powered by the 5-Megapixel camera with Autofocus, and the maximum screen resolution of the captured picture would be 2592×1944 pixels. The quality of the capture is just satisfactory, but not real good when compared to the other brands with a 5MP camera.
Similar is the case with the videos too, which don’t have a great quality but the capturing is decent. We have taken a demo video with the camera of the Stellar Horizon. The capture was with a 480p quality, so there is nothing much to expect from the camera of the device.
The battery is again something Spice users would be happy about. A 2150 mAh battery would be something they could showoff, when the battery life is in question because several high-end devices have got poorer batteries, and although we couldn’t do a proper test of the battery draining based on the usage, the battery did last for quite a long time on normal continuous usage with various activities.
Final Verdict
A device worth every penny being charged. Priced at somewhere around Rs. 12000 in the Indian market, it is the brand name that might keep the hype quite low, but the specifications, performance and especially the design is something that users should consider and purchase the phone for, rather than shelling out more than double the price for similar specs in devices from the well known brands. A 5-inch touchscreen, a professional design and the Android ICS operating system – These three factors are quite enough to make this device a worth buying one.
We have even compared the Mi-500 with the latest best device in the market with a larger screen – the Samsung Galaxy Note II. The former didn’t match the Note II in any aspect, but not everyone would be able to afford the Galaxy Note 2 with price thrice the Stellar Horizon.
