The Spice Stellar Virtuoso is one of the high end Android smartphones from the company, coming with the elegant body with the black body having the silverish body on the sides, and a neat looking 4.5inch qHD display that has the screen resolution of 960 x 540 pixels. We call it a neat display but as the company claims this to be a high resolution one, we won’t rate it that high. The graphics and color output is pretty neat, but the brightness couldn’t be that great under the sun, even when set to the maximum.
The Stellar Virtuoso is internally powered by the Dual-core processor clocking at 1 GHz speed, and the OS included is Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich version. Everything looks great except the touchscreen which is a bit rough and although it has got a good response one wouldn’t like using the touchscreen continuously feeling a bit roughness on it.
External Build and Display
Talking about the external build, the neat looking phone with the sharp edges has got just two physical buttons except the power key on the right panel and the single volume rocker on the left panel, and the front side has got three touch-sensitive buttons on the bottom, representing the Back, Home and the Menu key showing all the possibilities for doing stuff on the current screen. The rear camera bears the risk of getting scratched easily as it is raised from the back cover level. The front side of the phone has got the front camera and the sensors just beside the earpiece on the top. The 3.5mm headset jack and the MicroUSB port are on the top panel area while there is a mic in the bottom. The removable delicate back cover would expose a 1700 mAh battery and upon removing that the two SIM card slots and the MicroSD card slot would be open for the SIM and Storage card insertion.
The display is of 4.5-inch diagonal size and is a qHD one with the 960 x 540 pixels, which puts out good graphics but the only problem we experienced was as said above, the lack of bright output under the sun or in very sunny conditions.
Interface, OS and Apps
The Android 4.0.4 interface is all neat and thanks to the multitouch we get to see the easily adjustable and customizable multiple home screens which can handle the several apps, widgets and shortcuts. The notification panel cannot be dragged down from the lock screen, and it has got a lot of settings separated in different sections, where one has got the profiles, one has the settings for brightness, timeout and auto rotation and the other has the connectivity settings just like in most of the Android smartphones.
There are quite a few pre-installed apps in the Virtuoso, like the Stringo, SpiceGang, TOI, Facebook, the File Manager apart from the Google apps like Google Maps, Latitude, Google Talk, Gmail, YouTube and the Android Play Store. There’s an app called Documents To Go which would do the job that the MS office does, like viewing and sorting the PDF, ppt, doc and XLS files but for editing and creating new ones, an upgrade is needed. The documents can be synced through the file manager, through the computer and even with the Google docs which we now call the Google Drive.
The settings section has a lot to play around with, and as in most of the Android phones, its well sectioned into Wireless & Network, Device settings, Personal Settings and System setup options. The available storage for the user is just around 2GB, and this can be expanded using the MicroSD card.
Camera – Picture Capturing and Settings
The 8-megapixel camera is well made to do a good capturing, but the phone heats up too much just in five minutes when the camera is turned on, irrespective of the flash being turned on or off. The resolution of picture captured is 3264 x 2448 pixels, and on the max. resolution the quality doesn’t look that great but the flash does a good job in dark conditions. There’s a front camera too, with the 1.3 megapixel lens which does a good job both in self portrait as well as video chatting.
Below is a picture taken in total dark condition with the flash activated, to show how bright the subject is made.
The HDR feature in the camera does a good job, especially with the bright conditions around. It takes time to save the picture and a lag is noticed too, but in the end there is a difference easily noticeable between the normal and HDR modes of capturing.
There are several features to play around with, including the capturing modes, the settings in EIS, Exposure, Focus Mode, Scene Mode, Video Duration, Microphone, Sharpness, Hue, Saturation, Brightness, Contrast, Anti-flicker and the Audio mode. The effects include Squeeze, Big Eyes, Big Mouth, Small Mouth, Big Nose and Small Eyes, all of which we usually do through the 3rd party apps. Changes in the color effects and the White balance is also possible, and we are pretty much impressed with the camera, except that it is good enough for the picture capturing and we cannot expect a long video recording due to the heating up issues.
Benchmarking the Stellar Virtuoso gave a score of around 6000, which is not that high considering that the high-end devices from other brands can even touch 20,000 and above 15000 like the LG Optimus G2, Samsung Galaxy Note II, LG Nexus 4 etc. but the 1GHz processor can do good enough to play the games available through Play Store, and play the HD youtube videos with ease, and we can’t expect more than this.
Final Verdict
Firstly, the pricing of Rs. 11000 in the Indian market is a steal, for a 4.5-inch qHD display and an 8-megapixel camera which does decent capturing. but at the same time, the battery capacity and the heating up of the device on continuous usage or video capturing is an issue for people looking out for a device for long-term all-purpose use. For the similar price range, the brands like Samsung, HTC, Sony would give their basic phones with just a little above the entry-level specs but this phone can be compared with the two latest best smartphones from Karbonn and Micromax – the Karbonn Smart Titanium 1 and the Micromax Canvas HD A116, priced at 11K and 15K INR respectively.
Specifications of the Spice Stellar Virtuoso Mi-495 Android Phone
- 4.5-inch Capacitive touchscreen with qHD Display
- Screen resolution of 960 x 540 pixels
- 1GHz Dual-core processor
- 512MB RAM
- 8-Megapixel Autofocus Rear camera with LED Flash
- VGA Front camera
- Android 4.0.4 ICS operating system
- 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, MicroUSB Connectivity
Pricing of the Spice Stellar Virtuoso Mi-495 Android Phone
The MRP of the Stellar Virtuoso from Spice in the Indian market is Rs. 12499, but the actual sale price in both the online and offline retail stores is Rs. 10499, and the phone comes with a free leather case in the box package.
