You must have seen repeated commericals featuring Karbonn Machone Titanium S310 smartphone during the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 broadcast, well I was pretty much impressed with the looks of Machone and had a urge to lay my hands on it. The urge didn't stayed there for long since I already got one unit for review purposes (Thanks Karbonn!) So in this article you are going to read about the Machone and its performance as compared to other budget phones. I will be reviewing the Machone in a detailed and brief review covering all the required points, so let's get to work.
Unboxing
Just for your information, I shot an Unboxing video of Karbonn Machone but I lost it and couldn't upload it on time. Anyways, I upload it in as soon as possible and will leave a link here, until then, here is an image showing the contents of Karbonn Machone box.
 |
| Karbonn Machone Titanium S310 Unboxing |
Built Quality & Looks
Though Karbonn Machone is a budget smartphone, the looks give it a premium and royal look, kinda similar to the new iPhone (I'm not saying that the design is completely like iPhone 6, but yes, there is a lot of resemblance). The edges of Machone are curved and contains speaker grill or I must say small holes at the bottom (Like iPhone 6, as I pointed out earlier) The phone is compact in size and feels good in hands. The body is made up of polycarbonate and overall, Machone is 8.1mm thick and quite light weighted.
When the back panel is removed, you see Dual SIM card slots which houses a MicroSIM card, there is also a microSD card slot for expanding storage capacity. The battery of Machone can be removed and replaced by user. On the back, you get the camera, LED flash and a noise cancelling microphone. On the right, you get power button and volume rocker. Finally, on the top you get a 3.5mm jack along with microUSB port for charging and USB connection.
Display
Machone packs a 4.7" Inch LCD Display 1280x720 resolution display and has pixel density of ~319 ppi and supports 16 million colors. The touchscreen sensitivity feel okay, not very good and I'm really disappointed with the viewing angles, they're not very bad either but I had higher expectations. Also not to forget, there is no Gorilla glass for scratch protection. The sunlight legibility is also poor, even on full brightness.
Hardware & Performance
Coming to the hardware part, Karbonn Machone packs a Mediatek MT6582 1.3 GHz Quad Core processor along with 1 gigabyte RAM and Mali-400 MP2 GPU. The Internal storage is 8GB which can be expanded to 32GB using a microSD card. The hardware is good enough as compared to other devices in this range, however I found that Xiaomi Redmi 1S which costs less than Karbonn Machone, offers better Hardware specifications and performance. Machone handles games well but after a few minutes of continous gameplay (let's say 15-20 minutes) the heating starts to take place and sometimes results in crashes.
Software
The user interface on Karbonn Machone is quite Stock Android lookalike with some changes. It is based on Android OS v4.4.2 KitKat and has a custom lockscreen with notifications etc. The user interface is quite basic and has some pre-installed apps & games. I was surprised to see some major games pre-installed, Well done Karbonn. Other than that there is a multi-gesture option, which allows users to configure two-finger or three-finger swipes to open particular apps.
Camera
I don't want to make this section to detailed, thanks to Machone's poor camera performance, I'll rather wrap up quickly this. Karbonn Machone packs an 8 Megapixel camera with LED flash on it's back and a 5 Megapixel shooter in front. Other features like Autofocus etc. are also present. No matter how appealing these camera specs look, the performance of both the cameras was terrible. The colors produced by the camera were very artificial and looked ridiculous, sorry for using such harsh words but I'm trying my best to sugarcoat them. Machone does average when it comes to video recording, for the record it shoots Full HD video, that is 1080p with it's primary camera.
Connectivity & Battery
There are plenty of connectivity options available onboard Karbonn Machone. Both the microSIM cards supports 3G connectivity. Other than that you get Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Micro-USB and that's pretty much all. Karbonn Machone Titanium S310 houses a 1800 mAh battery under the hood which again delivers average performance. With moderate use, we were successful to keep the battery going till the end of the day but people who like heavy usage and gaming might have to plug the charger a couple of times a day.
Other Features
Benchmarks
During the tests I conducted on Karbonn Mach, we also ran a couple of benchmarks on it for better performance results. Here I am going to share AnTuTu benchmark results of Karbonn Machone Titanium S310.
The results speak for itself, but when I compared the AnTuTu benchmark results of the newly launched Lenovo A6000 (which is priced same as Karbonn Machone and also has similar hardware) I noticed that Lenovo A6000 performed better than Machone and came out with slightly better results, however the difference is quite small and doesn't prove that A6000 is better.
Verdict
Looking at the built quality, price point and decent hardware, Karbonn Machone is one of the best contenders for a budget smartphone but camera surely disappoints me. Other than that, the phone is quite good, the software runs flawlessly and I've never seen it lag or freeze during operation. Though it heats in certain situations, most probably while contionous gameplay session, other than that the performance is great. Now when it comes to whether I recommed it or not, Well I liked the phone but there are issues which we can't oversee and looking at other budget phones available in market currently, I would recommend skipping Machone for some other smartphone like Xiaomi Redmi 2, Moto E 2nd Generation or Lenovo A6000. If you are not a camera fanatic then you can go for Karbonn Machone, except for the camera, Machone won't disappoint you.
What are your views on Karbonn Machone Titanium S310? leave your comments.
About Jimmie Luthra
Blogger Comment
Facebook Comment