Spice Boss Graphite M-5615 - Great VFM

sksundram

In the zone
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Price - INR 1699

Bought from Saholic.com

Battery : 2000 mAh
Weight : 105 gms (with battery installed)
SAR value : Head 0.564 W/Kg ; Body 0.901 W/Kg (SAR value limit in India is set at 1.6W/kg)


Pics:

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Design + Look and feel :

This is a candybar phone. The gunmetal colour on the keypad, sides and around the speaker grill on the back really gives the phone a nice elegant touch. The back plate covering the battery is solid metal with SPICE logo on it. The front keypad buttons are a little stiff to press at first but I get used to it after a couple of days. Above the keypad there are master (SIM 1) and slave (SIM 2) keys on the left. Beside it are 4-way directional keys with a round centre OK button. On the extreme right there is the call END key. The SPICE logo sits atop them. The charging jack for its USB charger is on the left and headphone jack (3.5 mm) is on the right.

SIM + Memory card Installation:

It’s a tough job to remove the back metal cover. Let's just say this is the only part that I hate to do. You have to put memory card (microSD) first, then the SIM 2 and SIM 1 at last. I found this system a little absurd and it will surely irritate me in the long run as I am a frequent SIM changer.

Display and Camera :

The display is crisp with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. Full points there. The camera is a moderate 1.3 MP. The pictures taken are way better in sunlight than at night.

Software and other features :

Pressing the MENU button (Slave key, denoted by S) shows various sub-menu icons which are explained hereafter
1. Phonebook – lets you store upto 1500 contacts with picture support for contact icons. Also allows you to put contacts in various GROUPS like Family, Friends et al for mass texting. There is also a MOST USED tab for contacts that you called recently.
2. Messages – stores upto 500 sms and 100 mms. There are 4 tabs (inbox, outbox, drafts, sentbox) which can be easily accessed by simply pressing left/right button. You can either have the preferred storage of sms onto your phone memory or SIM memory. Apart from other features there’s a nifty option of exporting the sms collection to your external memory card.
3. Call logs
4. File manager – has the cut/copy paste feature along with creating new folder, sorting by name, size, type, time and marking features.
5. Bluetooth – phone/memory card folders can be shared over with Full control or just Read only.
6. Games – Sokoban, Snake, Tetris
7. FM Radio
8. Organizer – Calendar,calculator,world clock, etc.
9. Multimedia – Camera,video recorder, etc.
10. Internet – just GPRS support. works fine like old Nokia phones
11. Mobile Internet – Facebook, Nimbuzz, etc.
12. Settings – all the usual ones are there with a few noticeable ones like the option to put upto 20 contacts in Blacklist and Whitelist, power management, mobile tracker, option to choose one, two or both SIM in standby mode at a time, auto call recording, etc.

Battery :

Now the best part of this phone is its battery backup time. With a huge battery of 2000 mAh it gives me a standby time of a little short of 5 days that includes around 5 hours of calling and around 6 hours of music playback at low volume ( Vol 3 of supported upto 9).

MUSIC + Calling:

Shuffling, repeating and album image support are all there with background lyrics support also. I put an 8 GB (the maximum supported) SanDisk Extreme Class 10 card and it recognized it instantly. Bluetooth output as well as equalizer support are there as well though no custom equalizer is present. The current playing song can be shown on the Home screen as well.

One thing I noticed that when I plugged my SONY mdr-xb30ex earphone, the music at the lowest volume was too loud but clear. It’s sad that I just can’t use my earphone with it (can’t take the chance of damaging my ear drums) and would have to be contained with PMX-60 headphone only.

The Music through the speaker at back is OKAY ( Loud and clear with low bass). Nothing special there.

The sound output from the earpiece was good. Calling experience was satisfactory from both sides. The call recording feature is neat as the other partner on call won't be able to know whether you are recording or not.

Conclusion :

I found SPICE has provided all the necessary features within a cheap price bracket. I couldn’t have asked much.
 
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OP
sksundram

sksundram

In the zone
I think for such a device the battery,build,calling and music capabilities are the important ones which I have explained there. what else did i miss? :unsure:
 

Nanducob

Wise Old Owl
Oops..sorry... After the recent TDF hack,im unable to see words/comments written with images.i see only images and i have to qoute your reply to read the comments:(
 

$hadow

Geek in making
Looks like me too getting one of these. Just tired with the battery of my s3, had to charge thrice a day.
 
OP
sksundram

sksundram

In the zone
@OP , the battery Backup seems really nice.

yes, the huge capacity of the battery is the reason why I choose this phone among myriads others out there. as you have read in my review, the battery backup is very very good. while selecting the phone I had only Nokia and Spice in my mind. I didn't want to go with lava, micromax or other such brands as their build is super-cheap and due to SAR issues (sometimes!). Nokia does have some very good dual sim handsets with hot swapping feature but they are over 2K with only a few models left under my price bracket. Finally, I went with this model as I have used one of Spice's old models for a long time and it worked out to be gr8 phone.
 
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