Presenting a review of a the Micromax Bling (Model Q55) which is a entry level Dual SIM phone aimed at the ladies
Initial Impressions
Wow what a phone – This was the first impression for almost all ladies who saw it . The Micromax Bling Q55 is available in the while and limited edition Black with studded Sarwoski Elements . Twinkle khanna promotes the Bling and the company was beaming so many promos during the FIFA worldcup. We liked the build quality of the phone and design. It does have a nice feel to it considering the entry level pricing. The only thing we were worried about was the software part of phone.
Q55 Specifications
Box Contents
Basic things like Charger, USB wire, 3.5 mm Handsfree, Software CD, User guide, Service Guide all including in a very small box. You would also find a nice pink soft cloth cover.
Hardware
The hardware was solid without any noise from the hinges. The SWIVEL Form factor worked well .
Phone is small and handy and its handy even when swivel is open.
QWERTY keyboard is usable with 5 rows of keys.
There are 3 crystals in the front of the phone which Micromax calls “Enlightened Swaroski elements”
There is a 3.5 mm audio jack and mini USB is provided on right side of the device for charging and USB connectivity .
At the back side of the device is 2 MP, 1600×1200 pixels along with speakers. The phone weighs just 75g.
The phone has vanity mirror at back side for keeping women busy with the phone. Device has 2 call buttons for respective SIM cards and dedicated buttons are provided for social networking for Facebook and Instant Messaging.
Display
The phone has 2.4 inch TFT screen with 256K colors having a resoulution of 320 x 240 pixels. Screen is wide enough for good readability. Screen brightness is customizable. But the colors seemed a bit dull.
Camera
Camera takes 2 Megapixel photos which is ok in this price range. Day light pictures were ok but had some noise. Picture can be clicked using the button in the center.
Multimedia
Phone has basic multimedia features like audio playback , video playback , sound recorder and FM radio.Unfortunately we could not get to play MP4 videos on the Bling video player.
OS and UI
The Phone runs on a Proprietary OS but the phone is responsive and gives the user a good experience browsing the phone. Navigation from one icon to other is smooth and we haven’t faced any issue of phone restarting or hanging up. Short codes won’t work on these phones like they work on Nokia, Samsung etc. Icons in the UI could have been sharper . Bling runs on low internal memory of 12.2 mb which makes it totally dependant on the external memory.
Phone Calls
Phone calls from both the SIM cards worked well and user has 2 dedicated call buttons which gives user least confusion about call management for dual sim support handsets.
Browsing / Connectivity
It has dedicated button for Facebook The inbuilt client for FB is very poorly created as you cannot see updates of others. It’s just to update your own status. Now for browsing other websites Bling provides us with 2 options , one is default web browser and other is Opera Mini .Both work fine. No issues with the connectivity but it takes little longer to connect as compared to other phones but interesting thing was gprs connection dint break after continous use of 2 hrs. There is also a dedicated button for Bluetooth
Battery Life
The 850 mAh battery means that you might have to charge the phone every day.We used the phone heavily for one full day which included Twittering and Facebooking, listening to songs, few camera shots, 8-10 calls etc but still 2 bars where remaining out of 5. Not bad at all.
Conclusion
The Q55 Bling is certainly an attractive phone for the target crowd – women ! It certainly provides value for money considering it is available for less than Rs.5000 in the market. But the only deal breaker can be the proprietary operating system and lack of 3G & Wi-Fi.
Thanks to Anirudh for contributing to this review