As the market gets flooded with large display devices at ever more appealing price points, buyers are spoilt for choice. While the likes of Micromax and Spice are the elephants in the room, Karbonn isn’t far behind either. The brand new Karbonn Titanium S5 Pro brings a large display, above average performance to a very appealing price point. Read on to find out our opinion of the phone.
Hardware
First impressions make a difference and the Karbonn Titanium S5 Pro certainly makes a good one. Clean lines are visible with the white front surrounded by a faux chrome bezel. Above the display is an earpiece grille flanked by the front facing camera and the proximity sensor. The dimensions of the phone are quite svelte at just 138 x 70.5 x 7.9 mm. The slim bezels around the display further make the device feel quite small.
Karbonn has eschewed the capacitive buttons for onscreen controls and the end result is a very clean design. The buttons hide away during media playback and so don’t really encroach upon screen estate. We were very pleasantly surprised by the 5inch qHD panel used here and we’ll talk more about this later in the review.
Moving over to the sides, you can spot the volume rocker on the side. The single rocker provides very good feedback and is perfectly placed for one handed use. The same can be said for the power key on the right side of the phone. The 3.5mm audio jack and micro USB port are placed at the top.
The back of the phone is made of a slightly different kind of plastic. The smooth soft touch plastic makes the device prone to slipping. The camera module is placed at the top with a single LED flash below it. There’s a speaker grille at the bottom half of the device. Overall the phones feels quite good when held in the hand. Moreover, it is one of the better looking phones in it’s price range.
Software
The Karbon Titanium S5 Plus runs on Android 4.2.2 with a custom interface layer on top of it. Karbonn has done a fairly decent job at optimization here and the interface remains lag free at all times. Additionally, the changes while not exactly minimal are quite pleasing to the eye.
The company has also built in a modicum of customizability over and above what is built into Android. A robust theming engine is included that lets you customize the skin right down to the transition.
The custom skin also gets a fresh icon pack. Within the notification drawer are the standard set of quick access toggles that you can activate depending on your requirements. Some of the built in applications like the music player have been giving an interface overhaul too. A few additional apps like a File Manager, Flashlight, WhatsApp, demo version of Modern Combat 4 amongst others have also been installed. In our testing the interface proved to be well optimized and quite appealing to look at.
Performance
Under the hood of the Karbonn Titanium S5 Plus is a 1.3GHz quad-core processor paired with 1GB of RAM. Performance of the phone remains consistently good for the most part. The 1GB of RAM facilitates an above average multi tasking experience. Using resource intensive apps does induce a bit of lag due to budget minded processor but in day to day usage this isn’t an issue. Gaming too is generally good though the latest games exhibit dropped frames when played at the highest settings. We ran the phone through standard benchmarks and here are the results. Synthetic benchmarks don’t tell the entire tale but are a reliable means of putting a number to the performance of the device. The device scores consistently well in most of the benchmarks.
In the GPU centric GFXBench, the phone achieves the highest frame rate. The phone is placed right at the top of the competition.
In the CPU centric Quadrant benchmark, the phone is once again amongst the top three. A score of 4716 points means that it is well ahead of most of its competition including the Micromax Canvas 4. We were fairly satisfied by the performance of the phone and it remained smooth and lag free most of the time. As expected, heavy multitasking does take its toll on the Karboonn Titanium S5 Plus.
Camera
An 8MP camera module can be seen at the back of the Karbonn Titanium S5 Plus. This is paired with a single LED flash. Unfortunately the camera proves to be rather disappointing and we wish that the company had stuck with a lower resolution but higher quality module.
The camera is generally quick to focus but there’s a hint of lag between pressing the shutter key and taking the picture. In our testing this also induced a bit of camera shake. Even when it didn’t, the images aren’t anything worth writing home about. The tiny sensor and not that great optics combine to produce images that resemble paintings. There’s a distinct lack of dynamic range and shadow regions are generally completely darkened out. Low light images are mostly unusable due to the high noise levels. The phone can also record videos in 1080p resolution. These are saved in the 3gp format with very heavy compression which once again produces artifacts and results in not that great footage.
Display
The Karbonn Titanium S5 Plus has a 5inch qHD display. While the resolution is decidedly lower than most of the competition who are using 720p panels, we were well impressed by the quality of the display.
Colors tend to be bright and vibrant and the viewing angles are very good. The pixel density at 220 ppi might appear a bit low and text isn’t as sharp as you’d want it to be. That said, the display is generally good enough for all practical purposes and the color accuracy in particular helps it stand out from the competition.
Connectivity and Battery Life
The Karbonn Titanium S5 Plus has all the standard connectivity options you’d expect including WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth. Built in storage is very limited at just 4GB but you can expand this via the microSD card slot. RAM on the phone is 1GB.
The battery is an 1800 mAh unit which when paired with the mid range processor and relatively low resolution display helps maximize longevity. The phone easily lasts a full day of usage under moderate usage conditions. Light usage can help it last longer still.
Conclusion
The Karbonn Titanium S5 Plus is a very decent effort with good construction and above average performance. The design though uninspired is still quite appealing and we found the screen panel to be amongst the better ones in its category despite being lower resolution than most of the competition.
That said, it is hard to justify spending the amount on this phone when the higher specced Moto G is priced just a little more. The camera too is a bit of a letdown. The Karbonn Titanium S5 Plus is priced at about Rs. 10,000 at which it is a reasonable purchase but we’d recommend sticking with the Lumia 525 or Moto G.
Pros
Design
Performance
Cons
Camera
Low resolution display