14 DAY TRIAL // Good news for customers looking for a cheap Android smartphone, as Google’s Android One project that’s supposed to make Android devices accessible to everyone, as the first handset belonging to this program has just reached the UK.
The Android One program was initially launched in India back in September, but did not gain enough traction especially given local retailers’ opposition. Google decided to launch the Android One smartphones exclusively online, which upset lots of brick and mortar retailers in the country.
Due to the low sales of these Android smartphones, which are available in India for prices between Rs 5,900 ($95 / €75) and Rs 6,500 ($105 / €85) outright, brick and mortar retailers have decided not to stock them.
Three Android smartphones are still selling in India currently, each manufactured by a different company: Karbonn, Spice and Micromax.
Faced with a total fiasco in India, it appears that Google had nothing against these Indian OEMs launching these products in other countries.
And the first country to get the Android One project is the UK. Karbonn Sparkle V has just become available for purchase on Amazon UK and customers can now get it for just £130 outright, which is about €165 or $205.
That’s almost double the amount you pay for the same device in India, which kind of makes sense considering the fact that Google initially planned to make the Android One devices available only in emerging markets.
Still, Karbonn Sparkle V’s suggested retail price is quite decent for the UK market, especially if we take into consideration the specs the smartphone has to offer.
All Android One devices will receive the Lollipop upgrade
More importantly, all smartphones in the Android One program will be getting the latest version of the operating system, namely Android 5.0 Lollipop, so here is another reason to grab one.
Talking about Karbonn Sparkle V, the smartphone sports a 4.5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display that supports 480 x 854 pixels resolution and 218ppi (pixel per inch).
Furthermore, the handset is equipped with a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6582 processor, a Mali-400 graphics processing unit and 1GB of RAM.
Although the smartphone comes with only 4GB of internal memory inside, users will be able to further expand storage up to 32GB via microSD card slot.
On the back, the Sparkle V features a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash and HD (720p) video recording. There’s also a secondary 2-megapixel camera in the front.
Karbonn Sparkle V ship with Android 4.4.4 KitKat operating system out of the box, but as we mentioned earlier, it has been confirmed for an upcoming Lollipop upgrade.
