Smart Flo Poise review: A decent smartphone at Rs 5,000

Like many other Indian brands, Spice offers a number of smartphones at a pretty low price point in a bid to tap into switchers (people who are moving from feature phones to touchscreen smartphones). It is estimated that the low-end segment is responsible for a huge chunk of smartphone sales in the Indian market, and Spice has entered the battle with the ultra-cheap Smart Flo Poise. 

The smartphone has a 4.5-inch display, dual-core processor, rear camera with LED flash, 1GB RAM and dual sim functionality. It carries the price tag of just Rs 5,400, but is available online at Rs 5,000. 

This combination of spec sheet and price certainly makes for a pretty tempting offering for buyers who want a low-end smartphone. But does the performance justify the price? And is it a better alternative than Samsung's entry-level Galaxy Star smartphone or Nokia's Asha 500, a similarly-priced smart feature phone from a bigger brand? We get you the answers in this review: 

Looks and build quality
Spice smart flo poise is a smartphone that takes a lot of design cues from Samsung's Galaxy S2, but with a few changes of its own. So, the chrome lining on the sides is much wider here and the overall design is very boxy and chunky, and the edges are sharper. The device is pretty heavy, but feels very solid and sturdy when held in the hand. 

Below the screen are the three touch-sensitive keys for Menu, Back and home; the speaker is located at the back, next to the camera. The Power button is placed on the right, just above the Volume key; both are pretty easy to access while using the device with one hand.What is really striking is the fit and finish of Smart Flo Poise for its price. Having become used to shoddy build at this price point, we were surprised to see the high quality of plastic used, level of care taken in manufacturing and no creaking at all. We don't usually see this level of detail from most smartphones under Rs 10,000, so this is a change we welcome wholeheartedly. 
Hardware

Smart Flo Poise has better hardware than what rivals offer at this price. You get an IPS display with resolution of 480x854p, which trumps the 240x320p resolution of most competitors by a wide margin. There is a 1.3GHz dual-core processor with 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage, 32GB microSD support for storage expansion, 3.2MP rear camera with LED flash, 1.2MP front camera and 1,450mAh battery.There is no 3G support in Spice's ultra-cheap smartphone, something it has in common with most headset in this segment; it can access the internet over 2G and Wi-Fi. 

Software
Spice has used Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) operating system in Smart Flo Poise smartphone. The ageing OS is overlaid with a custom launcher that eliminates the app menu and puts all the downloaded apps (with redesigned icons) on home screens. We are not particularly fond of this setup, though it is fast becoming pretty common among smartphones made in China. 

Apart from this custom launcher, there are four themes that you can choose to use as the home screen. These are similar to the themes available on Play Store and seem a little childish in appearance.You can also select the type of animation you see while moving between home screens; there are 12 options in total and are pretty standard fare to anyone who has used such customization apps in google’s marketplace earlier. But the impression we get from this software is that Spice wants to give the popular animations to buyers, who are likely to be first-time Android users, without them having to visit Play Store. 

Performance
Spice's low-cost offering has a screen size and resolution that is hard to match in Rs 5,000-price segment, but numbers don't tell the real story. The display is bright and vibrant indoors and suffers from only slight pixilation, but much better than what you get from products by most other brands, both Indian and global. 

However, when we step out into the Sun, the screen washes out totally and it is hard to figure any what is displayed on the screen, even at maximum brightness. This is a major flaw than can prove detrimental to sales and popularity of the smartphone. 

On the software side, the heavy customization bogs down the performance. Apps don't open fast enough, but the smartphone's response time is still better compared to that of others at the same price. We feel that using stock Android would have been a better option at this price point and helped the device perform better. 

Preloading the smartphone with multiple browsers and as many as 48 apps does not really help the user considering the low-end hardware it features. Thankfully, users have the option to uninstall most of the preloaded apps to get rid of the clutter and improve performance. You can not only delete third-party apps like Opera browser, but also a few Google and Spice apps. 

We uninstalled the unnecessary apps, retaining only Facebook, WhatsApp, NQ Mobile Security and a few others, and then used a third-party launcher. This improved the performance of the smartphone drastically, with minimal lag while switching between apps. 
Images taken with Spice Smart Flo Poise's 3.2MP rear camera are disappointing, with poor details. The colours appear okay most of the times, but look a bit dull in some photos. The camera app has a number of settings, but tweaking them does not help much either. The 1,450mAh battery ensures that the smartphone runs for about 8-9 hours once fully charged with 2G data turned on. The usage included an hour of web browsing, couple of hours of using WhatsApp and Facebook, three hours of music playback, half an hour of calling and an hour of YouTube before the battery was exhausted. 

Verdict
Spice Smart Flo Poise is a pretty good smartphone for the price. The screen quality in sunlight and camera are its two major flaws, but the overall performance is something you don't find at Rs 5,000 easily. Moreover, most other smartphones at this price come with lesser hardware, older Android versions and a laggy performance. It is also a better option than Nokia's Asha 500, which has grown very little on the software side and is not really an option if you want a smartphone.