Good specifications at low price
Carbon’s latest product is titanium mach five (Titanium Mach Five). The specifications of this budget smartphone, available for Rs 5,999, are enticing. There is a 5 megapixel front camera with flash, apart from this the device has IR blaster and 5 inch HD screen. With the help of these features, will Mach Five be able to create a distinct identity for itself in the budget segment? We will try to know this in the review of the handset.
Look and Design
Despite being in the entry-level price segment, the Karbonn Titanium Mach Five looks interesting. There is so much specialty in its design that it looks fresh. The phone is available in champagne, silver and blue-white colors. There is a thick black strip around the screen. Three soft keys are located at the bottom of the screen. These are backlit but appear effective only in darkness.
The rear panel of the device is detachable. Power and volume keys are made on detachable panel. There is a 3.5mm audio port and IR blaster at the top of the device, while the micro-USB port is at the bottom of the device. With a thickness of 7.3mm, this device is neither too thick nor completely slim. Considering the price, we have no complaints with the look and design of this phone.
Specifications and Software
Karbonn Titanium Mach Five It has a 5-inch (720×1280-pixel) screen, 16GB of inbuilt storage (support for 32GB microSD card) and 2GB of RAM. The device is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6582 processor, a popular SoC in budget range devices. The phone has a 2,200mAh battery and runs on Android 5.0 operating system.
Mach Five’s biggest rival is Motorola Moto E (Gen 2) (Review). Mach Five beats Moto E in terms of RAM, inbuilt storage, display size and resolution. On paper, the Mach Five has more appeal in this price range than the Moto E (Gen 2). However, a phone cannot be judged only on its specifications.
The user interface is very light and very much like the stock version of Android Lollipop. There are many games and apps pre-installed on the device that can be removed. SwiftKey keyboard is also provided in Titanium Mach Five. There’s also a Peel Smart Remote app to take advantage of the IR blaster. After some initial hiccups, we were able to use the remote app and iBlaster with the LG and Videocon TVs in our office. It worked well. Much like a normal remote.
Despite being very close to stock Android, the Karbonn Titanium Mach Five does not offer many controls and customization options for the user. The biggest drawback is that the option to display the battery percentage on the status bar (this can be done through a third party app) was not given. The interface works well but you cannot completely customize your phone according to your needs. This was very disappointing.
camera
Karbonn Titanium Mach Five has 8 megapixel rear and 5 megapixel front camera. Flash is also provided with both the cameras. By the way, the flash of the front camera gives less light than the rear one. The front camera works well to a great extent. Along with good selfies, it takes decent pictures even in low light. The camera software also worked well on most occasions. And it also has some useful features. Shooting modes, filters, flash and camera switcher are easily accessible. The sensor focuses quickly.
Whenever we opened the camera app, we were faced with a tutorial screen. Tapping the back button closes the tutorial page and lets you go to the page you want, but it was very annoying. For this reason you are not able to take pictures fast. However, we later learned that it gets disabled once you complete the tutorial, which takes about 30 seconds.
Despite being a budget device, its camera performance pleasantly surprised me. The 8-megapixel sensor took sharp and detailed pictures in regular light. There was a reduction in sharpness and color in low light. Despite being a device priced at Rs 6,000, the Karbonn Titanium Mach Five performs well in the camera department.
performance
The Karbonn Titanium Mach Five’s performance in daily use was average. Interface and apps ran smoothly. The Mach Five scored 20,084 and 9,380 points in AnTuTu and Quadrant benchmark tests respectively. The GFXBench and 3DMark tests returned scores of 6.9fps and 2867 respectively, which is a bit low.
Playing our test video Karbonn Titanium Mach Five Had a problem. The phone played light videos easily. Even though the Mach Five has a 720p screen, its GPU isn’t particularly suitable for graphics-intensive tasks.
Talking about speaker volume, call quality, reception and Wi-Fi strength, the performance in this department is at par with any other budget smartphone. We have a complaint about the sensitivity of the phone’s touch screen, which sometimes read swipes as touch. The soft keys sometimes did not register taps properly, due to which we were not able to handle the phone comfortably. This device is weak in terms of battery life. The battery of Karbonn Titanium Mach Five lasted for 7 hours 36 minutes in the video loop test.
our decision
Despite the low price, the specification list of Karbonn Titanium Mach Five is very impressive. There are very few devices available in the market with 2GB RAM, stock version Android experience and a decent camera for just Rs 6,000. Apart from this, Titanium Mach Five also has a front flash and an IR blaster, along with surprising looks and HD screen.
The phone looks weak due to performance and software shortcomings. There aren’t many customization options and many of the niceties that Android users have become accustomed to are missing. Software related deficiencies can be rectified through firmware updates, but nothing can be said about when these will arrive.
This is a phone that is good in some respects and bad in others. However, the Mach Five, priced at Rs 5,999, will definitely appeal to budget users looking for a good camera and a beautiful display. If you plan to buy a budget device then you can consider this smartphone.
