Comparison Between Google Android One Phones In India

Monday September 15, 2014 was a big day for both India and Google, when the search giant launched the first family of Android One smartphones in the country - the Spice Dream Uno, Micromax Canvas A1, and the Karbonn Sparkle V. This move was conceptualized to be part of a "larger initiative to bring high-quality smartphones to as many people as possible." This move has made India the very first country to get the Android One Smartphones. The three phones will be available in retail stores by early October.

Sundar Pichai, Google Senior Vice President of Android, Chrome & Apps, said that "Android One was conceived deeply with India in mind." He said that it was a journey to reach the next 5 billion people, and India accounted for a substantial portion.

A High-Quality Experience
The Android One phones run Android 4.4 KitKat and are said to offer a high-quality experience. Google added that all three phones will be the first to receive the Android L release, an update that will offer the new "material design, enhanced security features, improved battery life, as well as smarter notifications."

Sale & Pricing 
The Spice Dream Uno is available exclusively via at Flipkart and priced at Rs 6,299. The Karbonn Sparkle V is available exclusively via Snapdeal and comes to you at a price of Rs 6,399, while the Micromax Canvas A1 can be bought exclusively via Amazon, and is priced at Rs 6,499.

Colors 
Consumers can choose to buy the Karbonn Sparkle V in Mild Grey, Magnum Blue, Pearl White and Wild Red color variants. The Spice Dream Uno and Micromax Canvas A1 are available in White and Black colors.

Hardware Specs
All three smartphones have similar hardware specifications, as well as features such as FM radio tuners, dual SIM card slots and microSD card slots, which the company says are "particularly important to Indians". The phones will come pre-loaded with Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, and Google Translate. The Spice Dream Uno and the Micromax Canvas A1 have a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek processor, whereas the Karbonn Sparkle V has 1.3GHz dual-core MediaTek processor. All three come with 1GB RAM, an internal storage of 4GB as well as offer expandable storage upto 32GB. 

Display 
All three, Karbonn Sparkle V, Spice Dream Uno and Micromax Canvas A1, share common specifications when it comes to the display i.e. 4.5-inch (480x854 pixels) IPS FWVGA display, and a capacitive touchscreen.

Camera 
All three phones have a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a 2-megapixel front camera.

Connectivity & Battery 
The phones support Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPRS/ EDGE, GPS, 3G, and have a 1700mAh removable battery.

Tie-up With Airtel
The launch also saw Google announcing that Airtel is offering a promotion to reduce data costs for anyone who buys the Android One phones. Android One users will get 200MB per month worth of app downloads from Google Play for the first six months as well as free over-the-air (OTA) updates, with an Airtel SIM card, without counting toward their mobile data plan. Google is also shouting out about the data compression feature on Android One's Chrome browser and has also announced that in the coming weeks, offline video playback in India will be available on the YouTube app. This will allow users to store videos on their Android device via Wi-Fi, and watch them at a later time even without data connectivity.

An expandable set of hardware partners for the Android One initiative was also announced by Pichai including manes like Asus, Acer, HTC, Alcatel Onetouch, Intex, Lenovo, Lava, Xolo, Panasonic as well as chipmaker Qualcomm. Google also revealed that the Android One phones would launch in the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries in South Asia by the end of the year.