Hello,
I am going to post a Review of Reconnect GSM 4301 which is a rebranded Alcatel OT-995. Reconnect is a brand of Reliance Digital, a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Group of companies. Reliance has launched Electronics in the form of LCDs and Mobile phones under its brand RECONNECT. As far as mobile phones are concerned, Reconnect has 2 models, The lower range RECONNECT GSM 3201, which is 3.2" display, Dual sim, Android 2.3 mobile which is also a rebranded Alcatel phone. GSM 3201 is available at Reliance Digital for 6,500 Rs. This phone is aimed at the lower range of dual sim mobiles. GSM 4301 is aimed at the Mid end segment with a price tag of 14,000 Rs. Let us now look at what is in the Box.
Unboxing and Contents
Reconnect GSM 4301 which i shall now further refer to as 4301 comes in a Neat and compact 80 x 145 x 70 mm box. The box is sealed to avoid tampering of the contents of the box. The box displays the specifications of the phone, a bar code and a MRP sticker. The MRP of this phone as on the box is 14,990 Inclusive of all taxes. Opening the box, the phone greets you with its sleek looks and neat and clean lines. Below the phone tray are hidden - Phones battery, a phone charger, a Micro USB to USB cable, a Stereo headset, a screen guard, a quick start guide and a 2 Year (yes 2 years!) warranty card. The accessories appear to be of good quality.
Form factor and Technical specifications
The 4301 boasts of 4.3" TFT, Capacitive Touch screen with 16M colours. The Phone measures 128 x 68 x 9.8 mm weighing in at 124 gm. The lower front of phone has 4 capacitive touch buttons which are options, home, search and back buttons. The Left top corner of the phone has a LED for alerts, adjacent to the LED is a proximity sensor. The top middle houses the ear piece and just adjacent to the ear piece is a 1.3 Megapixel Camera. The top panel of phone as a 3.5 m audio jack and a power button. The left panel a volume rocker and a mini USB port. The lower panel has a Mini HDMI port. The buttons have a chrome finish while the whole body has a brushed steel look. On the back there is a 5 Megapixel camera, a LED flash and a large but slim speaker grill. The back panel holds the RECONNECT logo in white and has rubberised finish making it smudge resistant and instigating confidence while holding it.
Popping the hood of the phone, there is a battery compartment, a Micro SD slot and a SIM card slot. As the Micro SD card is housed below the back cover, every time the card needs to be swapped, the cover has to be opened, making the card not truly hot swappable.
Detailed technical specifications are as under:
Display Type TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours
Size 480 x 800 pixels, 4.3 inches (~217 ppi pixel density)
Memory Card microSD, up to 32 GB
Memory Internal 2 GB ROM, 512 MB RAM
Data GPRS Class 12 (4+1/3+2/2+3/1+4 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
EDGE Class 12
3G HSDPA, 14.4 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP
USB Yes, microUSB v2.0
Camera Primary 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash with Geo tagging
Video 720p@30fps
OS Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread), upgradable to v4.x
Chipset Qualcomm MSM8255T Snapdragon
CPU 1.4 GHz
GPU Adreno 205
Sensors Accelerometer, proximity, compass
Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS
GPS Yes, with A-GPS support
TV-out via Mini HDMI
Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh
User Interface
Power up the 4301 and one is greeted by the Reconnect Logo. Startup is speedy and the phone is quick to reach the home screen. The default launcher on startup for 4301 is ONE TOUCH launcher which is also known as SPB shell 3D launcher and available on the Play store. The Launcher can be changed from system settings>Launcher selection, the other option being the default gingerbread launcher.
The Lock screen shows the time, date and day, number of missed calls and number of unread messages. The Lock has to be dragged to the bottom of the screen in order to unlock it. There are no other options for changing mode of the phone from Vibrate to Ringer which is generally found on android phones.
Besides the normal android applications, 4301 comes with some preinstalled applications which are
1. Antivirus Pro
2. Currency Converter
3. Cloud backup
4. Facebook
5. Twitter
6. One touch share
7. Office suite
8. OI shopping List
9. Notes
10. Nimbuzz
11. Picsay
12. Touchpal keyboard
13. Battery Saver
14. Shazam
15. SPB shell 3D Launcher
The status bar is not customizable and has options of toggling Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Data, Ringer, Airplane mode, Screen Brightness, Sync, Orientation and Phone volume.
The Dialer is plain jane but easy to key in numbers due to the big buttons and huge screen. The Dialer sports the usual android tabs of contacts, call log, favorites and groups. The stock dialer however does not search based on permutations and combinations of name and numbers. Ex Dialer from Play store quickly resolved this issue.
Messaging supports threaded view and typing is very easy thanks to the bundled touchpal keyboard. The touch is accurate and responsive messaging is a breeze on the 4.3" display.
Music Player, Radio, Video Player Camera and Video Recording
The default music player sports all the options of the standard android music player. The music player has the ability to the sort the songs according the Artist, Albums, song titles and Playlist. Play options include Play, pause, Previous, Next, shuffle and single repeat, album repeat and repeat all songs. Songs can be changed by swiping to left or right of the screen. The Player does not have a Landscape view which is very strange. The album art is shown nice and big with the song progress being a blue line on the edge of the CD. The music player lacks equalizer settings. The Audio quality with the bundled earphones is clear but not loud enough especially in noisy ambiance. The music is bassy in nature and lacks treble. I suspect this is more of a software issue rather hardware issue because music quality on Poweramp with the same earphones is AMAZING! The music is loud and crisp.
The phone also has a FM radio with RDS. The stations can be set by a cool analog dialer animation on the screen. The app is capable of auto searching and storing upto 8 Radio stations.
The video player is plain jane with just the options of Previous, Play/pause and next. Volume through the speaker and headphones is loud, crisp and clear. The video player handles MP4, H264 videos and SD resolutions just fine. However divx, xvid, FLV, rmvb codecs and HD resolution videos are a No go. I have downloaded MX Player from the play store and HD movies at 720P are handled just fine with smooth playback for all codec types. Full HD is however choppy.
The phone features a 5 megapixel snapper with geo tagging. The camera has 4X digital zoom however there is no zoom via the volume rocker. The options available while the camera app are
1. Auto focus mode - On, off
2. Exposure - +2 to -2
3. Scene mode - Auto, Beach, Action, Snow, Sunset, Party, Candle, Backlight
4. Picture size - 5M, 3M, 2M, 1M
5. Picture quality - Super fine, Fine, Normal
6. Color effect - None, Sepia, Greyscale and Negative
7. ISO - Auto, 100, 200 400
8. Skin tone enhancement - On, off
9. Selectable Zone focus - Auto, spot metering, Centre Weighted and frame average
10. Touch AEC - On, off
11. Anti banding - Off, 50 Hz, 60 Hz, Auto
12. Remaining shots - On, off
13. White balance - Auto, Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent and cloudy.
14. Flash mode - Auto, On, Off
15. Zoom
16. Camera Selection: Front and back
During video mode, the options are
1. Continuous auto focus - On, off
2. Color effect - None, Mono, sepia, Negative
3. Video quality - 720, D1, WVGA, VGA, CIF, QVGA, QCIF
4. White balance - Auto, Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent and cloudy
5. Camera Selection: Front and back
The camera churns out decent stills with occasional hints of a reddish hue in the middle of the photograph. This is observed at certain angles and indoors only. The photograph quality in the open and daylight is good. Noise is visible when shooting indoors and in low light conditions. Overall the quality of stills can only be rated as mediocre. One more interesting limitation is that the camera sound when capturing stills cannot be turned off.
Video recording however is very good. Auto focus works very well and the video fps remains at 30 continuously. However the video is stored in 3gp format only. 3gp has higher compression than mp4. I suspect the video quality would have been better if video could have been stored in mp4 format. Nothing to complain about though. The audio quality during video recording is clear and crisp.
BrowserThe phone has a standard android browser. Pages are loaded quickly and without any problems. Flash also works. Scrolling through the web page is buttery smooth thanks to the 1.4 Ghz processor and Mali 205 GPU. Zooming in and out also renders the text and images very quickly.
Synthetic Benchmarks and Gaming
I have used Antutu and Quadrant benchmarks for this test. The phone scores 3513 in Antutu which is over the likes of Google Nexus S and Samsung Galaxy S. It scores 2882 in Quadrant Benchmark beating the motorola atrix 4G, Google Nexus S, HTC Desire HD and LG optimus 2X
Gaming is enjoyable and smooth on the 4.3" screen. Games like temple run, angry birds run absolutely smooth. There is a hint of Lag when the in game ads pop up. But i guess its not due the lack of fire power of the phone.
Call Quality
Voice during call is clear and crisp during calls. There were no dropped calls or crackling that i have encountered with Airtel Netowrk. However the maximum sound level could have been a tad higher.
Battery Life4301 comes with a Lithium Ion 1500 mAH battery. The phone lasts happily till the end of the day with 2 hours of call, light browsing, a little bit of gaming and continuous sync.
Bundled Software
The phone comes with Reconnect manager on the SD card. Ones installed, it can be used to sync the phone with the computer, adding, deleting apps, contacts, messages, ringtones etc. The program is pretty basic but does the job.
ConclusionReliance and Alcatel have succeeded in giving us a all round feature rich phone at a reasonable price. The price - performance ratio of this phone is very good and already the phone is gaining popularity as the sub 200$ phone in the other countries.
What i like about the Phone:
1. Screen Size
2. 16 M colours.
3. 480 x 800 pixels resolution
4. HD recording
5. HD video playback
6. Smooth gaming experience.
7. Price!
8. Going to recieve ICS update this september (Source Alcatel FB and XDA)
What i don't like:
1. No dedicated camera button
2. No zoom with volume rocker
3. Default music and video app
4. Lack of Predictive dailing
Lastly The phone has developing support at XDA. There is also a CM9 basic version and AOKP out for this phone. The threads are
Alcatel OT-995 a.k.a Ultra or Sapphire HD - xda-developers
Alcatel OT-995 development - xda-developers
I hope you have like my review. Please drop in comments and suggestions about the review. Also feel free to ask any questions that you may have about the phone. I will try my best to answer them.
Full size images can be found here
I am going to post a Review of Reconnect GSM 4301 which is a rebranded Alcatel OT-995. Reconnect is a brand of Reliance Digital, a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Group of companies. Reliance has launched Electronics in the form of LCDs and Mobile phones under its brand RECONNECT. As far as mobile phones are concerned, Reconnect has 2 models, The lower range RECONNECT GSM 3201, which is 3.2" display, Dual sim, Android 2.3 mobile which is also a rebranded Alcatel phone. GSM 3201 is available at Reliance Digital for 6,500 Rs. This phone is aimed at the lower range of dual sim mobiles. GSM 4301 is aimed at the Mid end segment with a price tag of 14,000 Rs. Let us now look at what is in the Box.
Unboxing and Contents
Reconnect GSM 4301 which i shall now further refer to as 4301 comes in a Neat and compact 80 x 145 x 70 mm box. The box is sealed to avoid tampering of the contents of the box. The box displays the specifications of the phone, a bar code and a MRP sticker. The MRP of this phone as on the box is 14,990 Inclusive of all taxes. Opening the box, the phone greets you with its sleek looks and neat and clean lines. Below the phone tray are hidden - Phones battery, a phone charger, a Micro USB to USB cable, a Stereo headset, a screen guard, a quick start guide and a 2 Year (yes 2 years!) warranty card. The accessories appear to be of good quality.
Form factor and Technical specifications
The 4301 boasts of 4.3" TFT, Capacitive Touch screen with 16M colours. The Phone measures 128 x 68 x 9.8 mm weighing in at 124 gm. The lower front of phone has 4 capacitive touch buttons which are options, home, search and back buttons. The Left top corner of the phone has a LED for alerts, adjacent to the LED is a proximity sensor. The top middle houses the ear piece and just adjacent to the ear piece is a 1.3 Megapixel Camera. The top panel of phone as a 3.5 m audio jack and a power button. The left panel a volume rocker and a mini USB port. The lower panel has a Mini HDMI port. The buttons have a chrome finish while the whole body has a brushed steel look. On the back there is a 5 Megapixel camera, a LED flash and a large but slim speaker grill. The back panel holds the RECONNECT logo in white and has rubberised finish making it smudge resistant and instigating confidence while holding it.
Popping the hood of the phone, there is a battery compartment, a Micro SD slot and a SIM card slot. As the Micro SD card is housed below the back cover, every time the card needs to be swapped, the cover has to be opened, making the card not truly hot swappable.
Detailed technical specifications are as under:
Display Type TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours
Size 480 x 800 pixels, 4.3 inches (~217 ppi pixel density)
Memory Card microSD, up to 32 GB
Memory Internal 2 GB ROM, 512 MB RAM
Data GPRS Class 12 (4+1/3+2/2+3/1+4 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
EDGE Class 12
3G HSDPA, 14.4 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP
USB Yes, microUSB v2.0
Camera Primary 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash with Geo tagging
Video 720p@30fps
OS Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread), upgradable to v4.x
Chipset Qualcomm MSM8255T Snapdragon
CPU 1.4 GHz
GPU Adreno 205
Sensors Accelerometer, proximity, compass
Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS
GPS Yes, with A-GPS support
TV-out via Mini HDMI
Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh
User Interface
Power up the 4301 and one is greeted by the Reconnect Logo. Startup is speedy and the phone is quick to reach the home screen. The default launcher on startup for 4301 is ONE TOUCH launcher which is also known as SPB shell 3D launcher and available on the Play store. The Launcher can be changed from system settings>Launcher selection, the other option being the default gingerbread launcher.
The Lock screen shows the time, date and day, number of missed calls and number of unread messages. The Lock has to be dragged to the bottom of the screen in order to unlock it. There are no other options for changing mode of the phone from Vibrate to Ringer which is generally found on android phones.
Besides the normal android applications, 4301 comes with some preinstalled applications which are
1. Antivirus Pro
2. Currency Converter
3. Cloud backup
4. Facebook
5. Twitter
6. One touch share
7. Office suite
8. OI shopping List
9. Notes
10. Nimbuzz
11. Picsay
12. Touchpal keyboard
13. Battery Saver
14. Shazam
15. SPB shell 3D Launcher
The status bar is not customizable and has options of toggling Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Data, Ringer, Airplane mode, Screen Brightness, Sync, Orientation and Phone volume.
The Dialer is plain jane but easy to key in numbers due to the big buttons and huge screen. The Dialer sports the usual android tabs of contacts, call log, favorites and groups. The stock dialer however does not search based on permutations and combinations of name and numbers. Ex Dialer from Play store quickly resolved this issue.
Messaging supports threaded view and typing is very easy thanks to the bundled touchpal keyboard. The touch is accurate and responsive messaging is a breeze on the 4.3" display.
Music Player, Radio, Video Player Camera and Video Recording
The default music player sports all the options of the standard android music player. The music player has the ability to the sort the songs according the Artist, Albums, song titles and Playlist. Play options include Play, pause, Previous, Next, shuffle and single repeat, album repeat and repeat all songs. Songs can be changed by swiping to left or right of the screen. The Player does not have a Landscape view which is very strange. The album art is shown nice and big with the song progress being a blue line on the edge of the CD. The music player lacks equalizer settings. The Audio quality with the bundled earphones is clear but not loud enough especially in noisy ambiance. The music is bassy in nature and lacks treble. I suspect this is more of a software issue rather hardware issue because music quality on Poweramp with the same earphones is AMAZING! The music is loud and crisp.
The phone also has a FM radio with RDS. The stations can be set by a cool analog dialer animation on the screen. The app is capable of auto searching and storing upto 8 Radio stations.
The video player is plain jane with just the options of Previous, Play/pause and next. Volume through the speaker and headphones is loud, crisp and clear. The video player handles MP4, H264 videos and SD resolutions just fine. However divx, xvid, FLV, rmvb codecs and HD resolution videos are a No go. I have downloaded MX Player from the play store and HD movies at 720P are handled just fine with smooth playback for all codec types. Full HD is however choppy.
The phone features a 5 megapixel snapper with geo tagging. The camera has 4X digital zoom however there is no zoom via the volume rocker. The options available while the camera app are
1. Auto focus mode - On, off
2. Exposure - +2 to -2
3. Scene mode - Auto, Beach, Action, Snow, Sunset, Party, Candle, Backlight
4. Picture size - 5M, 3M, 2M, 1M
5. Picture quality - Super fine, Fine, Normal
6. Color effect - None, Sepia, Greyscale and Negative
7. ISO - Auto, 100, 200 400
8. Skin tone enhancement - On, off
9. Selectable Zone focus - Auto, spot metering, Centre Weighted and frame average
10. Touch AEC - On, off
11. Anti banding - Off, 50 Hz, 60 Hz, Auto
12. Remaining shots - On, off
13. White balance - Auto, Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent and cloudy.
14. Flash mode - Auto, On, Off
15. Zoom
16. Camera Selection: Front and back
During video mode, the options are
1. Continuous auto focus - On, off
2. Color effect - None, Mono, sepia, Negative
3. Video quality - 720, D1, WVGA, VGA, CIF, QVGA, QCIF
4. White balance - Auto, Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent and cloudy
5. Camera Selection: Front and back
The camera churns out decent stills with occasional hints of a reddish hue in the middle of the photograph. This is observed at certain angles and indoors only. The photograph quality in the open and daylight is good. Noise is visible when shooting indoors and in low light conditions. Overall the quality of stills can only be rated as mediocre. One more interesting limitation is that the camera sound when capturing stills cannot be turned off.
Video recording however is very good. Auto focus works very well and the video fps remains at 30 continuously. However the video is stored in 3gp format only. 3gp has higher compression than mp4. I suspect the video quality would have been better if video could have been stored in mp4 format. Nothing to complain about though. The audio quality during video recording is clear and crisp.
BrowserThe phone has a standard android browser. Pages are loaded quickly and without any problems. Flash also works. Scrolling through the web page is buttery smooth thanks to the 1.4 Ghz processor and Mali 205 GPU. Zooming in and out also renders the text and images very quickly.
Synthetic Benchmarks and Gaming
I have used Antutu and Quadrant benchmarks for this test. The phone scores 3513 in Antutu which is over the likes of Google Nexus S and Samsung Galaxy S. It scores 2882 in Quadrant Benchmark beating the motorola atrix 4G, Google Nexus S, HTC Desire HD and LG optimus 2X
Gaming is enjoyable and smooth on the 4.3" screen. Games like temple run, angry birds run absolutely smooth. There is a hint of Lag when the in game ads pop up. But i guess its not due the lack of fire power of the phone.
Call Quality
Voice during call is clear and crisp during calls. There were no dropped calls or crackling that i have encountered with Airtel Netowrk. However the maximum sound level could have been a tad higher.
Battery Life4301 comes with a Lithium Ion 1500 mAH battery. The phone lasts happily till the end of the day with 2 hours of call, light browsing, a little bit of gaming and continuous sync.
Bundled Software
The phone comes with Reconnect manager on the SD card. Ones installed, it can be used to sync the phone with the computer, adding, deleting apps, contacts, messages, ringtones etc. The program is pretty basic but does the job.
ConclusionReliance and Alcatel have succeeded in giving us a all round feature rich phone at a reasonable price. The price - performance ratio of this phone is very good and already the phone is gaining popularity as the sub 200$ phone in the other countries.
What i like about the Phone:
1. Screen Size
2. 16 M colours.
3. 480 x 800 pixels resolution
4. HD recording
5. HD video playback
6. Smooth gaming experience.
7. Price!
8. Going to recieve ICS update this september (Source Alcatel FB and XDA)
What i don't like:
1. No dedicated camera button
2. No zoom with volume rocker
3. Default music and video app
4. Lack of Predictive dailing
Lastly The phone has developing support at XDA. There is also a CM9 basic version and AOKP out for this phone. The threads are
Alcatel OT-995 a.k.a Ultra or Sapphire HD - xda-developers
Alcatel OT-995 development - xda-developers
I hope you have like my review. Please drop in comments and suggestions about the review. Also feel free to ask any questions that you may have about the phone. I will try my best to answer them.
Full size images can be found here
