Gadget Review: Fly Snap best budget buy

A London-based mobile company founded in 2003, Fly, hit the smartphone market in 2012, getting most of its business from Russia. Of the three smartphones launched together by the company in India this year, Snap is the cheapest at only Rs 2,900. It has all the basic features a smartphone can offer keeping in mind the price tag. Here's our analysis:

Design and display: Snap has got a plastic body, is light-weight and has average thickness. Below the screen are three touch capacitive buttons. The phone comes with a removable battery and the back cover needs to be removed to insert a memory card. On the right are the volume rockers, just above the power button. With 4-inch display, the screen offers a 800×480 pixel resolution.

Camera - The phone comes with a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, which takes decent pictures in sunlight. The night mode and flash hardly seem to help in dim to dark light conditions. The phone comes with a basic 2-megapixel front camera which serves its purpose for video chats or call sessions. Other features of the camera like white balance, anti-banding and ISO can be adjusted manually.

Hardware and Performance: Snap is the basic replacement to a feature phone. The device suits hands of users who are aspiring for the smartphone experience. The device comes with a 1.3GHz quad-core processor with a Mali 400 graphics support unit. It has standard 512MB RAM, which allows only a few apps and games to be open simultaneously, without lagging, which is quite an irony given its name. Snap earns itself around 16,727 An Tu Tu points suggesting that it poses a challenge in its price segment.

Operating System and user interface: Snap, due its release date, runs on Android 4.4.2 KitKat. There was no confirmation from Fly on the device being able to receive updates to Lollipop. It has simple user interface. One fun feature is smart wake, which is drawing a pre-set symbol on the screen when screen is off, to wake it up or make it perform a particular function.

Storage, connectivity and battery: The phone offers 4GB of internal storage, out of which 1.61GB is available for use. Besides internal memory, Snap supports expandable memory (microSD) of up to 32GB. The preferred location for downloads can be manually changed between internal and external memory. In terms of connectivity, the phone has got dual sim, with GPS, 3G, bluetooth, WiFi and Micro USB connectivity. Just like any other phone with 1,500mAh battery, Snap needs charging more than once in a day on continuous 3G usage.

Verdict: Snap offers a whole deal at a cheap price. If you aren't too big on selfies and multi-tasking, this is the phone for the first time smartphone user or someone who is keeping a tab on the wallet.

By Shaifali Agrawal

(The author can be contacted at [email protected])