I am not a layman neither hardcore techie wrt mobiles, my old phone was Motorola Milestone which was decently good yet again proved unreliable after 2 years of moderate usage, so decided to go for a decent android mobile with a moderate budget.
As far as mobiles are concerned I was never interested in Indian brands like karbonn, Micromax, lava, etc., and would always prefer a safe bet SE, Nokia or Samsung considering quality and after sales service. Another reason for ignoring the Indian mobiles is because of touch responsiveness and hardness.
Looking into creepy TV commercials for karbonn I thought of exploring it a little through web and users, one of my friend had a karbonn mobile and he told the quality is good compared to other Indian mobiles, went into a mobile showroom and tested the mobile, to my surprise it was uber cool like my Motorola and superfast like my old SE, I can well imagine the quality of hardware used was good like the global player, additionally known good websites like gsmarena, product reviews raved about the mobiles decently, adding more the cost was at least 30% less than the Global players so I bought the mobile and following are my observation, Quality: Good in terms of hardware used and excellent sync with software(ICS 4.0.4), additionally comes with a complementary quality scratch guard in the box(saves 300 Rupees), of course does get heated up but not as bad as my Old Milestone or not as good as iphone. Comes with a 1.2 Dual core processor and 512 MB RAM and 4 GB of internal storage which is enormously good for a moderate smart phone user.
Sound and Game quality: Decent as long as music quality or loudness is concerned, very good surface glasses for good gaming experience, neither games hangs or acts weird, I played angry birds, HD ninja, Snooker, car racing games butter smooth touch responsiveness and almost no-hang experience.
Internet and 3G experience: the SIM 1 Slot automatically picks up the 3G functionality though you have enabled 2G(GPRS/EDGE) and allows you to access internet in 3G speed( I am currently experiencing with airtel) where as the SIM2 does not support 3G, the speed is lightning fast and smooth which I believe is collectively achieved by good sync transition between hardware and software, flawless while working with an additional 8GB storage.
Battery: 1800 MAH Par good, I spend at least 2 hours on internet, listen to music during my drive, 10-15 calls/day approx 3-5 min each and the battery comes for 1-1.5 days which is acceptable within my limits.
Reception: This is a bit of let down I noticed as the phone hangs(rarely) when I get an incoming call and does not log the call received under missed call or received calls, additionally some times when you hung up the phone it takes at least 1-3 minutes to disconnect, I think it’s a bug and believe it will be resolved if I flash my ICS and upgrade to jelly bean.
Service: The first A21 I bought slipped from first floor after 10 days of my purchase and the sounds were not working, without an argument they replaced me with a different handset at free of cost, and for the past 4 months no issue experienced
Camera: Just ok, I should agree the 5MP camera of global players gives a better picture than this phone no matter if it’s taken during day time or night time the pictures are average or above average however not bad and good enough for skype/video conferencing.Front camera is kind of ok ok.
Scope of improvement: Quality of headset, heating issue(pretty common with other smartphones as well), Gorilla glass could be used, Flash LED missing to notify incoming mails/messages, call notification on the other SIM while speaking in the first SIM and improved camera quality.
Overall: It’s certainly worth 10k for the quality, reliability and features offered, could be a better substitute for Samsung galaxy and Xperia series.
Thanks for reading.