Spice M-67 3D, Don't Let The Name Fool You

Spice is seriously on a roll these days. They’re just lapping up all the mobile technology they can get their hands on. Their latest offering is in the form of a world’s first – the first glassless 3D handset the M-67 3D Dual SIM mobile phone. It’s created quite a stir in the mobile community seeing as 3D is trend of the year and still gaining ground. So here’s a closer look India’s first official glassless 3D mobile handset.

Form Factor
In the looks department the M-67 doesn’t fare too badly with its lightweight streamlined look, but the black and gold combo does look a tad gauche. The keypad layout, while it looks neat, is too flat. And even though the keys look large, the flat surface and hard press setting makes quick typing a bit of an effort. For some inane reason, Spice has gone ‘unconventional’ with this handset with a proprietary USB/charging port (located on one side) and 2.5mm handsfree socket. It has no hot swap for the microSD card slot (1/2GB included) and if you ever need to remove the ‘Slave’ SIM’, better set aside a few minutes for this otherwise easy task.

Simple design but they keypad is a bit too hard

So much for the overall design but let’s get to the display. The M-67 is equipped with a 2.36-inch LCD panel with a 240 x 320 resolution. But for 3D purposes this display isn’t quite as ordinary as your standard mobile phone LCD. The M-67 3D uses an auto-stereoscopic display which means that it doesn’t require 3D glasses to view images or video in 3D. The film that one would normally have on their passive 3D glasses is already a part of the display so to speak. There’s even a 3D shortcut key (doubles as the ‘*’ key) that allows you to switch to a 3D UI.

Features and Performance
Interface
The saddest part is that the Spice M-67 3D features the same UI as any of the other handsets out there. The 3D UI is a bit gimmicky and doesn’t really convert all screens to 3D. The switching can be pretty hard on the eyes. At the end of the day it’s still the very same Java based platform with a bit of ‘3D’ (I’m using the term loosely here) thrown in. However, navigating the menus etc. is a speedy process and there’s no lag even while typing. One big issue that was persistent throughout my testing period was that the call volume was a little too low for my liking. I was heard clearly enough but found it a little hard to hear others when I was outdoors or indoors. Dual SIM management is well handled.

Media
There’s not much to complain about in the music department. Audio quality was not too bad although the higher frequencies came in a bit on the sharper side. This can be ‘tuned’ by using the presets or creating your own via the 8 Band customizable setting. The treble will still be overly evident but far less obtrusive if you’ve adjusted it right. The FM radio worked out well with reception being quite clear in most areas including my commute. It also has a recording function that you could pre-schedule to save your favourite shows.

Now for Spice’s big ‘sell’, 3D Video. The player allows you select either 2D or 3D content (videos and images) but watching these videos isn’t the easiest task. It can be quite a strain on your eyes again. I was told I would be able to download 3D video content off of YouTube, convert the files and play them on the M-67 3D. So I did, suffice to say, that didn’t work out too well. The formatting was skewed. It tends to convert all the files, expect for the ones that came bundled with the 1GB card. At least those, even though the frame rate was obviously unmatched for the handset’s capabilities, did offer reasonably viewable 3D imagery. The same goes for some of the image files. I do not recommend trying to watch full length movies or any clips that last more than 30 seconds of so. You’re going to walk away with quite a headache.

A few games were preloaded and so were an image editor and a sound recorder.