Spice M-9000 Popkorn - Pop Some Corn and Enjoy the Show

Here’s one more projector phone that was recently announced in India – enter the Spice M-9000 Popkorn. So far, this is the third out from a local brand that’s, in all probability, manufactured abroad. The G’Five and Intex IN 8810 devices didn’t fare too well overall, so here’s a closer look at another contender for top budget pico projector enabled mobile phone.

Form Factor
The M-9000 is no where near as sleek or slim as the G’Five however it is nevertheless a rather comfortably designed handset. It’s a bulky handset with a quick access Projector key on the right side and volume/zoom keys on the left. A pull out aerial is located at the bottom on the left near the proprietary all in one socket. This all purpose socket can be used to connect the handset up to your PC for USB interfacing; it also works for the handsfree (not a very well designed pair) and also for audio out. The keypad is easy on the fingers and is comfortably designed for ease of use. The diamond in the center of the diamond shaped nav-pad just looks out of place and plain weird. The 2.4-inch TFT LCd sports a 240 x 320 pixel resolution.

Hey, if it's called Popkorn, let's package it like that

A whole lot of adapters and cables are provided for hooking the Popkorn up to a cute little apple shaped, portable, battery powered capsule. With a yellow shell and multicolored LED’s this speaker tends to look rather gaudy at best. Also included with the box is a neat little stand for placing the phone to comfortably watch videos via the projector. Sadly the Popkorn doesn’t come with a hot swap microSD card slot.

The big bad lens

With the chrome border and metal rear panel, this Dual SIM (GSM + GSM) mobile does mange to look quite decent even if it is 17.3-mm in depth.

Features and Performance
Interface
With Java-based devices, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. Then again it’s pretty much the same thing with any smartphone as well unless the UI has been customized. The M-9000 doesn’t offer anything new in the interface department for users. It’s strictly simplistic in nature. Like any Java-based handset, the interface is quite smooth but has minor issues with regards to ease of access in certain instances but is not hard to get used to. YOU can get used to it very quickly.

Stand, check, Phone, check, Weird Apple shaped speaker, check?

Media
The Popkorn has a little surprise up its sleeve – the extendable aerial that’s placed under the handset is actually a receptor for analogue TV. I wasn’t really able to get the best reception in most places but it does add a bit of novelty to the handsets overall feature set. The music player is not the handsets strong point – tones are unbalanced and the handsfree isn’t too comfortable. Even with EQ presets that include virtual 3D, surround sound, bass enhancement and an 8 band graphic setting that can be customized, I was not too thrilled with the quality of audio. The FM radio worked out well enough and it also comes with a Schedule Recording option for capturing your favorite shows (does anyone actually use this?). A separate sound recorder is also on board and can capture voices clearly enough provided the handset is within 1.5-feet in front of you.

Plenty of media features

The handset is only equipped to read low resolution (320 x 240 @25fps) videos in .FLV, MPEG4 or 3GP formats. Anything slightly higher and you’ll end up with only audio and a psychedelic visualization on the screen.