Spice S-7000 Touchscreen Mobile Phone

Spice has been keeping up very well with all the latest mobile trends while managing to keep their prices real low. They have the M-7070, a low priced 5MP camera phone and their piece d’resistance was their 12MP camera phone, the S-1200 that was almost half the price of its competitors. Their latest is this, the S-7000, their first full touchscreen handset released as a tie up with Disney’s Price of Persia movie that debuted recently. Here’s a closer look.

Form Factor
There’s not much you can do with a full touchscreen device in terms of looks, and although the S-7000 does come off looking quite like a generic touchscreen phone, it’s not an eye-sore in the least. The White and chrome look is quite trendy. The 3.2-inch resistive touchscreen sports a 240 x 400 pixel resolution and 262k colors making it easy to view in all lighting conditions. The tethered stylus is something akin to what Nokia had offered with the 5800. It’s not a ‘pen’ styled device but looks a bit like something out of the Prince of Persia movie. A universal, all-in-one mini USB port is placed on the side, above the volume/zoom keys and the handsfree cable is equipped with a 3.5mm earphone adapter where the mic is located. The S-7000 also has a hot swap microSD card slot (2GB card included) just under the rear panel.

Features and Performance
Interface
The device has multiple desktops with five widgets assigned to each. The widgets/shortcuts can be dragged and placed anywhere on the screens. The menus are also divided into three pages like Samsung’s TouchWiz UI styling. While the overall functionality is quite finger-friendly in terms of response, the UI itself is just a little bit sluggish. However it’s quite well laid out so it’s easy to navigate. In some menus, keeping the screen pressed will bring up a few menu options.

The Virtual keypad could have been better designed and response time for typing was not prompt. There was a clear lag between each multiple-tap sequence. In case you’re wondering, there’s no QWERTY option.

Media
The music player’s volume will have to be full if you’re ever going to comfortably hear music while commuting or if your anywhere outdoors in our wonderfully loud city. Even with the Bass enhancement setting or the EQ options (presets, Reverb effect 3D Surround), there’s no real ‘thump’ in overall performance. The audio also tends to jarr quite a bit if the enhancements are active. The bundled set of earphones (canal-type) are comfortable but couldn’t handle the tones. The player’s overall performance ends up being a disappointment. The FM radio worked out just fine and provided clear reception in most areas and decent reception during my commute. It doesn’t have a record option.

The S-7000 is preloaded with codecs (DivX, XviD) to support most of the popular video formats that includes, .FLV, .AVI, MPEG4, 3GP, MOV, WMV and RMVB. This means no video conversion is necessary for most videos, just drag and drop them onto the memory card for playback. High-res videos in the 720p range will have issues though - you may get audio but no video. The RMVB video player offers a stretch to fit option for videos as well as an option to adjust the brightness. A separate MPEG4 video player is also provided, I’m not sure why. The devices video capabilities are an asset but unfortunately its lack of corresponding audio support is a big problem.