1080p HD quad-core Android smartphones under Rs. 20,000 in India (July 2013)

When the Micromax A116 Canvas HD was launched it was the dawn of the era where smartphones under Rs. 15,999 were given the ability to house a 720p display and showcase a quad-core processor.

We have seen a plethora of homogenous quad-core smartphoneshit stores in this realm in the past year and they have all tried to distinguish themselves on grounds of features since the hardware was nearly identical.

Now, we have started receiving information that budget smartphones are going to launch that boast of a quad-core processor and a full HD display.

This does sound like a dream come true and some of the devices on the horizon are listed in the table below.

From the table below it is clear that all these smartphones will be priced above the Rs. 15,000 price point making them a bit expensive for those on a budget. The only device whose specifications haven’t been officially revealed is the Karbonn Titanium S6. Apart from the S6, all the other smartphones will run on the MediaTek MT6589T chipset. The iberry Auxus Nuclea N1 and the Lemon A4 offer users a whopping 16GB built-in storage straight out of the box where as the Spice Mi-525 Pinnacle FHD offers 8GB and theWickedLeak Wammy Passion Z+ a mere 4GB.

Models	iberry Auxus Nuclea N1	WickedLeak Wammy Passion Z+	Karbonn Titanium S6	Spice Mi-525 Pinnacle FHD	Lemon A4
OS	Android 4.2	Android 4.2	Android 4.2	Android 4.2	Android 4.2
Display Size	5-inch	5-inch	NA	5-inch	5-inch
Display Type	IPS LCD	IPS LCD	NA	IPS LCD	IPS LCD
Display Resolution	1920x1080	1920x1080	1920x1080	1920x1080	1920x1080
Built-in storage	16 4GB	4GB	NA	8GB	16GB
Expandable storage	up to 32 64GB via a microSD card	up to 64GB via a microSD card	NA	up to 32GB via a microSD card	up to 64GB via a microSD card
Processor	1.5GHz quad-core	1.5GHz quad-core	Quad-core (Qualcomm chipset)	1.5GHz quad-core	1.2GHz quad-core
RAM	1GB	1GB	NA	1GB	1GB
Rear Camera	13MP	13MP	NA	8MP	13.1MP
Front Camera	8MP	2MP	NA	2MP	5MP
Dual-SIM	Yes	Yes	NA	Yes	Yes
Battery	2800mAh	2500mAh	NA	2100mAh	1850mAh
Price	Rs. 18,000	Rs. 15,990	Rs. 19,000 approx	Rs. 16,990	Rs. 17,999

Now, there are a few concerns that we have with these 1080p budget smartphones. To start with, the RAM on these devices is just 1GB. This seemed to get the job done on the 720p display smartphones but rendering nearly twice the number of pixels on a 5-inch display will require more memory. Hence we feel that 2GB of RAM would have been ideal to have a seamless experience on these smartphones. When you will run apps, especially games, on the smartphones, the rendering will require quite a bit of memory. We would like to test some of these smartphones to put our claim to the test.

Put it another way, a quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and a 1080p display, all require quite a bit of juice. Here we think that the smartphones should have a minimum of 2500mAh battery to sustain a respectable amount of battery life. From the table above, only the iberry Auxus Nuclea N1 and the WickedLeak Wammy Passion Z+ fulfill this requirement. The Spice Mi-525 Pinnacle FHD and the Lemon A4 may not have the juice required to run through a day of average use. Battery life is a persisting problem in smartphones today and it will continue, but we hope these devices have the ability to run through one day of average use at least.