India’s Karbonn Mobiles has added a new budget Android smartphone to its product portfolio in the country. The entry-level device is called the Karbonn Alfa A120 and is priced at Rs. 4590 ($75). The affordable smartphone is already available for purchase on e-commerce sites, even though, it has not yet officially been listed on the manufacturer’s website. It is expected to be available at brick and mortar retail outlets in the days to come.
The phone predictably comes in a dual-SIM configuration, given that India – and most of Asia in general – is a predominantly dual-SIM market. However, the phone does not come with LTE support, which might restrict its appeal in some quarters, given that major Chinese OEMs like Xiaomi and Lenovo are selling LTE-enabled devices for around the $100 price point. The Karbonn Alfa A120 has a 4.5-inch FWVGA (480×854) IPS display and is powered by a 1.3GHz dual-core processor of unspecified make and comes with 512MB of RAM. It runs Android 4.4.2 KitKat out of the box but there’s no word as to whether it will receive the Lollipop update. As for the rest of the hardware, it comes with a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, along with a 0.3 megapixel front-facing camera.
The Alfa A120 comes with 4GB of storage out of the box and supports GPS, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, and Bluetooth 4.0. It also comes with an FM radio, a Micro-USB port, a microSD card slot and a 3000 mAh battery. Karbonn claims that the smartphone will last up to 240 hours in standby and deliver 18 hours of talk time on a single charge. The phone supports 22 different Indian languages, alongside some multi-gesture features and will compete with Spice Stellar 517, Lava Iris X1 Atom and Intex Aqua Y2+, all of which fall roughly in the same price segment.
It is worth remembering that Karbonn was one of the original Android One Partners for Google along with Micromax and Spice. The Karbon Sparkle V, one the original devices running Android One, has already received the Lollipop update as promised by Google. The phone was launched at Rs. 6,399 ($104) MSRP, but has since shed it’s price tag and is currently available for around Rs. 5,000 ($82) in the retail market.
