As blogged by us earlier, in this year the market is going to be flooded with big screen smartphones. In this month, we have seen launches of Micromax 116 Convas HD which sports 5 inch screen, followed by Galaxy Grand Duos by Samsung having screen size of 5 inch. To jump into this arena of phablet segment, Indian handset maker- Spice has launched now Mi-530 in India, which features a 5.3-inch screen with a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels.
The Spice Mi-530 is a dual-SIM (3G+3G) smartphone, and runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The phone is powered by a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, and it has 1GB RAM. The phone has an internal memory of 16GB, which can be expanded up to 32GB via a microSD card slot. There is an 8MP autofocus camera with dual-LED flash to capture pictures, while a 5MP front camera is given for video chat and self portrait. Other features include 3G/ HSPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and USB, Li-Po 2550 mAh battery and Dual mic noise suppression.
The phone is available in black colour, and available for Rs. 13,999, on e-commerce portal of Saholic.com.
According to a report from the market research firm ABI Research, almost 83 million phablets were shipped in 2012, an increase of 4,504 per cent from 2011. ABI Research projects that more than 150 million phablets will be shipped in 2013. This will account for 18 per cent of all smartphone shipments. The report says, the bulk of phablets will be shipped in the 4.6 to 5-inch screen category. It is anticipated that four out of every five phablets shipped will be in the mentioned segment.
Samsung has started the race of phablet with its flagship Galaxy S III, followed by Galaxy note, which was also a hit and its successor the Galaxy Note II, which is also selling like hot cakes.
So far, Apple has not joined the party of big screen smartphone and as per rumor mills, Apple is working on this project and will make this segment more interesting by launching big screen smartphone by the end of this year. But, whether their phablet will be affordable and how many players would have entrenched in the market with their bigger devices by that time? That is a million Dollar question!
