REVIEW: Saffron 1 Is A Good Bid For People Who Admire NAMO Or Want A Decent But Less Expensive Smartphone

This phone has been in the news for quite a few weeks now and we must say that the response to the news of this phone has been mind-boggling. While many loved the idea of a phone inspired by a renowned political figure, many said it’s just a stunt to gain popularity and some even said it was a practical joke and the phone would never come to life. Well, the phone is live and kicking, and it is now available in India.

As most of us know, the phone has nothing to do with any specific political party. However, it has been developed by a group of Modi fans from Gujarat, now based in China. They were kind enough to send a phone over for a review and here is what we could make of it.

Looks
To tell you the truth, when we first held the phone, it seemed somewhat inspired by Samsung Galaxy S3. They do look similar, but once you start using the Saffron 1, you will find subtle dissimilarities between the two. The new device is dressed in white and a nice silver trim runs along the side of the phone. The front part of Saffron 1 has a large 5 inch screen with a 5 MP front-facing camera above it and the usual feather touch navigation keys at the bottom.



The rear of the phone hides a large loudspeaker behind a meshed grille at the bottom and a 13 MP camera with LED flash on top. The power and volume keys are placed on the right side of the phone, all of which can be easily accessed using one hand.

Performance
The group of Modi fans have put some decent hardware within this mobile. It has a 1.5 GHz quad-core CPU, 1 GB RAM (which we think is slightly less) and 16 GB storage. A custom UI skin has been used over the Android 4.2.1 operating system. It does give the phone a distinct feel and the interface is slick to manoeuvre. However, we did get a bit of a lag when we played high-end games and apps. Primarily, the RAM can be blamed for this and the phone could do better with another GB of it.



Barring that, rest of the features look fine. The company is providing a lot of nice pre-loaded utility apps, such as the ‘Go’ set of apps. One distinct feature of this phone is the Toucher Pro widget. Turn it on and you will get a circular button on the screen in the form of the BJP logo. With this, you can access various functions such as screen brightness, rotation, Wi-Fi and more.

We benchmarked the phone with Quadrant (a popular testing tool for Android devices) and it managed to score a decent 4,679. That puts it shoulder to shoulder with phones such as HTC One X. The camera quality of the phone is not bad either and one can get good images in well-lit rooms and outdoors. Another point of excellence is the battery (but it has also made the gadget heavier than usual). The phone carries a 3,150 mAh battery, which kept it alive for 2 days on 2G network.

Verdict
The package is not bad at all. The phone can accommodate 2 SIM cards; the memory can be expanded up to 64 GB and users get most of the features that are only available in the premium segment of international phones.

Saffron 1 falls in a category that is already populated with products from Micromax, Karbonn and Lava. We feel the company is banking on Narendra Modi’s popularity, which might just be the rocket fuel required for the phone to thrust its way through to the crowds. All in all, a decent phone at a good MRP of Rs 18,000, but one can pick it up for a thousands or two less from the stores.