Adcom Thunder A530 HD

Adcom Thunder A530 HD packs in a lot of stuff in a nice little box-

Our review unit was in white colour which gives the smartphone a really premium look. At the outset, one can easily mistake it as a Samsung smartphone from Galaxy range as it’s front resembles those devices very closely. Even the buttons at the bottom of the screen are exactly same with a physical Home button sandwiched between two capacitive buttons for Options and Back. However, at the closer look, one can see a shiny metallic rim running along the sides of the Adcom A530 HD giving it a nice appeal. The back of the smartphone is glossy so much so that its gathers one’s fingerprints very easily and becomes slippery if the hands are sweaty. At the top of the screen, there’s secondary camera, proximity sensor and Earpiece.

The power key is on the right side, and it’s a little bit lower so that one doesn’t face any difficulty by awaking the device from sleep/ powering on with one hand only. The left side houses the volume rocker.

The device’s namesake comes from its massive 5.3 inches LCD screen which brings it in to the territory of phablets popularized by the Samsung Galaxy Note series. The device name also says HD, but we would like to clarify that the display actually bears a qHD resolution of 960 x 540 pixels, resulting in a decent pixel density of 208 ppi. The screen offers good contrast and offers enough brightness making it viewable under direct sunlight as well. However, many a times the colours seems to be a bit washed out.

Adcom Thunder A530 HD is powered by 1.2 GHz dual-core MediaTek 6577 processor based on ARM v7 core. The processor is being supported by a RAM of 512 MB. I must admit that I was a bit sceptical about the device performance as most of the recent smartphones are powered by a quad-core processor and even more RAM, but there was absolutely zero lag in performing about any tasks on the smartphone. Browsing through menus, reading documents, internet surfing, etc. was a very smooth experience. Multitasking also worked as expected and playing games like Subway Surfers and Angry Birds was relishing.

Since the device’s performance review is based upon my perception of the device, to gain a better idea of its hardware configuration and performance, let’s see how it stacks up against other smartphones-

The smartphone is loaded with Android 4.1.2 version of JellyBean, which is not the latest (4.2 has been out for a long time and 4.3 was recently released). Still, the OS offers most parts of the User Interface and offers smooth experience thanks to Project Butter. Adcom hasn’t modified the stock Android OS and thus the smartphone delivers a pure Google experience with default apps like dialler, messaging, calendar and more. Although, company has added lots of games and apps on it such as Angry Birds, Temple Run 2, Fruit Ninja, Dropbox, Google Drive, Documents to Go, etc. The good part is that unlike other manufacturers which install the apps in the root access, so that they can’t be uninstalled, however apps available on this smartphone can be easily uninstalled if they don’t suffice for one’s needs.

The device flaunts an 8 MP camera at back with autofocus and LED flash. It’s capable of shooting images at 3268 x 2448 pixels and videos at . The camera app is also the stock Android and offers easy to use interface for adjusting various settings like White Balance, Exposure, Sharpness, Hue, Saturation, ISO, etc. before shooting  picture or video. The picture quality is pretty decent even in low lightning conditions largely due to its excellent flash. The videos are being recorded at 640 x 480 pixels @ 30 fps, however they are recorded in 3gp format which is fairly old. It also provides option for shooting 360° Panoramas, Self Times, Continuous Shots (either 40 or 99) and taking HDR (High Dynamic Range) images.

Even the Music and Video Players installed in the device are default only and hence have very limited capability in terms of various formats. But, it’s an Android device and offers the flexibility of adding any app for playing multimedia files on the smartphone. The speaker grille present at the back of smartphone offers audible sound even in crowded places like Bus and Train. What I really like about the device is it’s untangled in-ear earphones, not only they offer great sound, they free everyone from going through the hassles of opening the earphones whenever they are taken out from a pocket or bag.

Like all devices these days, Adcom A530 HD has a dual-SIM support with active standby feature for 2G/ 3G networks. Apart from that, it has usual options of Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS with Assisted GPS.

The smartphone is provided juice by a Li-ion battery of 2800 mAh. During an optimal usage of device with an hour of calling and messaging, internet browsing on both 3G and Wi-Fi, listening to music and other general tasks, it was easily able to last a day. However, playing games or watching videos for longer duration will surely affect the battery life of the device.