Spice S1200 12MP Mobile Phone

Full Review

Due to mobile phones’ small form factors, manufacturers don’t include optical zoom feature even on their high-end camera phones. Instead, they have started pushing more pixels on the camera sensor than actually improving the overall image quality. While this megapixel war continues to carry on, Spice has wisely introduced the Spice S1200, a camera phone with a feature that doesn’t just look good on the spec-sheet but actually works well. Let's take a close look at what special things Spice has done with this rather chunky camera phone.

Features

Color reproduction is good and the amount of details it captured is much better than what I saw with either Samsung Pixon 12 or Sony Ericsson Satio (both sporting 12MP camera), thanks to the CCD sensor.

The Spice 1200 packs a 12MP camera (highest in the market right now along with Sony Ericsson Satio and Samsung Pixon 12), a CCD sensor (while the rest of the phones are satisfied with the CMOS sensor), a 3x optical zoom (we’ve seen this on Nokia N93 and Samsung G800 both discontinued models). The optical zoom of the Spice S1200 is long enough to rival even entry level point and shoot cameras, let alone the high end phone cameras from bigger brands. Apart from the top of the line hardware, the Spice 1200 has a slew of imaging features. It has multiple face detection, smile shutter, anti-shake (digital image stabilization), and manual/auto/multi focus and macro mode.  There are three metering modes, four color modes and 16 scene modes excluding program and auto scene mode. The ISO speed can also be manually selected from ISO 80 to ISO 3200. As in many basic point and shoot cameras and mid range camera phones, the Spice S1200 also has the option for manually changing white balance, exposure and many more. Video is captured at VGA resolution though which is disappointing for a phone with such good optics. And at 640x480 pixels at 24fps, zooming is not possible either.

As a phone the Spice S1200 does not bring anything exciting to the table. Its specs sheet reads like a guide to building an entry level smartphone. It is a normal candy bar phone that sports a 2.4-inch (320x240 pixels) TFT screen with 262k color support. For media playback, the Spice S1200 can play 64 polyphonic MIDI, SP-MIDI, WAV, MP3, AMR, AAC, AAC+ and 3GP video.  It also has an FM radio with scheduled recording feature. It supports Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and EDGE connectivity but sadly, there is no 3G and Wi-Fi support which is quite unfair for a phone in this price range. It has an internal memory of 70MB which can be upgraded via the microSD slot which supports up to 32GB. Spice included a 512MB of microSD memory card with our review unit. The phone does not offer a standard 3.5mm stereo headphones out, so we have to rely on its bundled headset for private music listening. The 1020mAH battery offers a talk time up to 3 hrs and stand-by time up to 150 hrs.

The phone uses a proprietary Java-based UI with no multi-tasking support except for supporting music playback in the background. It came with usual phone apps like Alarm, Calculator, Currency Convertor, Calendar, Voice Memo and a few Java games. There are various apps bundled under one category name called Fun Spice which are online apps including Opera Mini, Reuters , Email2SMS, Nimbuzz, Cricket Updates, Mobile Tracker and many more. These are quite handy apps that Spice S1200 kindly included to enhance user experience.

Design and Usability
Due to its optical zoom lens at the back, the Spice S1200 is a bit chunky and the body has a glossy finish which is a fingerprint magnet. Its build quality is quite average and its look also resembles many sub Rs.10k phones. Besides, the alphanumeric keypad is a bit cramped especially the circular 4-directional pad and the call keys. It was quite hard to get things done on the go. The phone has a miniUSB port at the bottom, this is used for charging, connecting the headset and PC data transfer. The side has dedicated buttons for the camera like shutter button, camera mode switch from camcorder to camera and volume/zoom rocker. In camera mode, the alphanumeric keys (2, 5, 8 and 0) act as shortcut keys for commonly accessed functions to make shooting easier.

The phone's interface is neat and clean. It has an icon based navigation system that is simple to navigate and everything is easily accessible. But the rather plain and ordinary design on the hardware and interface makes the overall user experience just average and there is nothing very exciting about the Spice S1200 as a phone.

Performance
Surprisingly, the Spice S1200 operated smoothly without any lagging issues during our usage. The only time it reacted slowly was while viewing pictures which were taken at full 12MP resolution but that is understandable, given the size of each image.  The call reception signal was good but is not without its flaws either. Callers’ voices sounded distorted and there were occasional break-ups even in areas with good signal reception. Audio playback quality is loud on its built-in speaker but the sound quality via the bundled headset is just clear mids without much highs and no bass at all. The screen has good brightness indoors, but outdoor visibility is poor. Watching video is also not fun because of the outdated screen resolution for this price range.

Apart from the budget-level experience the Spice S1200 offers as a phone, it’s a totally different story when it comes to its 12MP camera. For its imaging capability alone, the Spice S1200 has set a benchmark for the rest of the camera phones.

Firstly, the image quality is something that will rival many entry budget point-and-shoot cameras. Color reproduction is good and the amount of details it captured is much better than what I saw with either Samsung Pixon 12 or Sony Ericsson Satio (both sporting 12MP camera), thanks to the CCD sensor.  The difference in the images captured by these phones was more noticeable while viewing pictures at their actual resolution.

1. Image is well exposed and showed decent details.2.Noise presence is quite less even in
darker areas.

3. Good color reproduction and no visible noise at ISO200  4. Focusing is a problem in extreme low light.

5. Macro shot: Quick to focus and nice details.       6. Outdoor macro shot: Well exposure and vivid
color reproduction.

The Spice handled noise well in most of our indoor shots but focusing was a big issue when it came to low light. Despite the presence of Xenon flash, in extreme low light, getting the right focus is where it always struggled. The lens showed slight distortion at both ends but it wasn’t visible enough to create an issue. The 3x optical zoom operated reasonably fast and is good enough for getting close portrait shots. It is way much better than the mass digital zoom found on the rest of the phones.

Face detection worked well and getting multiple faces detected was not an issue at all under good lighting. The images we shot showed slight purple fringes on high contrast areas but it wasn’t noticeable enough to affect the image quality. Our gripe here though is the focusing in low light especially at the tele end. However, we were impressed with the overall image quality of the Spice S1200 camera which showed us more impressive results than what Samsung Pixon 12 and Sony Ericsson Satio offered.

Videos captured with the Spice S1200 were just average quality though.  They lacked details and the sound was also badly recorded. From unimpressive frame rates to the poor color reproduction, video capturing is just not its forte. The battery lasted for 2 days after shooting around 100 images and making around an hour of calls, which is good enough for normal usage.

Bottom Line

A 12MP phone that will rival many entry level point and shoot cameras. The Spice 1200 shoots top quality images for its class and it is one of the few 3x optical zoom featured camera we've seen till date. As a phone, it does not offer anything great though.