The Micromax Q5FB, also called Q5 Ezpad is the company's Qwerty offering that is being marketed as a social phone. With dedicated buttons for Facebook and Nimbuzz, the Q5 has essentially positioned itself to the youth as a device to numb their thumbs away. What confused me was the lack of Wi-Fi; maybe the chip was sacrificed to keep the cost low but the same target market isn't going to fork up the money for a data connection. Colour me bemused.
The keyboard on the Q5 was much better than I expected. The keys had a good size, were evenly placed and felt sturdy — unlike many premium phones which place them too close, making typing a nightmare.
The phone has a two-megapixel camera so the pictures won't be impressive. The screen with a very low resolution (320x240) and a low colour range (262K) feels primitive too, and you can tell the difference in quality coming from a phone priced at Dh339. Micromax is obviously going for the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid with its low prices and volume sales.
Apart from the trackball, the rest of the body feels solid and just might be capable of taking a few falls. Maybe next time, I should include that as part of my "testing". The speakers on the phone were good, which surprised me as it's one of the last details to which manufacturers pay attention.
The phone's software is the same Java OS found on most phones of this category and it's pitiful. The navigation is clunky and the experience is inhibitive; I feel I'm back in the early 2000s, the days of the older Nokia phones (series 40) which had a similar interface.
Despite the inclusion of other web-enabled applications such as Opera, the Q5 doesn't feel like a phone designed for the web. And it lacks a built-in e-mail client. Apart from SMSes, I don't see where else the Qwerty keyboard would be useful, making the entire form factor pointless.
However, I do feel that using an alternate OS such as the Google Android would have increased the usability and utility of the phone manifold; besides the inclusion of Wi-Fi. Until then, the Q5FB Ezpad is a terribly underutilised phone at a decent price.
Bhavishya Kanjhan is a digital marketing professional and an early adopter of all things digital. Follow his tweets on @bhavishya
