Meets with a variety of settings, ways to organize the mailbox and smart functionality. Inexperienced user technology and fans of minimalism, it can even scare away. You have to choose between mailbox and its smart counterpart, assign actions to swipes, deal with the search bar and integrate third-party services.
Spark developers focus on smart features. The app automatically collects incoming messages and organizes them into New, Newsletters, Pins and Inbox categories. Their display order corresponds to the above and determines the model for working with letters in the new product. The first thing you do is parse new emails, read or immediately clear the newsletter block. Important messages you pin it in the Pins section (analogous to the list of important tasks), and the rest - in the Inbox. At any time, you can switch to the usual mode of displaying all letters.
In addition to the Smart Inbox and Inbox mentioned above, Spark has the Archive and Attachments sections. If everything is clear with the first, then I have not seen the attachment page anywhere before. There are collected letters with the appropriate filter, it is convenient to view, forward, respond to them.
Pleased appearance pages of a separate letter. Spark designers removed extra elements, leaving maximum space for text and attachments. Thanks to this, it is convenient to view messages even on a small iPhone screen 5.
Another innovation regarding the work with letters is quick replies. According to the developers, most responses can be replaced with three actions: Like, Thanks and Smile.
The organization of letters is tied to four swipes: short to the left - add or remove from favorites, long - postpone the letter by time; to the right, respectively, archive and delete. A random action is canceled by shaking the smartphone or the Undo button in the lower right corner. This feature will definitely come in handy: the usual swipe to the right to bring up the side menu in Spark sends emails to the archive, which is pretty annoying.
A separate Spark personalization section is responsible for reorganizing menus, swipe actions, and widgets. You can also configure reports on reading letters, notifications, signatures, sound alerts. There you will also find the binding of the mail client to third party services. Cloud storage Dropbox, Box, OneDrive and Google Drive, delayed reading services - Pocket, Instapaper and Readabilty, note-taking - OneNote and Evernote.
Another reason for the pride of the developers of the novelty is smart string search. The application handles plain language queries correctly and will return relevant results for a query like "pdf attachments from david". Naturally, so far this feature is only available in English. In addition, Spark finds files by name or type, and saves frequently used queries.
Readdle managed to create the most customizable and functional mail client. Its disadvantages are the impossibility of multiple selection at one time for attachments and unstable work. The creators continue to actively work on the project, fix bugs and promise the appearance of Mac and iPad versions of Spark soon. You can download the novelty for free in the App Store.
- Phone
- Battery
- Wired headset
- Power adapter with USB cable
- Warranty card
Positioning
Despite the fact that the Highscreen Spark smartphone has been on sale for a long time, it does not lose its relevance. Now more and more low-cost Android devices are appearing with decent characteristics, which Spark can boast of: at a price of 4,000 rubles, it uses a 4-inch diagonal with a resolution of 480x800 pixels, the Qualcomm chipset - MSM8225 - is 2 1 GHz cores, 512 MB random access memory, 5 MP camera, but no autofocus. And last but not least, there is Wi-Fi and 3G.
In the near future, two more reviews of ultra-budget devices from Explay and teXet will appear.
Design, dimensions, controls
Smartphone Spark is a typical representative budget segment devices on the Android OS: nondescript appearance, rectangular shape of the case with strongly beveled corners, black case. It is not clear why the gadget was then called Spark, since in English this word means “spark / flash”. The front side is protected by durable glass, so for long time did not appear to be used deep scratches. The surface collects fingerprints and other traces quite abundantly, but they are easily erased. A glossy black plastic runs along the edge, very easily soiled. The bezel tapers slightly towards the screen. The back cover is made of pleasant to the touch velvety "soft-touch" plastic. Since the rear panel smoothly transitions to the ends, the phone lies very well in the hand, especially if your palm small size. The camera is framed by a large ledge in the form of an isosceles trapezoid with beveled corners, made of glossy black plastic. The lettering under the “5.0 Mega” lip on my sample was slightly offset horizontally.
Dimensions "Spark" - 124x65x12.6 mm, weight - 130 grams - the standard parameters of almost any inexpensive device. There are no problems with the assembly: the device does not creak or play, it does not crunch when squeezed. If you press on the area near the camera, the case is slightly pressed through.
On the front side, there is a loudspeaker covered with a wide metal mesh. Its volume is average, mostly listened to high frequencies, obviously not enough low. No rattling, echo or other unpleasant moments were observed. The interlocutor is heard clearly and legibly, you are also heard well. To the right of the speaker is the front camera, and to the left of it are the proximity sensor and the ambient light sensor. Both are functioning correctly.
Below the screen are three touch buttons: Back, Home and Menu. Applied to the surface with translucent paint, there is a backlight white color, pretty bright. The microphone is under the back button.
The microUSB connector is on the bottom end, the 3.5mm audio jack is on the top. On the left is a paired volume rocker. It is slightly convex, its stroke is minimal, pressing of medium hardness. The power button is on the right, the same type as the "volume".
On the back of the device are: a camera, a flash and a wide slit where the speakerphone is located.
To open the lid, it must be pry on the notch on the lower left corner. Under the battery: two slots - SIM1 / SIM2 and a card slot microSD memory("hot" replacement is not supported, which is natural).
Highscreen Spark and Samsung Galaxy Note 2
Display
One of the main advantages over competitors is the display. Its diagonal is 4 inches ( physical size- 52x86 mm), and the resolution is 480x800 pixels. Yes, I agree, you won’t surprise anyone, but for a device for 4,000 rubles it’s not bad! The pixel density is 233 PPI, pixelation is noticeable, but not striking. The screen matrix is simple, not IPS, so if you tilt the display towards you, the colors are inverted, and if you tilt it away from you, the contrast slightly decreases. However, in general, it is quite suitable for an undemanding user.
Sensory layer, naturally capacitive type, fulfills only two simultaneous touches.
Sensitivity is slightly above average. The settings are familiar: brightness (auto or manual), wallpaper, sleep mode, and so on.
Battery
It uses a lithium-ion (Li-Ion) battery with a capacity of 1500 mAh, 3.7 V, 5.5 Wh. The manufacturer does not provide data on battery life, so I tested it myself.
In video playback mode (MP4, 640x480 pixels) on maximum brightness and the volume in the headphones, the battery sat down after about 2.5 hours. If you use 3G, make about 10-15 calls lasting 1-2 minutes, “take a picture” for 20 minutes, then the battery will run out in 5 hours. Not much.
It takes about 2.5 hours to charge from USB and the same from the AC adapter.
Communication options
The phone works in cellular networks 2G (GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and 3G (900/2100 MHz). In this case, one SIM card functions only in 2G (right slot), the other in 2G or 3G (left slot).
In stock Bluetooth version 3.0 (EDR) for file and speech transfer. There is a wireless WiFi connection IEEE 802.11b/g/n. The device, of course, can be used as an access point (Wi-Fi Hotspot) or modem. In the settings, this item is listed as "Modem Mode". There is WiFi Direct.
Memory and memory card
This model has 512 MB of RAM. Of this amount of RAM, an average of about 150 MB is free.
Built-in memory 4 GB, available for data storage (1 GB) and applications (1.8 GB) about 2.8 GB. Card slot provided microSDHC memory up to 32 GB. In the settings "Applications" there is an item "Installation location". In it, you can choose the location for installing programs: Inner memory”, “Removable SD card”, or “System discretion”. I advise you to put everything on the map.
Camera
IN this smartphone two camera modules are used: the main one is 5 MP, the front one is 1.3 MP (clearly interpolation from 0.3 MP). There is a small flash, which is of no use even when photographing at a distance of less than a meter. Although as a simple flashlight will do.
I won’t describe the camera in detail, it seems to me, and it’s clear that the quality of the photos is unimportant. The video is recorded in 1280x720 resolution, the sound is clear. Everything would be fine, but the picture crumbles into squares, although the bitrate is about 4 Kbps. Number of frames - 14.
Video file characteristic:
- File Format: 3gp
- Video codec: AVC, 3.7 Mbps
- Resolution: 1280 x 720, 14 fps
- Audio codec: AAC, 156 Kbps
- Channels: 1 channel, 48 kHz
Sample photos on the main camera:
Sample photo on front camera :
Performance and software platform
The Highscreen Spark is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Play chipset, model number MSM8225. Technological process– 45 nm, instruction set – ARMv7, processor 1 GHz two ARM cores Cortex-A5, graphics accelerator Adreno 203.
The interface does not slow down, everything starts quickly and cheerfully. You should not count on cool toys: even if they start, they will “lag” or have to reduce the graphics to a minimum.
Benchmarks (Quadrant and Antutu):
The device works in the operating room Google system Android version 4.0.1. Not so long ago, an update was released that added several new wallpapers for the desktop and “fixed” the proximity sensor. But the version remains the same.
Telephone part
The dialer is standard. When you enter it, you see the names and numbers of contacts at the top of the screen. When you enter a number, contacts with those numbers appear in the same area. In the tab with a picture of the clock are located following sections: Select SIM, All calls, Incoming, Outgoing and Missed. After clicking on “Call”, a menu with three buttons is displayed on the screen - call from SIM1, SIM2 or cancel the call. If no button is pressed, the call is made from the "sim card" that was selected in the default settings.
Multimedia
Music player and radio. Used familiar radio and standard music player. The volume of the music in the player is high, the quality is quite good. The loudspeaker volume is slightly above average.
Video player. There is separate application"Video". MP4 and 3GP files are supported by default. Maximum Resolution- 720p at low bitrate, simple videos like DVDRip are best.
Conclusion
The Highscreen smartphone did not make much of an impression, but for the money it is an excellent device: big screen, a high resolution, two cameras, dual core processor and a decent Qualcomm chipset, quality materials(fortunately not so much glossy plastic). For 4,000 rubles, I do not see obvious negative points in this device, well, except that the battery is not the most capacious and the gadget does not “live” for days. So, if there is no way to buy a more expensive device, but you want to join Android world, then I can quite recommend Spark for purchase.
Roman Belykh (
We are glad to present you the Spark app for smartphones on Android platform. From now on, this is the most convenient way read startup news and cases, study projects and communicate with colleagues using your phone.
All supported android versions beginning with 4.0.3.
We tried to make the application convenient, beautiful and fast. In the first version, all the main sections of the site are available: project blogs, company catalog, vacancies and user profiles, personal notifications.
Blogs
It contains news and case studies of startups, useful articles and simply interesting materials from the field of IT, marketing and business. Sorting by popularity and publication date is available.
Comment:
Since publication covers are an important part of the application design, we are tightening the image moderation rules - all ugly, low-quality and irrelevant covers will be deleted. Read about the requirements for uploading images in paragraph 5 of ours.
Articles of the projects you have subscribed to go to the section " Subscriptions»
Questions
Discussions topical issues communities of entrepreneurs, developers, marketers and other professionals, communication with project teams, problem solving, seeking advice and feedback.
Projects
The section contains a catalog of startups registered on Spark. It is possible to filter the catalog by industries, cities, vacancies and search for investments.
The project profile allows you to get acquainted with the idea and description of the business model, ask the team a question or find out if there are vacancies.
Jobs
Live catalog of current vacancies in startups, search for co-founders and partners. All sorts of filters are available: by city, profession, salary, availability of options, remote work opportunities.
Notifications
After authorization, you will be able to receive push notifications about all events related to your account: ratings, replies and new comments. In the near future it will be possible to subscribe to announcements of the most interesting materials from Spark.
Disabling notifications is carried out in the "Settings" section of the side menu. By the way, there you can also choose the section that will open when the application starts.
Some features of the site (for example, writing articles and a messenger) are not yet available, but they will appear in future versions.
About development and testing
The application was created on our own: we developed an interface for interacting with the server, wrote client side in Java, drew a design. The application does not use third-party frameworks and libraries, its size is only 4.8 megabytes.
Unfortunately, we (and our colleagues from vc.ru and TJ) had almost no devices for testing, so we had to resort to your help.
We have reviewed the list active users Spark, selected among them people who sometimes visit the site from Android phones and wrote to them on social networks with a request to take part in closed testing. So a small team was formed, with the help of which we caught and corrected errors and shortcomings in the application for two weeks. Thank you very much for your help!
However, something may seem uncomfortable or ugly to you. Report all found errors and wishes to us by mail or in the "" section at any time of the day.
About tablets
Separately, we note that the interface of the first version of the application is not adapted for use on tablets, so we disabled their support. In the next updates, we will present a convenient and beautiful adaptive design and you will be able to install the app on your tablet.
About the iOS version
Install the application, rate, write reviews.
Happy using! And we are already working on next version, which will soon appear on Google Play.
