Pine Executive -  Dual-SIM, feature-rich budget phone

The Pine Executive is a dual-SIM, feature-rich basic phone that yields good value for money. If you are looking for a dual-SIM phone on a tight budget, then this one is for you. Of late, the cellphone market is witnessing a flood of dual-SIM budget phones, that tend to draw your attention. We have reviewed a few of them to bail you out of decision making trouble!

The Pine Executive has a sleek and delicate human curvature design, with a predominant plastic strip running across the body contours of the cellphone. It has an all plastic body, coated with a glossy finish which gives a shiny look to the front and back-panels. The battery cover reveals a weak build quality and tends to break easily under rugged use. The battery cover can be removed quite easily, using the marked nail grip at the bottom surface of the back-panel. Removing the battery cover and the battery, reveals two GSM SIM card slots and one microSD memory card slot. It incorporates an USB power port on the lower left hand side and a torchlight bulb at the bottom surface of the cellphone. The torchlight can be turned on using the specially designated torch key at the top of the keypad, located to the right of the navigation control/select buttons.  

The keypad consists of narrow-ridged spacings separating the keys and the call function buttons located on either side of the navigation control dial, which is located just below the LCD screen at the centre. The keypad has a blue backlit LED that lends an attractive look to it. In spite of the closely spaced keys, we found the keys to be very responsive and yielded good tactile feedback while typing lengthy messages. The menu interface is very simple and user-friendly. The application software includes some interesting features like data security, where you can lock your data stored on the phone or memory card with a password and also choose whether to enable protection for phonebook, SMS, MMS, call history, file manager or all of them.

Performance:
The Pine Executive had a modest outing in the signal reception and voice clarity test. It yielded mediocre performance in both the device loudspeaker and hands-free clarity test. There was evidence of static noise and wavering voice clarity with the loudspeaker and the audibility was very weak with the hands-free headset. Also, it had a very poor performance in the Bluetooth transfer speed test with a score of 30KB/s. It produced disappointing results in the captured photo quality and video playback test with below average scores. We could witness visible pixelated artefacts and distorted images in the captured video, while there were colour patches and grainy particles in the video playback test. On both the occasions, the video frame rate was poor, leading to stuttering and periodic freezes. We could however forgive its shortcomings considering it to be a very basic budget phone.

Conclusion:
The Pine Executive is a feature-rich budget phone, with its key selling point being the simultaneous dual-SIM activation and usage. Overall, considering the price to feature ratio, it makes a decent buy at Rs. 1, 995. Although, we would not recommend it for a best buy, as it failed miserably across multiple performance test categories.

Specifications: SIM card: Dual-SIM (GSM+GSM); Display: 1.8-inch LCD screen (128 x 160); Memory: microSD (up to 4GB); Battery: 1000mAh, up to 4hrs talk-time, up to 250hrs standby-time;


Pros:
Very affordable
Ergonomic keypad

Cons:
Lacks USB connectivity to the PC
Mediocre loudspeaker and hands-free clarity
Average build quality

Pine Executive -  Dual-SIM, feature-rich budget phone

The Pine Executive is a dual-SIM, feature-rich basic phone that yields good value...