Salora better known for their display technologies, they have come up with an entry level device named Salora Arya Z2 for the Indian market. The device offers some decent specs and is available exclusively via Amazon for a price tag of Rs. 6,999.
Packaging
The Salora Arya Z2 comes in a cardboard pull out box which has a picture of the device on both sides along with quick specs on he back. Inside the box we have the phone on top, a pair of earphones with silver plated pin and call control button, microUSB 2.0 cable, 1800mAh battery, 1 AMP wall adapter and the usual user guide & warranty documents.
Design and Build
The Salora Arya Z2 looks extremely beautiful and its minimalistic and symmetric design is worth praising. Although the device is made out of plastic but still it has a premium and feel to it.
The front has the 5-inch HD display which is fully laminated to reduce reflectiveness. Above the display lies the earpiece along with the 2MP front facing camera and bunch of sensors. Below the display we have the shortcut keys and the mouthpiece.
On the right we have the volume rocker, while the left side has the power button. On top we have 3.5mm jack and the USB 2.0 port and down below lies the slit to remove the back flap.
On the back we have the 8MP auto-focus rear-facing camera that can record videos up to 720p accompanied by a single LED flash, below which lies the Arya branding, the Salora branding and the speaker grill. Removing the back flap reveals the microSD card sot and a microSIM card slot, further removing the battery takes you to the 2nd SIM card slot that supports the normal SIM.
The Salora Arya Z2 is powered by MediaTek 1.3GHz quad-core processor which is paired with 1GB of RAM. The device has an internal storage of 4GB that can be expanded up to 32GB by using microSD card slot. One of the key feature of this device is that you can store the apps or games data directly on to the SD card provided that you select the SD card as the default storage.
User Interface
The Salora Arya Z2 is powered by Android KitKat 4.4.2 and the lock screen is pretty much similar to stock android with just a little touch to it. We have the usual function toggle and notification bar. Long press on the home shortcut key unlike other android devices would take you to the recent app menu. Long press on the home screen take you to the wallpaper, widget menu. The app drawer is minimal and has no bloat-ware, although you have some 3rd party apps like the Amazon store, mobile market and some in-house apps as well. On the whole the interface is breezy and doesn’t lags except for the case of hard core multitasking.
Performance
Display
The Salora Arya Z2 has a 5-inch HD display that uses the One Glass Solution Technology (OGS). OGS basically means that the touch panel and the display glass are almost connected to each other and there is no air in between, thus resulting into a display that has no refraction at all. Further the complete screen is laminated which means that it would reflect less. The display renders colour quite beautifully with proper saturation and hue The viewing angles are impressive as well. Overall the display impresses us. It’s not the highest resolution display and thus lacks the crispness but still it is enough bright and renders the images perfectly.
Browser
The Arya Z2 uses the Stock Android browser and its default browser. The browser works absolutely fine. The image rendering is decent. The browser gives a score of 448 on a scale of 555 which is good. The browser supports pinch-in zoom and double tap zoom.
Multimedia
The sound output via the speakers is decent and if you switch on the special effect booster Bass also becomes slightly better, Treble is good however it crackles slightly at the maximum sound level. While playing videos we found that the mid tones are sightly low and the surround sound is just average. The sound gets obstructed as soon as the device is placed on a flat surface. The Gallery arranges the photos and videos in stacks. You can select any photo and do the basic editing in the gallery.
Camera
The 8 MP auto-focus rear-camera works pretty well and there’s no shutter lag. You can record 720p with this camera and can take stills as well while recording. The special feature of Arya Z2 is that you have an 8MP sensor still you can select to take pictures with a size of 13MP which sounds fascinating however we found that pictures taken at 8 MP were better and had fairly better details than those taken at 13P. The front facing camera has 2MP sensor and yes it can take pictures at a higher resolution of 5MP as well. Having said all this, the overall photo and video quality are below average even in good lighting conditions.
Battery
The battery gave us a backup of about 9 hours on heavy usage, although if you are a moderate user it can last for about 11 hours.
Verdict
The Salora Arya Z2 is beautifully constructed. It has a very responsive UI and gives a seamless user experience. The sound output via the speakers is good as well and the best part is the price point just Rs. 6,999. The only negative point about this device is its camera, it under performs as per standards. The biggest competitors to it are the Xiaomi Redmi 1S and the Moto E which come in with some better specs. However out of all the devices Arya Z2 has the best display. Finally taking a decision to buy a device depends on the Brand, people tend to buy devices that are from bigger manufactures as they are presumed to have better after sale services and that’s the reason you won’t tend to buy new brands like Salora, but for your information Salora has been providing after sales services to quite a lot of companies and has a large after sale support network, so in case you are troubles about the after sale services you don’t need to worry.