KingCom S!gma Stone Quick Review

The smartphone market is very lucrative that every Tom, Dick and Harry wants a piece of the pie. This is the reason local IT dealer is bringing their own brand of Android smartphones in the Philippines market. Read on and know more about the S!gma Stone.

We checked out the S!gma Stone which is their new flagship device. This is also the first time we’ve seen a smartphone from the brand so we’re still unfamiliar with their line-up. The S!gma Stone will be their make-or-break device so we’re interested to see how it fares.

Build and Construction.

The S!gma Stone looks like one of your typical mid-range handset. The 5-inch display is built around a plastic body with metal trimmings. It has a bit of heft to it but the size is just right on one hand.

The micro USB port and 3.5mm jack are found on the top end while the power button is on the right side. The volume controls are found on the left side.

The silver aluminum trimmings on both sides are tucked in place with micro-screws. The back panel slightly tapers toward the corners with a smooth but dimpled texture. The smooth surface at the back is actually prone to smudges and can become slippery at times.

The rear camera protrudes by at least 2mm but the barrel is surrounded by metal to avoid scratching. Just below it is the LED flash with a metal plate that has a KingCom logo in it.

Opening the thin battery cover exposes the 2 SIM card slots with one slot that can double as a microSD card slot.

Display.

The S!gma Stone uses a 5-inch IPS LCD panel with 720p resolution with a pixel density of 293ppi. While this is enough pixel density, you can sometimes see the pixels especially when viewing photos and videos. Display quality is decent and viewing angles are wide.

The navigation is represented by three backlit soft buttons found just below the display panel. For a 5-inch device, the handset is slightly bigger than usual and the bezels are thicker than usual.

Over-all it’s a decent display; nothing impressive but good enough for the price point.

Performance and Benchmarks.

The S!gma Stone is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM running Android 4.4. Kitkat.

We ran several of our standard benchmarks and got pretty decent to good scores – Antutu Benchmark score is 18,277 while Quadrant Standard is jus 7,294. Nenamark 2 scored 54.7 frames per second which is quite good.

The handset performance is split depending on the type of load that we throw at it. Navigation is smooth but not really very snappy. Where we would experience some lags in when there are multiple apps running in the background. Typical games would load and run but most of the graphics heavy ones will experience some noticeable lags.

Call Quality, Connectivity and Battery Life.

Making calls and sending SMS is pretty swift and easy on the device. We never experience in delays in sending text messages or interference in getting calls.

There’s WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G which are standard. We can’t really demand more for its price range.

As for battery life, the S!gma Stone comes with a measly 1,810mAh. On light to moderate use, we are able to last close to a day but heavy use barely lasts us half a day of use.

Using our standard battery bench, the S!gma Stone took about 7.5 hours of continuous video loop for an HD video at 50% brightness and 0% volume. We’d recommend bring a powerbank as a backup when using this handset.

Conclusion.

The S!gma Stone is a pretty decent device. For a suggested retail price of Php6,888, KingCom offers a nice handset with fairly capable hardware specifications. The price point can be very competitive for the local market but the S!gma Stone is worth a second look. If KingCom can provide a better after sales than other local brands, then that might help them differentiate themselves from the dozen or so local players in the market.

The S!gma Stone comes in a variety of colors – black in blue back cover and white with pink back cover; and has a suggested retail price of Php6,888 when it becomes available in stores on November 25 like KingCom, Wellcom and Kingpad (also available in Lazada this November 19).