Kazam Tornado 348: Software

Sadly, there’s no Android 5.0 Lollipop love here for the Tornado 348, as Kazam opts for Android 4.4.2 KitKat. It’s a lightly skinned version of Google’s mobile operating system, so you don’t have to deal with too many unique idiosyncrasies.

That said, there are some, and Kazam’s minor tweaks don’t alter the experience for the good. The notifications panel is set up differently, where Settings and Notifications are separated into two tabs. Instead of display brightness living inside the notifications tab, it’s been moved to live within the settings. It might make logical sense when written down, but we find it more useful to have it on that first page. There’s some handy gestures like the tap-to-wake, although this is something we have already seen on the LG G3 and Android 5.0 Lollipop devices like the Nexus 9 tablet.

SEE ALSO: Android 4.4 KitKat Tips and Tricks

Elsewhere, this is standard Android. There are multiple homescreens, access to the Google Play Store, the Recent Apps assigned to the left capacitive key, while holding down the home button is your gateway to Google Now.

Thankfully, Kazam doesn’t overwhelm you with hordes of unnecessary apps here. Most of the usual suspects come pre-installed, alongside native apps like the calendar and the contacts app. Google’s suite of Play apps are there and there’s even an FM radio. That’s good when you only have 16GB of storage to play with and no expandable microSD card storage to play with when you are running low.

SEE ALSO: Android 5.0 Tips and Tricks

Kazam Tornado 348: Performance

The 348 runs on a MediaTek True Octa MT6592 processor with a not so impressive 1GB of RAM. In theory it should  handle Ultra HD/4K video playback andalthough the Tornado doesn’t support that video recording resolution, it’s impressive for a phone of this price to be capable of playing 4K video.

The main benefits of an octa-core processor should be to improve multi-tasking and gaming performance without having a substantial impact on power consumption, and it’s among the faster phones at this price. he Tornado runs swiftly and with no discernible lag during everyday use.

There’s an ARM-based Mali 450 MP4 GPU to handle gaming and it  than manages to keep our go to test game Real Racing 3 running with no signs of lag or frame rate drop offs. It certainly lacks the visual sheen when you compare it to phones running the latest Adreno GPU, but for more graphically demanding gaming it copes very well.

Benchmarks backup the idea the Kazam punches above its price.It scores average 2,024 in the Geekbench 3 multi-core test, putting it way ahead of similarly priced phones like the LG G3 S (1,138). Indeed, it actually outperforms more expensive 4-inch phones like the Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini, Moto G (1,155) and the HTC One Mini 2 (1,120) and isn’t far from the £229 One Plus One (2,062), which runs on Snapdragon 801 CPU.