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Kazam hasn't specified when or even if the Tornado 348 will be receiving an update to Android 5.0 Lollipop so until then, you're going to have to make do with Android 4.4 KitKat.
As I mentioned in the previous section, there's been no extensive modification and no bloatware preinstalled. Outside of a Nexus device, this is as clean an Android experience as it gets and anyone with familiarity of the operating system will have no problems with the interface.
The app drawer, notifications panel and settings shortcut haven't been altered and, as with most smartphones, you can group apps together into folders to save homescreen space.
One of the newer Android features is Guest Mode, which you can select from the pull-down settings menu to launch. This lets you limit access to albums, notes messages and other personal data if you want to give the handset to a friend to use.
There's the usual selection of Android widgets and wallpapers available to customise the Tornado 348. Kazam hasn't added anything new and there's plenty more to be had from the Google Play store.
I can't really fault the interface on the Tornado 348. It would be nice to have an idea of when to expect Lollipop, but KitKat is intuitive and blessedly free from interruptions on this handset.
Performance
The Tornado 348 uses a 1.7GHz MT6592 octa-core processor and an ARM Mali 450-MP4 graphics chip, both of which are comfortably mid-range. The performance level is roughly that of last year's early flagship handsets; the LG G2 being a good example.
I installed my usual round of apps and games and the Tornado 348 wasn't troubled by any of them. My concern about the performance doesn't come from the processor and 1GB of RAM, but the lack of storage.
Any serious smartphone user which, these days, is most of us, is going to find 16GB with no upgradeable storage very limiting indeed.
There's a case to be made for streaming services like Spotify, Netflix and Dropbox. But if you want games that take up over a gigabyte (like Grand Theft Auto III) then space is going to go fast. Leaving out a microSD slot isn't a cost issue; it's a design issue to keep the phone as thin as it is. Unfortunately I think the 348 is worse off for it.
The GeekBench 3 benchmarking app returned a multi-core score of 2198 which puts it alongside the likes of the Google Nexus 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3.
I found the Tornado 348 was fine when opening basic apps or navigating through menus, but it did take a fraction longer to load up more complex or graphically-heavy apps. Similarly exiting back to the homescreen also produced a slight amount of lag.
During heavy gaming sessions – that is, over 20 minutes on Grand Theft Auto III, the chassis did get quite a bit warmer. The problem isn't as severe as the Sony Xperia Z2 or Z3 during 4K filming, but it is present.
