Build/ DesignOn first look, the Canvas HD looks more like an enlarged
version of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, unlike its predecessor, the Canvas 2, whose
design resembled that of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2/Galaxy SIII. However, despite
sporting a 5-inch screen, the phone looks compact compared to the Canvas
2.
On closer inspection, you'll gather that the front of the phone is
black in colour, while the back is white. Looking from the sides, it gives the
impression that the phone bears both colours since the removable back cover
doesn't just cover the back and extends to the sides. We didn't like the
dual-colour design concept, but some might find it interesting.
The
screen forms the largest part of the front and the bezel is, thankfully, much
thinner than that of the Canvas 2. The three capacitive navigation buttons sit
below the screen, while the earpiece (also black in colour), notification light,
and the front facing camera, are located above the screen. To be honest, the
front has a very plasticky feel to it, but then this phone costs Rs. 13,990, so
you don't expect premium materials to be used. However, the screen gets smudged
easily, even without our hands being sweaty.
The back of the phone, which
features a removable back cover, has also been done in plastic, sports a glossy
finish and is less prone to smudges. The 8-megapixel camera lens protrudes out a
bit, similar to the HTC One X camera lens. The LED flash and a secondary
microphone are located adjacent to the lens. There's Micromax branding and a
speaker grill towards the bottom. The back cover hides the battery compartment,
above which there are two SIM card slots and a slot for the microSD card.
At the right side, you can see a Power/screen lock key, which is also white in
colour. This button is a little recessed and at times gets a bit hard to press.
The volume rocker sits at the left side and is easy to press. At the top, you'll
find the 3.5mm headset jack and a micro-USB port. There's just a microphone at
the bottom edge.
Overall, we felt that Micromax could have used better
quality materials but it would have to cut corners to reduce the price of the
device, so it's understandable.
Display
The USP of the Canvas
HD is indeed its HD screen. The phone's 5-inch HD IPS screen sports a resolution
of 1280 x 720 pixels and a colour depth of 16.7 million. Thanks to the higher
resolution, text, icons and images look much sharper compared to the Canvas 2
and the recently launched Samsung Galaxy Grand. There was no pixelation.
However, we felt that the screen contrast was a little haywire, resulting in
images appearing to be washed out.
Under sun visibility was good though
the screen is very reflective. Thanks to the IPS panel that facilitates wider
viewing angles, we found that the viewing angles were indeed wide, which
essentially means that more than one person can view content playing on the
screen properly, even from different angles. We also found the touch response of
the screen to be good.
Software/ InterfaceThe Micromax Canvas HD runs Android 4.1.2 (Jelly
Bean). Micromax has skinned some elements of the user interface, such as the app
icons and the notification tray. The notification tray includes toggles for
settings such as Wi-Fi, Brightness, Rotation, Bluetooth, GPS, Data, Screen
timeouts and profiles (for alerts and other notifications). There's also a SIM
selection toggle. Similar to most other Android devices, there are five
customisable home screens that can be filled with app shortcuts and widgets.
The notification tray also features a settings shortcut and a clear all
notifications button, along with expandable notifications (expanded with the two
finger pull gesture). Android 4.1 Jelly Bean also brings in Google Now, which
needs to be initialised for the first time, before use.
For the
uninitiated, Google Now is a voice based information assistant and an extension
of Google search. You can ask questions and the tool returns answers or search
results. It uses 'cards' which are essentially small boxes that offer different
sets of information ranging from weather forecast, directions, traffic
information, scores, appointments, and currency conversion, among others. Google
Now collects information based on the user's behaviour, location, and even
e-mail, to offer information automatically.
The three capacitive buttons,
Home, Menu and Back help in navigating through the phone, with the Home button
also doubling up as an app switcher on long press.
Micromax has also
included some of its own apps including content stores, M! Store and M! Live,
and services store, M! Zone, in addition to its messaging app, HookUp, and
friends locator app, M! Buddy and a few 'try and buy' games (Fruit Devil,
Cricket Fever). The handset also offers FM Radio and FM radio
recording.
Micromax has also modified the Messages app, adding a Smileys
input option next to the text entry prompt, and a button for attaching
multimedia, contacts and audio clips, among others, with it. Micromax has also
added a file manager app, a NoteBook app, a ToDo app, in addition to a universal
search app, and a video player app. It has also replaced the stock camera app
with a different one. The company has also included a Wireless Input Device app,
letting users configure a Bluetooth-based input device with the
phone.
Micromax has also modified the Phone Dialler app giving the option
of calling from any one of the SIMs. The dialler resembles the iOS dialler in
terms of the colour scheme.
Camera
The phone features an
8-megapixel autofocus shooter that takes decent images in daylight. However, we
found the photos taken through the phone a bit overexposed, and the
white-balance in the automatic mode was not optimal. This results in images
appearing to be a bit whiter, and colours looking a little dull. Indoor shots
were above average. We also found that the camera took some time to focus. The
camera takes good quality videos depending on the ambient light. However, it
saves video clips in .3GP file format, which is an older file format.
As we mentioned before, Micromax has put its own camera app. The app leaves out
the Panorama mode, but offers a burst mode, letting users click up to 99 shots
at once. We also noticed that there is minor gap between two consecutive camera
shots in the continuous shot mode. The phone offers three basic modes - Face
Beauty, HDR and Photo. The photo mode allows users to modify settings like
Exposure, colour effect, ISO and white balance, among others. There's a self
timer of up to 10 seconds as well.
The phone also features a VGA front
camera, which takes average pictures, and can be used for video conferencing. We
wish the phone had a dedicated camera button to help click a quick
picture.
Performance
The Micromax A116 Canvas HD is powered by
a 1.2GHz MediaTek MT6589 quad-core processor with 1GB RAM onboard, and PowerVR
SGX544MP chip for processing graphics. There is 4GB of internal storage, which
is expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card.
With Android 4.1 Jelly Bean,
the overall experience of navigation through the interface was impressive,
thanks to Project Butter and the phone's quad-core processor. We did not
experience any lag while launching apps, playing games, scrolling web pages or
switching between apps. It is safe to say that performance wise, the Canvas HD
trumps other phones in this price range. Even the more expensive Galaxy Grand
loses out to the Canvas HD in terms of benchmarks, but end users are unlikely to
note significant performance difference between the two, unless they are playing
CPU-hungry games (Hint: The Canvas HD performs better).
priced at around 12600 online @ ebay...
