Micromax Canvas 2: Specification, Review & Price

Micromax was first to market with a 5-inch, budget phablet the A100 Canvas smartphone. Therefore, like other mobile companies, Micromax has also made its existence in the Mobile market. They launched Superfone Canvas A100. It was a huge success, due tho which they decided to go one step further and introduced Canvas 2 with a 5-inch screen along with Dual-Core CPU for the same price as previous one. This is priced at Rs. 9,999, and comes with a 5-inch TFT capacitive touch screen IPS display at a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels with 196 ppi pixel density . It runs on Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) OS.

Hardware:

The much talked phone is no where close to S3 or S2 when compared to hardware. It has a 1 GHz Dual core Mediatek Processor, 512 MB of RAM and an 8MP camera. It also has 3 GB + storage on the inside along with a 5 inch FWVGA screen. One more important thing that this phone has NO Gorilla Glass, so you have to use screen guard and a cover to keep it safe. In short, not handy for Ruf N Tuf users.The only thing that made me thinking about this phone is the RAM. Its only 512 MB. I mean there are so many other options to buy with good RAM memory by paying a bit more. It wouldn't have been problem for them to give a better RAM and a bit hike in the price.

Display & Touch:

This is something that is good the phone has provided. The FWVGA display provides a better display but not that good, coz it is not the most pixel pounded screen. The resolution is quite enough to make the phone and the screen look good. The IPS panel however puts this in a new league, allowing good daylight visibility, almost zero darkening on edges and a nice wide viewing angle.

The display gets good when watching Video and playing games. But when comes to playing a game which requires lots of finger touch at a time, say 4 or more, the phone jitters. So be careful while installing the games. This makes it more uncommon when compared to other phones.

Camera & Multimedia:

Comparing to the previous A100, which has a 5MP camera, A110 gives a much better 8MP. This phone provides Dual Panorama modes (Simple Panorama & Macro panorama) and works great when focused. The camera features are the same as on the Micromax A90. There is burst mode 16, 8, 4 shot mode and can also record videos in HD (720p resolution).  When using the camera if you find unnatural colour for example red showing as pink, just go to settings and change hue, saturation, brightness and contrast to medium. When recording videos you do have an option to pause the recording.

Watching movies and videos works great. The Micromax A110 canvas 2 plays back full hd. The Audio is not loud enough. the Canvas 2 can only handle up to 720p video playback smoothly. MP4 files play well in the stock player but AVI, MKV, etc. have trouble playing back even in MX Player.

Connectivity and Misc. apps

The Micromax Canvas 2 only supports two bands for 2G and just one for 3G. Connectivity features include Wi-Fi ‘n’, Bluetooth v3.0 and USB plug-and-play support. Other than the Play Store, Micromax also bundles their M! Store and M!Zone for added content. The bundled apps include some games like Cricket Fever, Fruit Devil along with some productivity apps like File Manager, M! Buddy and HookUp.

Gaming:

When seeing a phone with such big screen, the first thing that you will think of playing games on it. But it will let you down. The reason is the RAM. Even with dual core and large screen it cannot fill the gap of RAM. This will definitely not allow you to play games with huge size and high resolutions which requires more AM. The game gets store in the internal memory which cannot be transferred into external, directly. So once your internal memory is full, it will cause the game to stuck or can even hang your phone.

Battery Life:

The Canvas 2 has a 2000mAh battery. I think this is not that sufficient to handle the power of such a huge screen and that too for the entire day. Its been said that the overall backup for the phone is around 6 to 7 hours, including calls, wifi, videos, music and internet usage.

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Conclusion:

I think the phone is good. Yes, if you are buying this phone for the sake of playing games, please don't buy it. The RAM is not sufficient enough to handle huge games. Secondly the battery backup is good. Atleast this much is expected from the company like Micromax. Overall, if you are looking to buy a phone just for look and handling only calls and messages and photos then you can go for it. After all what else will get in in price of 10,000 INR.

Cheers!!!