Micromax is out with its new smartphone in the Canvas series. It’s after a long time it has a new feature to boast of that is both current and trending. Though LG failed selling a similar design in the flagship segment, Micromax brings it to the budget market with the Canvas Infinity. But what does it promise at Rs 9,999?
What is Canvas Infinity?
Micromax Canvas Infinity is technically a 5.7-inch device that comes with a plastic built and an HD display at front. It sounds like a regular Micromax with huge, chunky body (most probably in gold) and considerable weight.
But infinity is a smaller phone which tries to mimic the LG G6. With no physical buttons at front and small bezels at the top and bottom it looks dangerously close to the LG phone. But Micromax is not worried. It even calls it the Full Vision display (same as LG) and keeps the same 18:9 aspect ratio.
The phone has a removable back cover and battery with two SIM card slots and micro SD card slot. The built quality of the phone is far from terrific, but Micromax packs in features like fingerprint sensor and a 2.5D curved glass for a more premium feel.
How is it saved by the price?
Though the bezels aren’t as small as what Micromax advertises on its box, its price doesn’t let you complain. There is a Snapdragon 425 chipset under the hood with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage.
LG already has a phone in the under Rs 15,000 category that carries it propriety thin-bezel design, a better Snapdragon 435 chip and a Full HD display. It’s a metal unibody built which feels worlds ahead of the Canvas Inifinty.
By pricing the Canvas Infinity under Rs 10,000, Micromax has not only exited the competition, itis selling the cheapest phone to have a nearly 80% screen to body ratio.
Are we impressed?
Technically we should be. But there are hiccups to buying a Micromax phone. Unlike Xiaomi, Meizu or Samsung, Micromax is getting the phone designed and built by a third party vendor in China.
Then, the company overlooks a shady past when it comes to customer care services. It has a huge spread across India, but there have been instances in the past when customers didn’t get their phone repaired even after a month of wait period.
More importantly, the software on Micromax Inifinity is still a slow and buggy one. Sure it runs the Android 7.1.2 which is the latest. But in the little time we used the phone, we found that it’s not optimised well enough.
Moreover it is a bad mock-up of the Apple’s iOS that takes away a lot of advantages of the Android interface. The notifications dropdown is iffy, switching between apps takes a moment and there are a bunch of third party apps, most of which you cannot remove.
The cameras on the phone are impressive though. There is a 16MP front camera with soft LED flash and real-time background blur feature that works just fine. Though, the auto focus goes for a toss in low light. This is where it can readily beat the LG Q6, or even the Redmi Note 4.
The front camera is average in low light, but its auto focus works pretty amazingly. Features on-board include HDR, super pixel capture and a wide enough f/2.0 lens. The colors are accurate and natural, unlike the front camera that does some over-processing for enhancement. Both cameras can record Full HD 1080p videos.
Overall, the phone does feel like a better package from Micromax in the budget segment since a long time. Though the software or rather the interface is nothing close to what phones like Nokia 3 offer and so is the build. But it does come with a new design, good set of cameras and latest Android.
Micromax is desperate for a comeback in the smartphone market. And it has a trump card in its pocket this time. Though, only time will tell if it is able to play it well. But for now, Micromax has certainly raised the stakes by pricing the phone lower than expected after quite a long time now. And that has in the past, worked well for the Indian smartphone maker.
Having said that, it still has a stiff competition from Xiaomi in the online space. The Redmi Note 4 has a much better chipset, display, battery and interface layout (though the software is still very old Android Marshmallow). The bezels? Well they aren’t very less than what the Redmi 4 has, so it’s a very thin line Micromax is walking on.