At a press event in New Delhi, Micromax announced its next flagship device. The popular manufacturer of affordably priced Android smartphones introduced the Canvas HD which brings specs previously seen in high end smartphones at what is positively a ground breaking price point.
Here is the Micromax A116 Canvas HD Unboxing
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ldjOvvZz7E
The specifications of the A116 Canvas HD include :
- 5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD 16.7 million color IPS display
- 1.2 GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6589 processor
- Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean)
- 8MP rear camera with LED Flash, 2MP front-facing camera
- 3.5mm audio jack
- 1GB RAM, 4GB internal memory, 32GB expandable memory with MicroSD
- 3G, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, GPS/A-GPS
- 2000 mAh battery
The highlight of the handset apart from the MediaTek 6589 based quad core processor is its 720p HD screen which is so far unheard of in a device in this category. In our brief hands on time, we quite liked the display though brightness levels felt a bit low. Contrast levels too are just about satisfactory. Users expecting a display equivalent to much higher priced smartphones might be left disappointed.
The Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) running smartphone has a design which will appear quite familiar to users of Micromax devices. The black plastic front is complemented by a white, matte finish back. The right side of the phone sports an easily accessible power key. We felt that the key felt a bit too hard to press though this might just be an issue with prototype hardware.
Over on the left is a volume rocker which can be easily handled even when holding the phone in a single hand which is quite important in a smartphone of this size. The lack of a camera key is disappointing.
The phone is equipped with an 8MP autofocus camera with an LED flash. A VGA front facing camera should facilitate video calling. The chipset being used here supports full HD video recording but we’re not sure if it is enabled on the Canvas HD. We’ll be sure to test it out during our review.
In terms of performance, Micromax has kept a clean build of Android resulting in good performance across the board. We felt a few stutters and force closes in our hands on time but we’ll pen this down to prototype hardware and beta software. The phone is powered by the latest generation MediaTek MT6589 processor which is based on the Cortex A7 architecture. The GPU is a PowerVR SGX5 chip which is about twice as powerful as the SGX531 chip in the Canvas 2. This should bode well for mobile gaming enthusiasts. The Canvas HD is equipped with 1GB of RAM which will make sure that you don’t run out of RAM while going through multitudes of applications.
The Micromax A116 Canvas HD will hit retail in early February at a price point under Rs. 15,000. We were quite impressed by the handset in the brief amount of time we spent with it. While too soon to pass a judgement on the handset, we think that this has the potential to be another best seller for Micromax. Definitely one to watch out for.