Indian handsets maker Micromax is the leader as far as the mid-range of smartphones are concerned. Of late, many brands such as Moto G, Xiomi Mi3 and Asus range of smartphones have also occupied considerable space in this segment. If a consumer wants to spend Rs. 13,000 to buy good quality and powerful smartphone then he has many choices in front of him. Micromax was going quite easy with its Canvas range of smartphones, which were getting good response in the market, but with the onslaught of above brands, Micromax had to change its strategy and has come out with Canvas Nitro to take head on with above devices. Will Micromax be able to push its Canvas Nitro in the market, let us find out:
Design
Today’s consumer do not want to carry in their hand a dull looking device despite the fact whether they want to spend too much or not. Taking this aspect into consideration, Micromax has come with Canvas Nitro with leather finish back, which resembles faintly with Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S5 smartphones. It also has faint stitching on the back, but it is not very impressive. Although the imitation does not give it premium look yet it looks good. The phone is made of plastic and overall the design is simple. This phone is easy to carry and can be carried in one hand easily.
The three capacitive touch buttons for navigation have been provided below the display. The rear camera is on the back panel with LED flash and behind it is Micromax logo. The 5MP front camera is placed above the display at the right side.
The power key is placed on the top right edge and the volume key is provided on the left edge of the Nitro. The keys are made of coloured plastic. Since we received the reveiw unit in blue color therefore the keys are also of same color. The 3.5mm headset jack is at the top, and the micro-USB port can be found at the bottom of the device.
Display
This smartphone sports 5-inch HD (720×1280 pixel) IPS display, which reproduces sharp images and texts when you use indoors. In direct sunlight, it has poor legibility and for which, this device can’t be blamed as even some high-end smartphones fail this test when exposed to the sunlight. The other important feature of the display is that it boasts of an oleophobic coating to prevent fingerprints staining. To test this claim, we poured two drops of oil on it and the oil did not spill on the screen and remained there as it was dropped. Then after five minutes, I removed these three drops with the gentle rub with my finger and the screen absorbed it and became normal.
Software
The Nitro runs on almost stock version of Android Kitkat 4.4.2, which is commendable ingredient of this device as the UI imposed on the basic OS, creates problems not only for hardware but also for the majority of users, who are quite comfortable with the Android OS. However, Micromax could not fully leave the bug of tweaking the software. Micromax has tweaked the software a little bit and added a few additional features which appear to be influenced by HTC’s Sense UI and Samsung’s Touchwiz.
For instance, Quicklook is Micromax’s own version of HTC’s BlinkFeed. With Quick Look feed, you can select topics of your interest and get the same from select websites, but you do not have the choice to select the content from other publications unlike HTC’s BlinkFeed. The reading with this feature is not good as it has blue tint on the background of text when any article is opened.
The other software tweak, which reminds one of Samsung’s Smart Pause is the feature of pausing video playback when the user looks away. It works for most of the time.
The Canvas Nitro also has Smart Alerts feature enabling the users to view notifications of missed call, messages and emails right on the lock screen in a strip that matches the color of the type of notification. You will get a green strip for messages, red for email and blue for a missed call.
This smartphone comes pre-loaded with apps like M! Games, M! Live, BookMyShow, Clean Master, Getit etc., and these apps can not be uninstalled.
Camera
The Canvas Nitro is equipped with 13 MP Auto focus rear camera with Sony IMX135 CMOS sensor, F2.2 aperture, and rear wide angle of 28mm. For selfies, it houses 5MP camera with F2.4 aperture, 22m wide-angle lens with 75-degree viewing scope. Surprisingly, with these hig-end camera specifications, the quality of end-prodcut is not upto the mark. This justifies the theory that mere pixels enhancements do not increase the camera quality. The images clicked with this camera are not sharp and there is dearth of deatail contrast. The images taken in low-light and in the dark, do not come out well. It appears that some software tweaks are required to fill this lacuna in the camera performance. The picture quality of the front camera is also average.
This smartphone comes with very useful feature for using the camera. In this smartphone, all Camera Widgets can be found on the homescreen and users can access multiple modes of camera with just a touch on their home screen. For instance, if you want to click selfie , you are required to touch the icon on the home screen and if you want to use the camrea for video recording then again no need to go in the camera settings. Just click the necessary icon and perform the desired function.
Performance
Thanks to its processor of 1.7GHz Octa-Core (MediaTek MT6592) processor, coupled with 2GB of RAM and 8GB internal storage, which can be extended upto 32GB via microSD card, there are no issues as far as its daily operations are concerned. It performs all the functions without any hiccups, switching of apps, web-browsing, accessing social media apps like Facebook, Twitter etc. is smooth. Call and audio quality of this smartphone is good.
We even played high-end games like Asphalt 8 and Dead Trigger 2 on this smartphone and did not notice any lag and our gaming experience was more than satisfactory. Surprisingly, this smartphone is packed with powerful 2500mAh battery, which lasts for upto 14 to 15 hours even if you use it extensively by watching videos for very long.
Conclusion
The Canvas Nitro packs in decent hardware features and only disappointing part of this device is its camera, which underperforms despite its high-end specifications. The Nitro has direct competition with New Moto G, Asus Zenfone 5 and Xiaomi Mi3. Micromax has an advantage that Xiaomi Mi3 and Asus Zenfone 5 are not easily available whereas the Nitro can be bought easily via online and offline. The new Moto G is its really challenger. We would still recommend the Nitro to those who can ignore camera performance but want good battery back-up and overall good performance at reasonable price.
Images clicked in different environments:
