An ad that has beautiful babes shaking their hips as a guy with a Micromax Canvas Music phone with JBL headset passes by is certainly good for promoting this device, but does it offer anything for which you should spend your hard earned money?
Design
Micromax Canvas Music looks average from the front. The back panel looks good though with its rubberised finish. A Micromax logo in the back panel further gives a boost to the overall look.The phone is just 11.3 inch thick. It is quite light and is complimented by its rubberized back panel – all this results in a very good grip.
It isn’t a big handset anyway but Micromax has preferred conventional positions for its buttons for easier operation. For instance, the power button is conveniently placed on the right hand side and the volume rocker is on the left side. As usual, the Micro USB cum charger port and 3.5 mm jack are at the top.
Display
The handset comes with a 4.5 inch 480 x 854 pixel display. This means it has 217 ppi pixel density, which seems okay but many low cost handsets with 4.5 inch screens have 244 or higher Pixel density (ex: Xolo Q700).
The screen thus looks okay; neither bad nor good. We had no problem whatsoever vis-à-vis the touch inputs; the display, however, isn’t bright enough for use in bright sunlight.
Memory
Canvas Music comes with 503 MB Internal Memory (4 GB ROM,) but has a 32 GB expandable memory slot. I would have appreciated some more internal memory, at least 2 GB, which is a norm for handsets these days.
Entertainment
As the name suggests, the Micromax Canvas Music is a music oriented handset. However, do not think that it comes with specialised music technology like HTC’s Beats Audio. Expecting such a thing from such a low cost handset is quite too much). But anyway, Micromax is providing a headset of JBL and free access to Micromax MLive with this handset. On MLive you can choose from around 3 lakh songs (claimed Micromax,) including English, Hindi, Gujarati and Punjabi songs.
The JBL headset (JBL Tempo J03W) is of very good quality. Micromax is also giving another piece of normal earphones with the device.
Camera
Canvas Music comes with a 5 Megapixel rear camera which is assisted by dual LEDs. This auto focus camera can record high definition (720 x 1280 pixel) videos. The camera is reasonable. For good pictures though you have to rely on its HDR functionality.
There is a 0.3 megapixel front camera as well.
Connectivity
The phone, like most low cost Android handsets, comes with WiFi with hotspot functionality. However, this 3G handset has the latest Bluetooth 4.0 version, GPS, micro USB 2.0, and a 3.5 mm jack.
Battery
The Canvas Music has an 1800 mAh Li-Ion battery, which claims to provide 5 hours of talktime and 260 hours of standby on 2G network. The official figures itself are not encouraging. We used the device for an hour of gaming with WiFi in which it lost around 15 per cent charge. We then used it to watch videos on YouTube, in which it lost 20 per cent charge in 40 minutes.
Performance
The Micromax Canvas Music has a Mediatek 6577 dual core Processor clocked at 1 GHz with 512 MB RAM and Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean operating system. As the specification suggests, the phone is good for mildly graphics intensive games. You should use a task manager to clear its memories every now and then too. Otherwise, the phone will definitely hang.
However, Micromax should be appreciated for providing Android 4.1 instead of ICS as most Android handsets in this price range have.
Conclusion
Micromax Canvas Music is currently available for just above Rs 8,500 from retailers, and it is offering a JBL headset worth Rs 1,500. So, essentially, Micromax is offering the phone for Rs 7,000 only.
At such a cheap price there aren’t many handsets with better specifications than the Canvas Music. So in a nutshell, go for the Canvas Music for a good headset, Android 4.1 and a decent display, but don’t choose it for gaming or the camera.