Micromax is one of those few Indian brands, which has managed to survive the heated competition from Chinese players. However, it was severely injured with the aggressive pricing coupled with a high specs-to-price ratio by the Chinese players.
In the fag end of 2018, Micromax introduced two new smartphones, the Infinity N12 for Rs Rs 9990 and Infinity N11 for Rs 8990, for the Indian market. However, can its two warriors save the company’s sinking ship? Let’s find out.
What we liked about Micromax Infinity N12
Micromax Infinity N12 can be termed as one the most well-designed smartphone from the company. The front sports a large display and fortunately (or unfortunately) there is a notch at the top. The side bezels are minimal, though the chin is quite thick in our opinion.
The back panel is made of some plastic, but it moulded in such a fashion that it gives a premium look and feel. You get a dual-tone finish at the back with a mix of purple and blue. The phone feels quite comfortable to hold and it does not slip from your hands, like most of the glass panel-infused smartphones does these days. That said, the Micromax Infinity N12 gives a pretty decent look, though some might find inspiration from other Chinese players’ smartphones (take the example of Huawei Nova 3i).
Another strong point of the device is the battery backup. In our normal usage, the phone lasted more than one full day. The usage included surfing the web for some time, watching a few videos, checking emails and more. Under power usage, you get close to half a day battery backup, which is quite decent for this smartphone.
Micromax has tried to give a near stock experience on this smartphone. The infinity N12 runs on Android 8.1 Oreo with company’s 360 UI on top of it. The user interface is more refined and the company has cut down some noticeable amount of bloatware. There are only apps like Micromax browser, video player, FM Radio, etc. apps that comes pre-loaded in this device. The Settings menu is now streamlined, meaning that you will find no difficulty in finding the desired options.
Coming to the performance, the Micromax Infinity N12 is powered by a MediaTek Helio P22 Chipset along with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. The phone responded well when it comes normal usage and a bit of multi-tasking. It was able to handle most of the casual gaming effectively, though graphics-demanding games are another case.
What we didn’t like about Micromax Infinity N12!
The display was one area where Micromax felt short as compared to its competition. The 6.18-inch HD+ display with a screen Resolution of 1520 x 720 pixels. The colours were not as sharp as we have seen in other smartphones at this price range. For example, whenever you play some animated videos on this smartphone, the colours seem to be a bit washed out in nature. The brightness is also quite average in our opinion.
Another sore point of this smartphone is the camera. The Micromax Infinity N12 employs a dual-camera setup at the rear that comes with a combination of 13-megapixel primary sensor and a 5-megapixel secondary lens. For the front, there is a 16-megapixel shooter for selfies and video calling. In our testing, we found out that the phone was particularly slow in processing the images. The images clicked through this smartphone were quite average as it lacks some detailing and the sharpness was notably missing. The low light shots were below average as the photos came out of noisy and full of grains. The selfie camera does a decent job, though you cannot expect wonders from it.