Micromax last month launched the iOne smartphone in India. The budget Micromax iOne has been priced competitively at Rs 4,999 and it comes in Black and Blue colour options. We got the chance to spend a couple of days with the Micromax iOne and this is what we think of it.
Design and Display
The Micromax iOne comes with matte plastic back panel with a glossy finish which seems to be of decent build quality at this price point. There are round-edges on the phone and it comes with a curved back which makes the device comfortable to hold in hands. It has a wide notch up top and a considerable chin at the bottom of the display. The glossy finish attracts a lot of smudges and fingerprints at the back which you will need to clean on a regular basis.
At the top of the display, there lies the front camera along and an earpiece and usual array sensors. On top, we have a 3.5 mm Headphone jack and a Micro USB port while at the bottom the phone only has a microphone. On the right side, we have power on/off button and volume rocker buttons while the left side is bare. It has a dual SIM slot and a micro sd card slot for expanding the memory.
The back panel of the device consists of a single camera setup with LED flash. It also has a #iOne by Micromax branding at the back. Below the branding, lies the speaker on the back panel. The phone does not feature any fingerprint sensor but it has face unlock feature apart from regular PIN or pattern for security. In our initial testing, we found the face unlock feature to be quite fast in unlocking the device.
For this budget, we found the device to be good in build quality but the design was totally off. The phone is quite compact and it is very easy to use it with a single hand. We found it to be comfortable to hold in hands as it is also very light weighted. The phone weighs just 120 grams.
Now talking about its display, the Micromax iOne sports a 5.45-inch HD IPS display with a Resolution of 540 X 1132 pixels and 19:9 aspect ratio. Nowadays, most of the phones come with a large display but small display lovers can buy the Micromax iOne smartphone which will fit in their needs with simple phone design and a standard notch
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Hardware and Software
Micromax iOne is powered by the Unisoc SC9863 octa-core Processor paired with 2GB of RAM. Internal storage is at 16GB with the option to expand further up to 128GB using a microSD card slot.
The Chipset used here is entry-level and is certainly not the best one around. With this chipset, the phone is not targeted for heavy users but this can be considered for first-time smartphone users. We were easily able to play light games like Candy Crush and Subway Surfer. Applications like Gmail, Maps, Youtube, and more did not take much time in opening and the device was easily able to handle most of the daily tasks, especially switching between apps. However, it is too early to comment on the performance of the device.
For the software, Micromax iOne also runs on Android 9 Pie operating system out-of-the-box. The phone comes with limited bloatware which is a good thing. So the users can download the apps as per their requirements. The device has only a few preloaded apps like Paytm, Google Duos, Mobile Assistant and sound recorder, each of which can not be deleted. The user interface has its own hits and misses and we will talk about this in details in our upcoming review.
Camera
On the camera front, the Micromax iOne sports a 5-megapixel rear sensor with flash support. For the front as well, there is a 5-megapixel sensor for selfies and video calling. The camera has various modes like Video, Photo, Beauty, FaceCute, Bokeh, Night and Panorama.
During our initial testing of the device, we found out that the device taking decent photos in proper lighting conditions but the same can not be said for low-light pictures. The results are not satisfactory as the images lack some detailing and the colours look dull. At this price range, the camera also did a pretty decent job in taking selfies. We will reserve our final judgment as we need to take a couple of more shots under different lighting conditions.
Battery and Connectivity
Battery life is one of the most looked after aspect while buying a smartphone. Micromax iOne is backed up by a 2200 mAh battery, which should ideally last a day or more under normal usage. One noticing features of this phone is that it comes with a removable battery which is generally not seen in other phones which are available in the market. The battery gets up charged fully in around 3 hours from zero to 100 per cent with its wall charger.
In terms of connectivity, the device comes with standard features like 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS with A-GPS, Micro USB 2.0, etc.