Micromax Canvas Xpress 4G – Lets discover what it has got.

Earlier it was ‘Roti, Kapda aur Makaan ( Food, clothes and Home) in human basic needs to survive but now another thing has been added in these is a mobile. Not a basis mobile phone but a smart phone having all latest applications, features and most important – cost effectiveness is the desire of Indian mobile users. The sub 7K smart phone segment is a heated one. Every week a new entry-level phone is launched by a domestic or Chinese company within India, leaving little or no difference between the specifications of these phones. Another entrant to this category is Micromax Canvas Xpress 4G, which is priced at Rs 6,599 and is the successor to Canvas Xpress 2. So does this budget smart phone have something new to offer?

Design and Camera

You might call it a budget constraint or the race to deliver new phones quickly. In terms of design of their less costly phones, Micromax has never really been pioneering, and the company hasn’t made an exception with Canvas Xpress 4G’s design. This newly launched blue coloured mobile device is just average to look at and has nothing special or extraordinary about its appearance.

Micromax Canvas Xpress 4G is a rectangular smart phone with sharp corners. The front of the phone has a 5-inch HD display that supports 720p resolution surrounded by a thick bezel. We found the display of the phone to be good and it did not show any pixilation and presented the colours accurately, even when we viewed the screen from different angles. Phone usage under direct sunlight is a bit of a problem.

The speaker of the smart phone and the selfie camera are placed above the display and users get the haptic keys at the bottom. The back panel of the Micromax Canvas Xpress 4G houses the 2,000mAh removable battery along with the dual sim and the microSD card slots. The main camera at the rear comes with an LED flash with the Micromax logo below it.

Moving on to the camera capabilities, the smartphone sports an 8MP rear camera and a 2MP front-facing camera. Speaking first about the primary camera of the phone, it takes decent pictures in well lit as well as in low light conditions. Now that is something everyone looks forward to in a budget phone and most of them fail in low light conditions, thankfully not this one. We found the photos to be good, but colours could have been better. On the other side, although there is a beauty feature available on the front camera, it does require a lot of work to produce the best picture.

Performance and Hardware

The Micromax Canvas Xpress 4 runs Android 5.1 Lollipop OS, which has not been customized much. Like its predecessor, the phone’s app drawer has not been integrated with the homescreen. Canvas Xpress 4G comes with a number of preloaded apps like Wynk Music, Saavn, Quikr, Hike, Chaatz, etc, which can be uninstalled by the user if one doesn’t wish to use them.

Since it is a budget phone with limited on board storage, one would end up cleaning the not-so-used apps. We were hoping to find an app that we particularly liked in the Canvas Xpress 2 called Start. This app sets up a simplified lock screen enabling the user to access most used apps and social media accounts directly from the from the lock screen itself. Sadly, it is not present in this phone. It would have made some many things simpler for the users.

Moving on, the software of the smartphone was simple and user friendly, some more customization option would have been wonderful. The Micromax Canvas Xpress 4G is powered by a 1GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6735P processor and 2GB of RAM. It offers 16GB of internal storage (of which 11.8GB is available for users) and can hold microSD cards of up to 32GB. The phone supports 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and also comes with an FM radio tuner.

The phone never slowed down when we opened multiple apps or Chrome tabs simultaneously, however, we noticed slight lag while switching between apps. On the gaming front, we didn’t face any problem while playing games like Angry Birds and Temple Run. However, when we tried to play heavier games like Asphalt 8, there were some random frame drops.

Speaking of the 2,000mAh battery of the phone, it was a disappointment and the phone had to be charged again within 8 hours of above-average usage that included social networking, voice calling, and clicking pictures from the phone camera.

The call quality of the Canvas Xpress 4G was not up to the mark. We have seen rather heard better from Micromax phones The GPS of the phone worked perfectly fine, but the phone did heat up after a prolonged use of maps. This is the case with most smart phones in this category.

Priced at Rs 6,599, the phone competes with the likes of Yu Yuphoria and Microsoft Lumia 540 dual SIM. We felt the Micromax Xpress 4G had so much potential on paper, but just does not keep up with the competition.

In the end we were left with a mixed bag of emotions. On one hand we loved that the phone supports 4G networks and has a decent rear camera plus a nice display. We were a bit disappointed with the low battery life and sub standard call quality. And these are two things that have to be super in any phone to make it a brilliant buy.