Micromax A111 Canvas Doodle Review

Samsung is the leader in smartphone category, but is facing stiff battle from vendors like Micromax. We have a bevy of mid-range phones that come with decent hardware that offer consumers a strong feature set and affordability, and Micromax has made a strong business of manufacturing and selling such devices. And these to mid-range smartphones are taking the fight to international vendors like Samsung. Right now, Nokia is heading the list in the Indian smartphone market for making affordable mid-range smartphones followed by Samsung. And the third place goes to none other than Micromax, which may or may not come as a surprise to many.

Design and screen

The build of this smartphone looks very similar to earlier devices made by the manufacturer, but with slight differences that won’t be noticed. As is usual, the chassis is made of plastic but this one has a flip cover to protect the display. Canvas Doodle also comes with a 5.3-inch FWVGA display screen with the resolution of 854X480. They need to improve on the display screens to catch up with current HD displays that are commonplace in the smartphone market. Micromax joined the quad-core team with their Canvas HD, Canvas 4 and Canvas 2 Plus but this time Micromax included a Qualcomm chipset with Canvas Doodle.

Internal hardware

It comes with a 1.2GHz quad-core CPU with 512MB RAM, which should be satisfactory. Internal storage is 4GB with a MicroSD card that takes it to a total of up to 32GB. The primary camera is 8MP with LED flash and 720p video recording and secondary camera is 2MP. This smartphone gives dual-SIM option that is usual for all Micromax devices. We get usual connectivity options like GPRS/EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi, WAP, USB and Bluetooth. The power behind this smartphone is a Li-Poly 2100mAh battery, which gives 6 hours of talk-time and 220 hours of stand-by. Canvas Doodle comes pre-installed with the latest Jelly Bean 4.1.2 OS and in-built apps.

Decent mid-tier handset

The Canvas Doodle is the kind of device that makes Micromax a rising leader in budget smartphones market but unlike Nokia and Samsung, Micromax hasn’t made a high-end smartphone that can compete in the global market. This kind of smartphones also ensures stability in the market by giving access to various options. This device may help Micromax in increasing the market sales because of the quad-core CPU and huge display at a very good price.

But there isn’t a smartphone that doesn’t come with cons. This one does too and the biggest one is its resolution. The RAM is pretty low when compared with other devices. The internal storage is very bad considering all your apps get saved there by default, which will limit you when installing your favorite apps and games. External storage is good but there should have been more options like 64GB since these days the high-end smartphones come with 32GB/64GB/128GB internal and external storage variations. With the Micromax A111 Canvas Doodle price in India at Rs. 10,080, it is ideally suited to contend with other budget mobiles in this category.

Conclusion

Micromax is India’s 3^rd largest manufacturer as of now but they have a lot of competition which will join in pretty soon enough with upcoming brands like Karbonn, Lenovo, Jolla, Acer, Asus and Xolo. Nokia, HTC, Samsung, Sony, and LG are pretty old and have a loyal base of consumers to provide their mid-range series of smartphones to, and that just makes the situation harder for Micromax.

So, their accomplishment speaks for itself. There are a lot of improvements that can make Micromax the top manufacturer in India, starting with quality of chassis and display, to timely software upgrades. Soon, we may have our first Indian smartphone brand gaining an international audience.