Faced with tough competition from online only sales model of Xiaomi, Lenovo and others, Micromax also announced an ultra budget smartphone, the Canvas Spark. The new device will follow the online flash sale model and comes with pretty good specs for the price it is being offered at. Micromax Canvas Spark comes with a 4.7 inch qHD display which has a resolution of 960 X 540 pixels and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for preventing scratches.
The device runs on a 1.3-Ghz quad-core MediaTek MT6582 processor and features 1GB RAM. There is 8 GB internal storage space of which around 4.10 GB is available for use. There is also microSD slot for expanding the memory. The phone comes with an 8MP rear camera with LED flash and a 2MP front camera for selfies and video calls. The phone runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop and features a 2000 mAh battery. Spec wise, there are lot of similarities with the Redmi 2, but the latter is powered by better processor and also comes with 4G LTE support.
Related Reading: Micromax Canvas Spark Unboxing
Here is the detailed review of the device.
Design and Build:
Design wise, the Micromax Canvas Spark is one of the better looking budget smartphones out there. While we see most of the budget smartphone not concentrating on design, Micromax has done a good job with the design. The edges of the device is curved and comes with a matte finish rear panel. The rear panel has also a curved design and there is a gold finishing around the sides of the device which gives a premium feel.
The power and volume keys are on the right side while the 3.5mm audio jack is on the top and micro USB charging slot is at the bottom. The rear panel has the 8MP camera, Micromax logo and speaker located at the bottom. The front panel has the 4.7 inch qHD display, front camera, sensors and the three capacitive touch buttons located at the bottom.
Display:
Micromax Canvas Spark comes with a 4.7-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display with a 540×960 pixels resolution (qHD) which comes to 234ppi. The Moto E also packs the same display resolution. But the display on Canvas Spark is not the best we have seen on a budget phone. The colors look washed out and the overall quality was disappointing. While the touch response was pretty decent, the viewing angles were not great and colors did change when tilted at an angle.
Sunlight readability was again not great on the device. The display has protection in the form of Corning Gorilla Glass 3, which is probably missing in many budget smartphones. Overall, the display was not the best aspect of the phone.
Software and Performance:
Canvas Spark comes loaded with Android Lollipop 5.0 out of the box and this is one great aspect of the phone. The phone UI is mostly stock Android with very less customizations from Micromax. The notification center is again Android Lollipop. Probably the only change in Micromax Canvas Spark UI is the transparency in the app drawer.
But the downside with the software is the number of bloatwares includes in the phone from Micromax. These apps includes M!Games, M!Live, and also MAd app along with other apps like Saavn, Myntra, Snapdeal and many more which is unnecessary for an average user. If you love stock Android experience, then Canvas Spark wont disappoint you with the UI.
Micromax Canvas Spark is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6582 CPU with Mali-400 GPU and 1GB RAM. The performance of the device was just average and there was evident lags in many areas. If you run multiple apps at the same time and switch between them, you can clearly see the lag. With several apps running in the background, the performance was sluggish. But having said that it can perform the basic tasks with ease.
The call quality was pretty decent on the device and the speaker performance was just average. The phone comes with 8GB of internal storage of which about 4.9 GB is available for use in the first boot. The device supports expandable storage of up to 32GB via micro-SD card and you can install apps on the SD card which is a good feature.
The gaming performance on the device was just average. While you can play almost all games including high graphic games, the performance was not really great. The device is pretty good for low end games.
Camera:
The phone packs a 8MP rear camera with flash and a front facing 2MP camera. While most of the phones in the sub 5k pricing offers 5MP camera, Micromax has gone for a 8MP shooter which is pretty good. The camera interface is typical of Micromax and packs all the necessary features you need on a smartphone camera.
The camera on the device has pretty decent performance in daylight with colors looking pretty good when compared to the competition. But having said that the colors are not really consistent. Indoor photos were not really good with lesser details and more noise. The images taken in low light were not encouraging, with noise being too evident to our liking.
The flash also works pretty good for low light conditions. The phone can record videos in 1080p and here again the colors were not consistent and slightly noisy. Overall, the camera is pretty good, but may not be the best in this price.
Here are some of the samples taken with the device.
Battery Life:
The device comes with a 2000mAh non-removable battery and the capacity is lower than what is offered on Redmi 2 and also Moto E. But the performance on Canvas spark was pretty good. We did install and run social apps in the background, emails, calls, casual gaming and still managed one day of usage. The battery performance was overall pretty good and you can easily get a day of usage with the battery on Canvas Spark.
Verdict:
Priced at Rs 4999, the Micromax Canvas Spark has a good design, comes with Android Lollipop and offers decent performance in day to day tasks. The display resolution and quality are not the best aspects of the device. If you are looking for a budget device with Android Lollipop, Canvas Spark is worth the buy. You can also check out InFocus M2 with similar specs and priced Rs 4999.
