Last year, Micromax had announced their first device in the Unite series, the Unite 2 with pretty decent specs and it went on to become a successful entry level phone. Now, the company has announced the successor to this popular device with the new Unite 3.
The Unite 3 comes with slightly upgraded specs when compared to Unite 2. The phone features a 4.7 inch WVGA display (480 X 854 pixels) and is powered by a 1.3Ghz Quad core processor with 1GB RAM. The phone also has 8GB internal storage included which is expandable via microSD card. The phone comes with 8MP rear camera and 2MP front camera. So how does the Unite 3 match up with the competition, lets find out in this review.
Related Reading: Micromax Unite 3 Unboxing
Design and Build:
Design wise, Unite 3 doesn’t offer anything new and it looks a lot like the Unite 2. The design is rather uninspiring, but the material quality looks decent. The phone comes with curved back panel and also curved edges on top and bottom. The removable back panel comes in different colors including white and blue. The phone has power button and volume keys on the right side. The 3.5mm audio jack and the micro USB slot is place on the top and the microphone at the bottom.
The back panel also houses the 8MP camera with LED flash and the Micromax logo along with speakers placed towards the bottom. The phone supports dual SIM and the primary SIM card is normal SIM and secondary being micro SIM. There is also micro SD expansion slot. The front panel houses the 4.7 inch display, three capacitive buttons, front camera and also the usual set of sensors. The bezel of the phone is pretty huge and quite a lot of space is wasted on the top and bottom. Micromax could have done a better job with the design especially when it looks similar to the Unite 2.
Display:
While most of the budget devices have moved to qHD or HD displays, Micromax is still using the out-dated FWVGA display on the Unite 3. The display has a resolution of 480 x854 pixels which is pretty low and this shows up in the display. The display looks pixelated and does not have good performance. The FWVGA display is one of the worst aspects of the device. The touch response was fairly good and the brightness levels are decent. There is Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection on the display.
It is high time Micromax thought of improving the display quality of budget smartphone. Overall, we were disappointed with the quality of display.
Software:
Micromax Unite 3 comes with Android 5.0 out of the box and is one of the few devices having the latest Android 5.0 out of the box in the budget segment. The UI on the Unite 3 is mostly stock Android with very little customizations from the company. The notification center and the multi tasking menus have the stock implementation. The phone comes with app drawer and has support for widgets.
The company has bundled several bloatwares into the device which includes Hotstar, Chaatz, Marble, Paytm, NewsHunt, Quikr etc.
The phone also comes with few gestures which can be enabled from the settings. The phone also has support for Hotknot feature where in you can exchange files by tapping on the display of other compatible device.
There is also a different type of home screen (launcher) which can be activated from the settings. This launcher has a different look, but not really a usable one. This launcher has enlarged icons, which is pretty use friendly for elderly people.
The phone also comes with an interesting app called Unite Lens which can convert to different Indian languages from English or Hindi. All you need to do is to open the app and select the language preference and then point the camera to the text. We tried using the feature, but didn’t work properly.
Performance:
The device is powered by 1.3 Ghz Quad Core Meditatek MT6582M chipset with Mali 400 GPU. It is coupled with 1GB of RAM and 8gB internal storage. The performance on the device was fairly good for average tasks, but did show some lag when stressed with large number of background apps. The device has decent performance for causal tasks, but not recommended for heavy users.
There is 8GB internal storage and out of which the phone has around 4.9GB user available which is pretty good. You can also expand the storage via micro SD card and also install apps on the SD card by changing the default write disk. The gaming experience was just average with the low resolution display. Ideally the device is just good for casual gaming and not recommended for heavy gaming. The heating on the device was minimal even when gaming.
The call quality on Unite 3 was good and so was the speaker output which is pretty decent for a budget phone.
Camera:
The phone comes with 8MP rear camera with LED flash and a front facing 2MP camera for selfies and video calls. The interface of the camera app is the old and outdated one from Micromax which you see on almost all Micromax phones. While the interface offers good amount of features, it is kind of laggy interface and not really easy to use.
The daylight shots taken with the camera had decent quality with good colors, the contrast was on higher side and not really the best in the price point. The overall quality was just average and does not match up with the competition. The low light shots were noisy and did not have good clarity, but the flash did work decent when the lighting was poor. Overall, we would say the camera is just an average one. The front camera is not really good for selfies, but works for sharing on social sites.
The camera does support 1080p video recording and the quality was again just average. Here are some of the photos taken with the device.
Battery Life:
The phone packs a 2000mAh battery and the battery performance on the device was decent. We tested the battery by running few social apps, emails configured and also regular calls, browsing and a bit of gaming and we could squeeze in a day of usage with the battery. If you are an average user, you can easily get a day of usage.
Verdict:
The device is priced Rs 6999, but now available for purchase for Rs 6499 on many sites. Today, the competition in the budget segment is so high that most of the devices in 7k price point offers HD display and better hardware. Unite 2 has a really poor display, design looks out-dated, mediocre performance and camera is just average. The only good thing about the device is that it runs Android Lollipop and the UI is mostly stock. We wouldnt really recommend this device especially when you have Moto E, Redmi 2, Lenovo A6000 Plus and Yuphoria, all having better hardware at almost same pricing.
One thing i must admit is that this is very decent looking phone. it’s looks very pretty and the most important feature of this phone is, it’s in budget phone with very lower price.