Micromax Canvas Juice 3 (Q392) Review

Micromax Canvas Juice series devices have been known for higher battery capacity as the name indicates. Recently Micromax announced the third device in the Juice series, the Canvas Juice 3 with a massive 4000mAh battery. It comes with a 5-inch (720×1280 pixels) HD IPS display sporting Corning Gorilla Glass 3. It is powered by a 1.3GHz MediaTek (6580) processor coupled with 2GB of RAM. There is also 8GB internal storage which is expandable via micro SD card. The Canvas Juice 3 smartphone is a dual-SIM (GSM+GSM) device which runs Android 5.1 Lollipop out-of-the-box.

It sports an 8MP rear autofocus camera with LED flash while there is a secondary 2MP front-facing camera. Here is the detailed review of the phone.

Related Reading: Micromax Canvas Juice 3 Unboxing

Design and Build:

Design wise, the Canvas Juice 3 is a typical Micromax phone. It has lot of resemblance to the Canvas Fire 4. It has a curved rear panel with a matte finish. The power and volume keys have a black finish and are located at the right side. The top houses the 3.5mm audio jack and the micro USB charging slot.

The rear panel houses the 8MP rear camera with LED flash and there is again a silver finish around the camera and flash. Two horizontal silver color lines run on top and bottom similar to iPhone. At the center of the rear panel, there is Micromax logo. The front panel has the 5.0inch HD display, front camera and the sensors. The device comes with three on-screen buttons. The rear panel also had the speaker unit which Micromax claims to be the best in class with  96dB sound.

Overall, the Canvas Juice 3 is a fairly good looking device.

Display:

Micromax Canvas Juice 3 comes with a 5 inch HD IPS display (1280 X 720p) and there is Corning Gorilla glass protection. The display on the Juice 3 is pretty good and the touch response is also smooth. Unlike other budget phones from Micromax, this one actually works pretty well and there is also a MiraVision display picture quality optimization included where in you can choose the picture mode (standard or Vivid) or even set a custom mode where you can change the contrast, saturation, brightness, sharpness, temperature etc.

The viewing angles are also pretty decent and so are the brightness levels. Overall, the display quality looks good for a budget smartphone.

Software:

Micromax Canvas Juice 3 runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop with a custom UI from the company. While the UI is not stock Android, there isn’t much of change from stock with similar notification center, app drawer and options. The settings menu is also similar to stock experience.

But having said that, there is also a First Touch launcher which can be switched from the home screen. This UI doesn’t look impressive and icons and layout looks ugly.

The first touch launcher has a toggle included in the home screen. This UI could be useful for elderly people especially with the large icons and unique layout.

The phone comes with another useful feature called Picture mode, which we mentioned in the display. The MiraVision display picture quality optimization included where in you can choose the picture mode (standard or Vivid) or even set a custom mode where you can change the contrast, saturation, brightness, sharpness, temperature etc.

Micromax, as usual, has included a bunch of bloatware in the device which includes Quikr, Snapdeal, Newshunt and many India specific apps which we feel should have been avoided as these occupy unwanted storage space.

Performance:

The device is powered by Mediatek MT6580 Quad-core processor clocked at 1.3Ghz with 2GB RAM. The overall performance was quite good and there weren’t any major issues with day to day usage. The gaming experience was just decent and may not be the best in the class as we have seen better overall performances on other devices.

The phone has 8GB storage and is expandable via micro SD card. There is close to 3.7GB of storage available in the first boot which is disappointing as the device comes loaded with too many bloatware from the company. You can also install SD card and directly install apps on the SD card.

The call quality on the device was decent and we didn’t have any issues like call drops. One of the highlights of the device is the 96dB output from the speaker. As claimed the sound output is pretty good and if you love listening using the speakers, then this will not disappoint you.

Camera:

Canvas Juice 3 comes with an 8MP rear camera with LED flash and a front-facing 2MP camera for selfies and video calls. The camera interface is the same as we see on most of the Micromax phones over the past two years or so. It is high time Micromax tweaked the interface a more friendly one. It does come with all the bells and whistles you would like on the camera interface.

Talking about the camera performance, the 8MP camera performance was just average and even in day light photos there was noise and photos lacked sharpness. While the colors were decent, the overall clarity was way below the competition. The 1080p sample was also just average. The phone also comes with 2MP front facing camera and the performance was poor and the quality was below average considering the price point. Overall, if you are looking for a decent camera experience, this isn’t the phone you should be considering.

Here are some of the camera samples taken with the phone.

Battery Life:

Micromax Canvas Juice 3 comes with a 4000mAh battery and this is the key aspect of Juice series. True to its name, the battery of the device works pretty well and you can easily get more than a day of usage with the battery. With average usage, you can easily get up to 1.5 days on the device.

The phone also comes with Super Power Lite more which gets you better battery life by turning off connectivity features like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and also clearing all background apps. This mode is pretty useful to get extra juice out of the phone battery.

Verdict:

Priced at Rs 8999 (official), the Micromax Canvas Juice 3 offers decent display, software and performance along with stellar battery performance. But where it lacks is the camera performance and the amount of storage available at this price point. If you are in the market for a budget smartphone with great battery life, this is worth considering, otherwise we suggest you to check out better alternatives available.