Micromax has recently launched their latest budget smartphone, the Canvas Infinity in India. The canvas Infinity is the cheapest smartphone to come with a 18:9 aspect ratio along with Full Vision infinite display. The phone is powered by Snapdragon 425 Quad core processor with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage and has Android 7.1.2 Nougat out of the box. The device is priced Rs 9,999, so how does it perform in this segment? Let’s find out in this detailed Micromax Canvas Infinity Review.
Design and Build:
The Canvas Infinity is quite a good looking device in the price segment and comes with a removable back panel. It has a metal rear panel with plastic on the sides. The build quality looks good for a budget offering but in terms of the design, there are some resemblances to the Redmi Note 4 in terms of the rear panel. The rear panel houses the 13MP camera, LED flash and the fingerprint scanner below it. The Micromax logo and the speaker unit is located at the lower part of the rear panel. The top panel has the 3.5mm audio jack while the bottom section has charging slot. The power and volume keys are on the right side. The SIM slots and the micro SD card slot can be accessed after removing the back panel.
The front panel has the 5.7 inch HD display, 16MP front camera, and the selfie flash. The navigational buttons are on screen. Even though the phone has a 5.7 inch display size, it is quite compact to use because of the infinite display. Overall, the device feels good in terms of design and build quality.
Display:
The display is one of the important aspects of the phone and it comes with a 5.7 inch HD display with 18:9 aspect ratio, first of its kind in this segment. The only other competition is the LG Q6 which is 50% more costlier than Infinity. The 18:9 aspect ratio brings in a resolution of 1440 X 720P. The display is having a 2.5D curved glass and has good color quality. The sharpness levels and overall clarity looks good even though it is an HD panel. The viewing angles are decent and so is the sunlight legibility. The brightness levels of the display could have been a tad higher especially when using outdoors. The touch response is also smooth.
The display is good for immersive multimedia experience.
Software:
Micromax Canvas Infinity comes with Android 7.1.2 out of the box and it has a custom UI with multiple home screens. The UI has drawn some inspirations from iOS with the layout and also the icons. It comes with a notification area where the notifications and quick toggles are arranged in two screens. The settings panel is also a custom one.
The phone comes with lot of additional tools including smart actions and gestures. There is double tap to wake and sleep, flip to mute and accepting calls. There is also one handed UI available on the phone. Since it comes with on screen navigational buttons, you can change the position of back and recent apps key.
Other added features include three finger screenshot and also support for themes. You can download from a collection of themes.
One of the annoying aspects of the phone is the App Center app installed on the device. It pops up notifications and also installs a few apps automatically. There are a handful of apps pre-installed on the device.
Performance:
Micromax Canvas Infinity is powered by the Snapdragon 425 Quad core processor with 3GB of RAM. While the Snapdragon 425 is not a powerful chipset like the SD625, it was quite responsive in day to day tasks on the Canvas Infinity. But when you push it harder for heavy multitasking, you can see a bit of struggle happening. The gaming performance also had a similar experience with heavy graphic rich games showing lags and struggle while playing in high graphic settings. Ideally the device is suited for casual games. There was no heating issues on the phone.
The phone comes with 32GB internal storage and you get close to 24GB in the first boot. You can also expand the storage using SD card as it comes with a dedicated SD card. The phone also has dual SIM cards along with 4G LTE and VoLTE support. The call quality and speaker performance was good on the device.
The phone comes with rear mounted fingerprint scanner and it does a good job in unlocking the phone. While it is not the fastest fingerprint scanner, it is quite accurate.
Camera:
Micromax Canvas Infinity sports a 13MP rear camera with F/2.0 and LED flash and a front 16MP selfie camera with f/2.0 and front facing flash. The camera UI of the device is something well implemented and comes with a host of features including the ability to view the photos in the interface without having to open the gallery. This is made possible with the 18:9 aspect ratio. The camera interface features tools like panorama, beauty, video recording and more. There is also a super pixel mode available. The camera samples taken with the device in day light conditions came out pretty well with decent clarity and sharpness along with good color reproduction for a phone in this segment. We haven’t seen too many phones in the sub 10k INR segment with good camera abilities and Micromax has done a good job here. The low light samples were also quite good with details although noise did creep into the photos with low light. The selfie camera is also one of the best we have seen in this segment and produces some really good selfies overall. Here are some of the samples taken with the device.
Battery Life:
Canvas Infinity comes with a 2900mAh battery and the battery performance is decent and you can get a day of battery life with 3 to 3.5 hours screen on time. Since the Snapdragon 430 is not as efficient as the SD 625, the battery performance isn’t stellar, but acceptable one. We tested the battery life on daily usage basis and could get through a day of battery life with moderate usage.
Verdict:
Priced at Rs 9,999, the Micromax Canvas Infinity has lot of good aspects going its way including the 18:9 aspect ratio, latest version of Android, upgrade to Android O and good set of cameras at an affordable pricing. Even though there are few annoyances like auto software/game installs and average gaming (not a powerful processor), the Canvas Infinity is a good budget offering especially with 24 hours repair or replace promise (conditions apply).
The Canvas Infinity is available starting September 1st on Amazon.
Excellent review…..