Review: Micromax Canvas Turbo Mini Slim and sleek

Taking a cue from global device makers like Samsung, Sony and HTC, Indian firm Micromax has also launched a compact version of its flagship smartphone, Canvas Turbo. Besides the size, the Turbo Mini also comes with comparatively inferior specifications and a lower price tag. In that context, we tried to find out if Canvas Turbo Mini can still aspire to rank among the best mid-range compact phones available in the Indian market.

Design

Canvas Turbo Mini offers the same design seen in the Canvas Turbo, but in a compact form factor. One of the most striking things about the phone is its light weight. At 110gram, the Canvas Turbo Mini weighs less than most smartphones in the market.

At just 7.8mm, it is also considerably thinner compared to phones in the same price bracket.

Sporting a unibody design, the phone features a plastic front panel surrounded by a chrome frame and a partial metal back panel.

The front panel is dominated by the Canvas Turbo Mini's 4.7-inch display with three capacitive touch buttons for navigation, placed below it. The 5MP front-facing camera and the sensor array sit above the display.

The volume rocker and the power keys are conveniently located on the right edge, while the left edge sports the micro-sim tray. We had a hard time ejecting the micro-sim tray due to alignment issues and poor finishing.

The back features a metal plate surrounded by plastic panels at the top and bottom. The top panel is removable and hides a normal sim slot and microSD card slot. Even here, we felt that the finishing could have been better.

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The rear features the 8MP camera lens and LED flash, in addition to the Micromax branding and product labels.

The top edge houses the micro-USB port and the 3.5mm headset jack.

Display

Micromax Canvas Turbo Mini sports a 4.7-inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 720 X 1280p and pixel density of 312ppi. The display offers good viewing angles, decent under-sun legibility and brightness. Text and images look crisp and sharp, colors’ are vivid though the colour temperature is on the cooler side which means that whites tend to look a little blue.

Software

Micromax Canvas Turbi Mini runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and Micromax has customised the interface with its UI skin and custom icons. Unlike stock Android, the entire UI sports a White theme that cannot be altered.

The Phone app, Messaging app, Music and Video player apps have been customized. The video player app can be resized and can float over other apps or the homescreen.

The phone offers smart gestures like flip to silent or receive calls when the phone is in close proximity to your ear.

Other than that, it comes with some preloaded third party apps including BBM, Opera mini, Kingsoft Office, Hike messenger, and Spuul and demo games like Bubble X Slice and Seven Stars.

With access to Google's Play Store, there's no limit to the number of apps that you can download. The phone also includes Micromax's own content and services marketplace, M!Live.

Camera

Canvas Turbo Mini sports an 8MP rear camera with LED flash and a 5MP front-facing camera. Micromax offers its own camera app which features Normal, HDR, Smile detection, Panorama and Scene detection modes.

The app also offers a burst mode, a GIF Animation mode, 3D Panorama and Remove Object modes. Granular settings for exposure, colour effect, ISO and white balance, among others, are also included.



The image quality offered by the rear camera is decent though focusing could be an issue while taking close-ups. Photos captured indoors in less light were grainy. The camera is capable of shooting 1080p videos and did a satisfactory job though the lack of a secondary microphone affects the quality of audio.

The front camera captured decent quality pictures for selfies. It's also good for video chats.

Performance

Canvas Turbo Mini is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core MT6582 MediaTek chipset and offers 1GB RAM. We were satisfied with the performance of the phone while navigating across the menu, launching apps, browsing the web and clicking photos. Games like Subway Surfers and Temple Run 2 were running smoothly without any lag or stutter. Even graphics-intensive games like Asphalt 8 and Dead Trigger 2 performed well.

The phone comes with just 4GB of internal storage and only 1.6GB is available to the user which is a big downside as Micromax doesn't supply a microSD card with the phone. You can use your own microSD card of up to 32GB storage capacity though.

In synthetic benchmark tests, the phone's performance was slightly inferior to the Motorola Moto G. The phone scored 16,732 in Antutu, 5,848 in Quadrant and 53.7 in Nenamark 2 benchmark tests.

In terms of multimedia, the phone comes with FM radio capability and the phone's built-in speaker offers decent sound output. The default video player supports a large number of multimedia file formats.

We did not encounter any issues while making calls and were satisfied with the phone's network reception. Voice clarity and loudness levels were also up to the mark. The phone comes with GPS for navigation and maps and was easily able to lock a signal.

Canvas Turbo Mini is backed by an 1800mAh battery with a claimed standby time of up to 180 hours and talk time of up to 6 .5 hours. With moderate to high usage, including about one to two hours of making calls, playing games, clicking some pictures, listening to music and browsing the web, the phone will just last you a working day, if you put the screen brightness at the highest level and keep 3G turned on. You'll need to charge it by late evening.

Verdict

With a reduced price tag of Rs 12,990, the Micromax Canvas Turbo Mini is one of the better mid-range Android phones available in the market. It's worth pointing out that the phone was launched at Rs 14,490 but Micromax decided to give it a price cut shortly after the launch of the Moto G which starts at Rs 12,499.

Moto G boasts of better build quality and the latest software. It runs Android 4.4 KitKat and comes with the promise of regular software updates.

Indian Smartphone brands don't really have a good track record when it comes to after sales support and OS updates though to the company's credit, Micromax has offered software updates for its other Canvas series phones, in the past.

In terms of performance, the Moto G is ahead of the Canvas Turbo Mini. It even offers better battery backup. However, Turbo Mini offers expandable storage which is missing in Moto G. So in case you like to carry your entire music collection with you, Canvas Turbo Mini is a better buy.