Verdict
The Micromax Canvas Nitro is the best Smartphone in the 15K segment after
the Xiaomi Mi3. Micromax has gone all out and put together an octa core phone
for the price of a quad-core one. The phone manages to create a lot of friction
against the much loved Motorola Moto G and with the Asus Zenfone 5 and ZTE V5
running a step behind in terms of performance
The phone brings a clean understated design back to the market, and only
comes in white and Blue backs with faux leather at the back. We had our doubts
about the performance and the battery which were cleared when we tested the
device.
Display & Design
If you've ever felt that the majority of phones are just variations of
each other, the Micromax Canvas Nitro won't really change that impression. At
first glance the Nitro looks like just another Micromax device with an distinctive glass front with three captive buttons at the bottom of the
screen. The story changes when you come to the back of the device as Micromax
has used a faux leather back with fake stitching instead of the matte or
smooth plastic back it generally uses on its phones.
As usual, the earpiece is placed on the top of the display and is flanked
by the front facing camera on its right. The power and volume rocker are
situated at the right and left of the device respectively. As for the speaker,
it is at the back gets muffled when you place the phone on its back.
The Micromax Canvas Nitro comes with a 5 inch screen with 720p HD
resolution. Micromax boasts that the the screen is oleo-phobic and anti-finger
print but in my tests I found these claims to be false. The screen looks
beautiful indoors but dull when you see it outside in direct sunlight even though
it's not totally illegible. The screen looks bright and crisp while playing
games or handling day to day to work.
Software & UI
Micromax has kept the software very basic in terms of the Android
operating system. The Nitro is running an almost stock version of Android
Kitkat 4.4.2 and I don’t have any complaints with the UI. Micromax has made its
UI a bit more minimalist and that has added to the good experience. The
interface looks snappy while opening apps or multitasking and left a very
satisfactory impression on me.
The only issue which I have with the Micromax Canvas Nitro is the included
bloatware which is quite annoying. Most of the added bloatware are just web
links to websites and don’t serve any purpose. On the home screen if you swipe
left you will see Micromax has tried to copy HTC blink feed but I think this is
an unnecessary addition to the UI. The silver lining in this is that Micromax
has been generous enough to add Swiftkey keyboard as standard.
Hardware & Performance
Micromax has skipped the quad-core and the hexa-core which is an
understood norm in this price category and gone straight for the 1.66GHz
octa-core processor from Media Tek. With 2 gigs of RAM onboard, everything
seems to fly by until you play graphics intensive games or try to play a 1080p
movie which will certainly heat up your device. The heating issue still persists
in Media Tek powered SoCs and in turn will affect the performance of the
device.
I tried games like Dead Trigger 2 and Asphalt 8: Airborne which ran
smoothly with a slight frame drop issues. Compared to this, the quad-core
powered Motorola Moto G (2nd Gen) performed a bit better in the gaming
department. If you are like me and have your media on your phone rather than
the cloud, the 8GB internal space in the Micromax canvas Nitro is up-gradable via a micro SD card.
The day to day performance on the Nitro is without any major hiccups and I
couldn't find any faults beside the occasional frame drop while playing a high
res 1080p video.
Camera & Battery
The Micromax Canvas Nitro offers a 13MP primary camera which is marginally
better than the ZTE V5 my colleague Prasid tested a few days earlier. Micromax
has used a Sony CMOS sensor with an f/2.2 aperture and added a blue glass
filter over it by Scott, that's supposed to make it more sensitive to color. However, we found that this makes the pictures shot by the Smartphone take a
cool bluish tint.
The front camera is a 5MP BSI fixed focus camera with a wide angle lens
and quite acceptable for taking selfish and video calls. As for the video
quality I was not convinced as the video captured came shaky and a bit low on
sound.
Battery is the playing field which Micromax Canvas Nitro has mastered. In
our battery test when we played a 1080p video on a loop for an hour, we
recorded a battery drop of just five percent. Even when I played Asphalt 8
Airborne for more than two hours I recorded a mild drop in battery. It took me
almost 14 hours to drain its battery under heavy usage. I may add the battery
life of the Canvas Nitro is comparable to the Samsung Galaxy Tab S.
Price Rs.12, 990/-