Saturday, May 21, 2016

GADGET GIZMO REVIEW Micromax Canvas 6

GADGET GIZMO 

REVIEW Micromax 

Canvas 6

A fingerprint scanner is slowly becoming a common feature in the premium, mid-range and sub `10,000 bracket from various brands. Micromax was one of the brands that inexplicably excluded this feature on their phones. This changes with the Canvas 6: the company's first mid-range offering with a fingerprint scanner.
The fingerprint scanner is placed on the back under the camera unit and has a glass finish. You can add a maximum of 5 fingerprints in the settings along with a pin code in case it fails to work. You can also restrict access to individual apps via fingerprint scanner by choosing from a list of installed apps in the settings. You also have to add a separate 4 digit PIN to unlock apps in case you use this feature. While your phone unlock can be pattern + finger, for apps, it has to be PIN + finger.
In our tests, the fingerprint scanner worked great: it woke and unlocked the device at the same speed as a majority of other devices (LeEco, Xiaomi, Panasonic) and worked 9 out of 10 times. However, it's not as fast as the fingerprint scanner we have seen on the Coolpad Note 3.
The design is a bit of a departure compared to most Micromax phones -and that's a good thing.The Canvas 6 has a metal unibody design with a curved back for better ergonomics. The camera is placed top-center behind a glass strip that runs edge to edge for added style. The metal finish power and volume buttons are on the right while the micro USB port and machine drilled speaker holes are on the bottom. Overall, the Canvas 6 looks and feels much better than the price suggests.
Performance from the phone is top-notch thanks to the octa core processor and 3GB RAM. We had no issues switching between running apps, playing full HD video or playing games like Dead Trigger 2. The only issue we noticed was that the phone tends to start heating up after 15 minutes of gaming. After about 25 minutes, it often became too hot to hold. The 3,000mAh bat tery managed to last from 9am to 6pm with around 15% to spare -this is with constant WiFi4G connectivity. This phone does not support any kind of fast charging. We had to plug the phone in for almost 4 hours to go from 10% to 100%.
The user interface of the Canvas 6 is based on Android 5.1 and in cludes the Around feature -also seen on the Canvas 6 Pro. Around detects your location and works as a one-stop solution for travel, food and shopping requirements. It works well and we feel it's a handy solution that saves you the hassle of installing multiple apps.
Camera performance is above average. You get a 13MP rear camera with phase detection au tofocus and f2.0 aperture. It fo cuses fast and there is minimal shutter lag. There is no `pro' mode though. We tried the cam era out in all kinds of light con ditions and it fares well though it can't shake low light noise. Images taken in low light appear fine at first, but there is a lot of visible noise & loss of de tails. The front camera is good in daylight but in low light, there is not much detail that often re sults in images looking blurred.
Overall, we think the Canvas 6 is one of the better devices from Micromax. It's priced the same as the Canvas 6 Pro that offers similar features, 4GB of RAM and a faster processor without the fingerprint scanner. However, both these de vices have the same problem.: they're overpriced compared to competition from Xiaomi (Redmi Note 3), LeEco (Le 1s) and Lenovo (K4 Note).
Karan.Bajaj@timesgroup.com

ET11MAY16

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