I purchased this product a week ago form my local store in the Exchange for my previous Lenovo A850, which i had to exchange unfortunately because of the broken screen (repairing was costing a lot, it was better to get a new one in that price in exchange). I have written a review in Lenovo A850 thread if you want to confirm. Anyways, regarding the phone, I am really very satisfied with this purchase, i do not regret not repairing my previous one at all.
The pros and cons are as follows:
PROS:
1) The device looks premium. I have the black variant, which on the front looks pretty cool when the capacitive buttons lights goes off (however not as cool as an OGS panel). There is a glossy back cover which people might like (i personally prefer matte finish), but is a foolproof fingerprint magnet.
2) The built quality can be a bit unsatisfactory, please note I am saying this because the power and volume rocker buttons move back and forth a bit, but still the device does feel premium in hand considering the overall built. There are 3 capacitive touch buttons which register the input well and lights up during function.
3) The screen is 5 inches, which according to me is the most preferable size of screen for usage. It boasts a resolution of 540 x 960 ~220ppi pixel density, which is satisfactory, however it would have been better if Micromax had provided 720p resolution.
4) Mediatek MT6582M (Quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A7) performs exceptionally well. It scores above 17000 in Antutu and around 6000 in Quadrant and gives a good 57fps in Nenamark2, which is quite impressive considering the price range.
5) GPU is Mali-400MP2 which is certainly better than Power VR SGX544 which is almost in all local Mediatek powered phones.
6) Gaming is very good on this phone, I have tested Asphalt 8, Real racing 3, GT racing 2 and frontline commando 2 on this myself and all of them run exceptionally well, no lag at all.
6) RAM is 1 GB out of which you get 972 MB usable which is excellent. There is well more than 600 MB RAM initially for operations.
7) The phone is dual SIM, some people might find this feature useful.
8) It has a notification LED, however it only displays 2 colors - red and green.
9) Internal memory is 4GB, Of which internal storage 1.42GB is allocated as phone storage (1.2GB free) and 1GB as internal storage. Memory can be expanded upto 32GB via SD card. However, please note, you can move all you application to SD card and you can even set your SD card as you primary internal storage option onto which all of the big apps will directly be downloaded to your SD card, so no fear of small storage inspite of having just 4 GB internal memory.
10) Comes with Android 4.2.2 Installed, and there are high chances that it might receive KitKat update in the near future (according to the info leaked on the Google)
11) Primary camera is 8MP and secondary camera is 2MP, which performs fairly decently and can record videos at 1080p at 30fps. Though you can't expect too much in this price bracket.
12) Pricing is very decent.
NEUTRAL POINTS:
1) Battery is 2000mah, which is pretty decent but not excellent. Micromax should have provided atleast around 2250mah battery, but nonetheless it still gives me a good 24 hours of battery life with 3G always on and mild - moderate usage. Should definitely last u through workday hours i.e from morning 10 to evening 8 or something with moderate usage. Ultimately this depends on user to user.
2) The speaker at times gets covered by surfaces and blocks the sound. I would blame the design of the phones for this.
3) Its fairly long time since 4.3 has released Micromax should give it out to its customers now. This should have come with it. I hope all phones do really get KitKat update, it will further improve the performance drastically.
CONS:
1) Speaker quality is not upto the mark. The loudness and clarity, both are unsatisfactory.
2) In call clarity is though good, the loudness is not upto the mark.
3) The music quality is extremely bad. I can't feel the damn bass at all. Not at all happy with this point. I am really surprised that even with my Ajays 2 the music quality is bad, I can't imagine the quality with stock headphones. I haven't even bothered to test them.
4) No Gorilla glass.
VERDICT:
A nice tight budget phone with hefty performance your money can buy. It has all the qualities to be in your hand if thats your budget, however it could have been a complete package with the battery given a bit more and rectifying those flaws i mentioned. Hardcore music enthusiasts, please look elsewhere (I am very unsatisfied with this point myself).
- Shishir Paunikar5 May, 2014