With the Micromax Canvas Selfie 2, the Indian company is attempting to cater to the budget conscious consumer.
Plus, it’s dedicated an entire range of phones to the selfie trend sweeping the world.
Key Specifications: Micromax Canvas Selfie 2
- Display: 5-inch FWVGA IPS display
- Operating System: Android 5.0 Lollipop
- Processor: 1.3GHz MediaTek quad-core processor
- RAM: 1GB
- Front Camera: 5-Megapixel, Fixed-focus
- Rear Camera: 5-Megapixel, Auto-focus with LED flash
- Battery: 2,000mAh
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Dual-SIM
- Price: Rs 5,800
What’s Good?
The Micromax Canvas Selfie 2 is a budget smartphone aimed at fresh adopters of touch technology. The specifications and features are hence at par with the average consumer profile.
The smartphone comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop out-of-the-box with Micromax’s Firstouch UI overlaid. Firstouch aims to simplify the user interface with large icons of primary applications such as contacts, messaging, camera, settings and music. Personally, I preferred the stock Android launcher and UI, which were much cleaner.
Now, coming to the point of the phone – the selfie camera. The phone sports a 5-megapixel snapper on both sides. On the front is a fixed focus camera while the rear one has auto-focus with an LED flash. The selfie camera has a beauty mode, which makes the eye bigger, skin clearer and tone better. The cameras performed really well even in low-light and artificially lit areas. The colour reproduction is decent outdoors too.
The smartphone has a 5-inch, 196ppi LCD display. The 8GB on-board storage is sufficient for general applications and is expandable up to 32GB with a microSD card. The speakers at the back are loud and clear at moderate levels.
The phone’s performance was mildly satisfactory and apart from jarred lines because of the resolution, there were little to no lags in graphic-intensive games like Angry Birds and Asphalt 8.
What’s Bad?
Keeping in mind the budget tag of the Canvas Selfie 2, expectations were kept quite low but the phone still disappoints in certain areas.
First, if the product is based on selfies, autofocus support at the front should have been added. Yes, we can manage without an LED flash at this price.
The phone is quite slim and the removable back panel has a faux-leather look. But the panel is actually a thin layer, which feels very fragile when you try to remove the cover for SIM or memory cards. The lack of a Gorilla Glass layer on the display adds to the fragility. The screen attracts a lot of smudges and fingerprints. But hey, there’s a screenguard in the box if that’s any consolation.
Another disappointment was in the battery department. The 2,000 mAh battery lasted just around 7-9 hours on regular usage involving phone calls, photography, Internet surfing and WhatsApp. A full charge at night dropped to 80-82% by morning, which is pretty bad on standby.
Why Buy It?
The 5-inch phone looks good and has a decent camera performance. Sadly, that’s about it. The primary competition faced by the Canvas Selfie 2 is from Micromax’s sister brand Yu. Yu’s Yuphoria offers a 720p display, better cameras, higher battery life and storage capacity, all for an additional 500 rupees. So, it makes complete sense to skip the Canvas Selfie 2.
After all, would you really buy a smartphone just for the selfie camera?