Micromax Canvas Selfie 2 Review

Like every country, India too has no dearth of selfie lovers. Smartphone manufacturing companies do not want to miss the opportunity to cash in on this craze. Although many people say that selfies should be banned. But it is also well known that technology companies are introducing selfie related products and accessories every day. Recently Asus Zefone Selfie was introduced. We found this handset good during the review. Now Micromax has introduced the second generation of its Canvas Selfie handset, Canvas Selfie 2. Micromax Canvas Selfie 2, available for Rs 5,999, is the ‘most affordable selfie smartphone’ available in the market, but how is its performance? Let’s find out.

Look and design

The build quality of the Canvas Selfie 2 is quite good and the plastic used in it does not look cheap. Micromax has used the design of its U series in this handset. The handset has a 5-inch HD IPS display. The selfie camera has a 5-megapixel sensor and is present in the center above the display.

Capacitive buttons are provided for navigation which are backlit. The power button and volume rocker are on the right side. The micro-USB port and headphone socket are present at the bottom. Its primary camera is also of 5 megapixels. Perhaps the company has adopted this strategy to keep the price of the handset low.

The handset packs a 2000mAh removable battery. There are two 3G SIM slots and a microSD card slot at the back.

The Canvas Selfie 2 smartphone is 9 mm thick and is quite lightweight. The look of the phone is nothing spectacular, but considering the price, its build quality is quite good. We were surprised why the company did not provide LED flash with the selfie camera.

Specifications and software
The smartphone is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6582M chipset coupled with 1GB of RAM. It has an inbuilt storage of 8GB out of which 4.74GB is available for the user. The handset does not support 4G, but you will get 3G support in both the SIM slots. Canvas Selfie 2 comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop. The company has also provided several third-party apps with it, the usefulness of which is questionable. You will also get the option to switch to Hindi language. Most of the third-party apps present in the handset can be uninstalled.

Performance
Even though the device has 1GB of RAM, the performance of the Canvas Selfie 2 cannot be called weak. However, heavy games like Dead Trigger 2 and multiple apps take time to load. Overall, Lollipop runs smoothly. The phone or its display does not heat up too much even after watching videos for a long time.

The touch response of the display and capacitive buttons is not great. We found that the handset was not responding properly to one-touch input at times. The viewing angles of the screen are decent, but its brightness level is quite low. Due to this, it was not easy to use the handset in sunlight. However, the color reproduction is satisfactory.

We also did not face any network issues. The handset worked well on 3G networks. Call quality was good. The mono speaker in the handset produced adequate sound.

The Canvas Selfie 2 played our full-HD videos with ease. The bundled headset was comfortable to use, but its audio quality is not very good. We would suggest you buy a new headset.

The performance of the front camera of Canvas Selfie is not satisfactory at all. We believe that Micromax could have worked more on the selfie feature of this device. The 5 megapixel front camera does not have autofocus and there is no flash. Due to these reasons, it becomes very difficult to use it in low light. However, the camera performance is good in suitable light.

The rear camera also comes with a 5 megapixel sensor, but it has autofocus. With this you will get modes like Night and Live Photo. You can also use HDR mode. The interface of the camera is very basic and it is also very easy to use.

The 2000mAh battery capacity may seem a little low in terms of numbers, but given the low resolution display, it should easily last a day. In our video loop test, the phone lasted for 9 hours and 7 minutes before switching off completely.

Our verdict
Micromax Canvas Selfie is not the worst option in the price range of Rs 6,000. We feel that the company could have done a better job with the selfie camera of the handset, especially since it is trying to sell it in the name of selfies. In our opinion, a selfie handset should have an autofocus sensor and flash. Without these features, the handset becomes like any other entry-level smartphone.

The build quality of the Canvas Selfie 2 is good. It supports 3G on both SIMs. The handset runs on Android Lollipop and plays full-HD videos smoothly. And its price is not too high either. However, the display resolution is low. Some third-party apps cannot be removed by the user. Battery life is also average and the selfie camera performance is not satisfactory.

If you can spend a little more money, we would suggest you to buy the Meizu M2. It is a much better handset. It has a 5 megapixel front camera and also supports 4G LTE. It has many features which are not present in Micromax’s handset.