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Review : Micromax Canvas Nitro A310

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Micromax has been reworking strategies for quite some time, and after their launch of the Canvas Gold, the company has kept it low key. Meanwhile, Motorola with their Moto G and Moto E along with Xiaomi with their Mi3 and Redmi 1s have really made a dent in the market.

The Micromax Canvas Nitro A310 is the company’s answer to all that, but does it really fulfil that goal? Lets find out!

Overview

The Canvas Nitro A310 is well built phone with good specs, in the right price bracket. However with the competition looming it may not match up in terms of hardware capabilities. The strategy to launch it with online partner Snapdeal is also similar to what we have seen in the past, Motos and the MIs and their launch with Flipkart.

Hardware

The Micromax Canvas Nitro A310 comes with a Mediatek Mt6592 Octa Core Chipset clocked at 1.7 GHz on all eight cores. The phone also has 2 GB of RAM and a Mali 450 MP2 GPU. The Nitro runs on a 2500mAh battery and has 8 GB of inbuilt storage, out of which roughly 5.2 GB is available to the user.

The front is laden with a vivid 5 inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 px, for optics on the rear the phone gets a 13 MP camera with auto focus and 1080p video capture, the front remains a fixed focus with a 5 MP resolution. Cameras are capable of HDR and low light photography, video has electronic stabilisation, and you can initiate the camera with a gesture “V” sign to click pictures from a far.

Unboxing Video

Build Quality and Design

Unlike its predecessors, the Canvas Nitro A310 is built on a plastic chassis, giving it a much lighter and less sturdy feel compared to the likes of the Canvas Gold. However the phone is still well built and feels like it can take a fall or two (not that we’d recommend it). The front has a tiny lip that nicely protects the front LCD of the phone, but on from a flat table placement or a flat drop. There is no mention of Gorilla Glass, although some generic “strengthened” glass has been used.

The back panel has a leather look (read: exactly like the Note 3) however it has a much better defined design, overall appeal and touch. The back panel is also very sturdy and not flimsy at all, which one would expect. We are not too sure about this blue colour, as it may not appeal to every one, it’s how one would say “different”.

Camera

Micromax focused a lot with the camera on the new Micromax Canvas Nitro A310, they have added several new camera features as standard. Things mostly which can be had with an app, but its is always much better to have features integrated with the OS and UI. An inbuilt camera specific widget lets you take shots by focusing on what you want to do, selecting from 5 different modes.

Front Back ; lets you take one picture from the front facing camera and one from the rear facing camera and combine it as a single image.

Stable ; just like the name says, waits till your hands are stable before taking a picture.

Selfie ; A selfie mode lets you click better selfies, however this works best with “V shot gesture” mode.

Refocus; lets you add blur to all areas except the area you select, more like a software version of HTC’s dual camera setup.

Coming to the hardware, the camera is based on a BSI Sony sensor with an f2.2 aperture and has excellent focus capabilities. Images captured indoors, as well as outdoors are accurate in colour reproduction and contrast. HDR was particularly good, and can really reproduce required details in the images.

: With HDR

: Without HDR

You get a good deal of details with the camera, especially up close to your subject.

Performance and Gaming

The Micromax Canvas Nitro handles day to day usage without any problem, and for once this phone does not heat up at all, mostly pertaining to the fact that the device is made entirely out of plastic. At any pint of time the total amount of free RAM is approximately 600+ MB, leaving you to wonder where the phone is utilising in excess of 1.3 GB of RAM. The included clean up app does open up about 120-140 MB of RAM, but that is still less considering that the device is running on KitKat.

Benchmarks and Gaming Video

We did see some hiccups in Gaming while gunning for high end games, and we also noticed quite a lot of frame loss, we plan to revisit gaming separately post the launch of the handset. Audio quality is excellent, however you might end up with your hand on the speaker ever so often, muffling up the sound.

Phone, Networks and Battery

Signal quality is excellent indoors as well as outdoors, audio is good on a call whether incoming or out going. As far as networks are concerned the plastic body definitely improves any WiFi connectivity issues faced by the previous generation of Canvas phones.

Battery life if good for one day’s use with the included 2500 mAh battery, which is removable and replaceable by the user. You will get an average talk time of 5-6 hours with both SIM cards placed in the phone.

If you are a light user you can easily run into the second day, however a charge a day would be recommended to keep you in a healthy battery position.

Multimedia And Android

The display is really good on the Micromax Canvas Nitro A310, it has excellent levels of black which are deep and blend in with the accurate blacks of the bezel. Video playback was good after the initial hiccups we faced (old version of Youtube App) and viewing angles are fantastic. The phone’s display works well indoors and outdoors and you will totally appreciate media consumption on the display, despite the fact that it is a 720p screen.

The OS is mostly stock Android 4.4.2, with minor customisations and mostly preloaded applications by the company, the UI also looks clean and is responsive. The set of apps including Quick Look (aka Blinkfeed for non HTC devices) and the new lock screen are excellent and work really well in providing notifications and quick update of news. Both of these can easily be turned off or replaced using custom launchers and lock screen replacements from the Play Store.

Screenshots

Conclusion

While most will argue the hardware powers of the Xiaomi Mi3, the Micromax Canvas Nitro is aimed to be more for those who want a less hectic approach to buying a phone. With an octa-core chipset and 2 GB of RAM, bundled with a 13 MP camera and expandable storage, the Micromax Canvas Nitro does have it positives. The biggest being the fact that the phone will be available to those who want to buy it, easily and how.

The Micromax Canvas Nitro is a step in the right direction for Indian manufacturers, especially considering they are taking huge flack from companies like Xiaomi and Motorola who are basically now playing in their space.

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