In its initial days of glory, the budget segment was ruled by smartphone brands like Micromax, Lava and Intex. As a matter of fact, Micromax, with its Canvas series, pretty much owned the niche. That was before the invasion of Chinese brands. Don’t get us wrong, the influx of budget devices has been readily welcomed by Indian customers, and consequently, the Indian smartphone bazaar has now become a hub for Chinese as well as other smartphone brands like Xiaomi, Honor, MEIZU, ASUS and Motorola, all trying to push the limits by loading their devices with impressive features and presenting them to customers with rather affordable price tags.
Through all the ups and downs, Micromax has remained a consistent competitor, making continuous additions to its Canvas series, and even launching an altogether new brand, dubbed YU, which took the market by storm with the Yureka (review). Now, playing in its element once again and reclaiming its territory, Micromax has announced the Canvas Xpress 2 which boasts an octa-core processor and a 13MP shooter for a price tag of Rs 5,999. Here, we take a quick look at the device and its box contents.
Design wise the device has lot of similarities with the Canvas Spark which was launched couple of months back. The rear panel has matte finish and there is gold finishing around the sides of the device. The rear panel has a gold finish logo as well. There is 13MP rear camera with dual LED flash and it has a curved finishing which feels good in hands. The build quality of the device is commendable and Micromax has done a good job with the finishing of the device considering it is a budget device.
The power and volume buttons are on the right side, 3.5mm audio jack at the top and the micro USB charging slot along with speaker unit located at the bottom. The front panel has 5 inch HD display, front 2MP camera and the usual set of sensors. Overall, the device has impressive build quality for a budget device.
There's a 13-megapixel autofocus primary shooter and a 2MP front camera. The default camera app on the device can shoot in different modes like Live Photo, Face Beauty, HDR, Panorama and Multi angle view. Additionally, you get control over standard settings like ISO, shutter speed and white balance. Connectivity options on the Micromax Canvas Xpress 2 are standard, including 3G, dual-SIM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.0 and GPS. 4G LTE is not supported though.
Thanks to its compact build and matte rear panel, the Canvas Xpress 2 is comfortable to use and feels rather light in the hands. The Canvas Xpress 2 offers a Corning Gorilla Glass protected 5-inch screen with HD resolution, roughly translating to a pixel density of 294ppi. The screen looks decently sharp and the viewing angles do not disappoint. The smartphone hides an octa-core MediaTek MT6592 processor ticking at 1.4GHz, mated to a gig of RAM. There's an integrated Mali-450 MP GPU as well. The Canvas Xpress 2 comes with an on-board storage of 8GB, out of which approximately 4.5GB is available for usage. The storage can be further expanded up to 32GB via microSD card. While the device runs Android KitKat 4.4.2 out of the box, it is upgradable to Android Lollipop.
The device is priced Rs 5999 and available on Flipkart. We will have the detailed review coming up on our blog soon, meanwhile do check out our YouTube channel for more videos on this device.