Micromax Canvas Fun A76 – Review

The Micromax canvas series is ever expanding and there is a new device in the lineup every once in a while. We recently saw them launch the updated version of the Canvas Doodle which is a huge quad core device. Another new entry from the stable of Micromax is the Canvas Fun A76.

Now unlike the doodle, it isn’t really a powerhouse and has got a dual core processor powering the device. The times when a single core with decent clock speed used to be the cool device are gone and even dual cores are considered to be quite basic. This is another such low end dual core device which comes at a price below 9K.

For the price, you get a device that would be able to handle your basic smartphone needs but don’t expect anything more than that. There are a lot of devices in the market which boast of almost similar specs and lie in a similar price band. We take a closer look at this new player and give you an idea of what the device is like.

Micromax Canvas Fun A76 Design/ Build

You didn’t expect much here. Did you? Still it is decent and is like most devices you would find for the price. It is quite large and one handed operation would be possible only if you have got huge hands. Though, we have adapted to large devices as ‘Phablets’ have caught up well in Indian market.

Canvas Fun A76 device has got a 5 inch display and it occupies most of the front. The front also has three capacitive keys which light up with the display. The front is neat and the device is square-ish. On the back sits the 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and the Micromax logo. The loudspeaker sits in the lower half of the back panel. The device isn’t very well built but still it is quite decent for the price and we couldn’t complain much.

Display

Canvas Fun A76 has got a 5 inch LCD display. You might like the display size before you turn the device on but before you think further, let us tell you that the display resolution is just 480 x 854. Now that resolution might sound okay on a 4 or 4.2 inch display but on a display this big, the pixel density is just gross.

You can literally count the number of pixels an icon is made of and that are not a good thing at all. The density would lay around 180 pixels per inch and that is really a very small number. The contrast ratios aren’t good and it is the same story with colours. This device is not meant to be a media house and the display supports the point. It would be good for reading texts and some web browsing and that is it. Nothing more than that.

Hardware/ Performance

The device has a dual core processor running at a clock speed of 1.2 GHz. It has got 512 MB of RAM to go with it and we feel it is insufficient. In your everyday usage, you might not feel the need of a better processor on this device but you will surely feel that it hasn’t got enough free memory.

The device would feel very smooth at first but as you keep installing apps, they would start to eat up RAM and you would feel that even while browsing through app drawer.

Camera

Canvas Fun A76 has got a 5 megapixel camera which is what you see on most budget devices. But while most devices get an auto focus camera with touch focus, they have decided to go for a camera with fixed focus. This means that you can’t play around much with the camera. The camera is what you would expect on this device. It can shoot some photos in good light but the colours are somewhat muted. It is even worse when the level of light goes down.

There is a lot of noise in the photos you capture in dark and if you use the flash, your subjects end up looking like white ghosts.The hardware is powered by a 2000 mAh battery which would easily take you through your day with average usage.

Interface

Canvas Fun A76 runs Jelly Bean 4.2 which is almost new and that is really good because most such devices never get version updates. The interface is pretty much vanilla with just minor changes. The changes would be easy to spot because they won’t exactly feel like a part. But the changes made are handy and would make browsing around easier for most.

The dual core runs the interface smooth until you start clogging the device with applications. It would have slight hiccups while browsing through the device and only extensive RAM clearing would help.

But if you keep the device tidy and install only the apps you need, it will run pretty smooth and using the device would be a decent experience overall. If you use a task manager to clear the RAM at times then you can run some games. High end games are strict no no. We tried running a few but most of the times they crashed.

Otherwise there isn’t much to talk about the interface of the device as it is similar to what most people have experienced already. No glitches or issues with it.

Verdict

There are a lot of similarly specs devices available in the market for you to choose from. This device is good for you if display quality is not a concern and you need more of a messenger than a phone.

The phone is priced a bit over 8K and there are better options available in the market for that price. If you extend your budget by only a little, you can have a quad core device which would perform way better. This phone would be a better deal if Micromax decides to lower the price a bit. You can buy this phone from Flipkart here.