The Canvas 5 is Micromax’s new flagship offering, arriving nearly two years after its predecessor. Priced in the chaotic sub-Rs. 15, 000 segment, the Canvas 5 aims to deliver stellar camera performance without costing buyers a whole lot of cash. Let’s see if it can make a strong impression on us.
Look and feel
The Micromax Canvas 5 scores some brownie points for its 2.5D curved arc display which saves it from getting lost in a sea of look-alikes. The front is made of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection against scratches. The rest of the phone isn’t too exciting to look at and won’t be turning heads. The metal frame on the sides offers decent grip and the buttons are well within the reach of your thumb when you hold it. The volume rocker feels a bit stiff but the power button has better response. There’s a 3.5mm headphone socket at the top and a Micro-USB port at the bottom.
The back is covered by a textured plastic cover which is removable. However, this is only to get to the SIM and microSD card slots; the battery is sealed. The cover feels really cheap and it’s easy to damage a fingernail or two trying to snap it on or off. There’s a 13-megapixel primary camera here along with single-LED flash.
The display is a 5.2-inch, full-HD IPS panel that performs surprisingly well in all lighting conditions. Colours are vivid and punchy and there’s no noticeable jaggedness around text or icons thanks to the high pixel density. The display’s touch response is also good and everything is legible under most lighting conditions, except direct sunlight. Above the screen, we have a notification LED, a 5-megapixel camera, and an LED flash. In a way, you could call this a selfie-focused phone too.
The Micromax Canvas 5 ships with a charger, USB cable, headset, and screen guard. The quality of the supplied accessories is average and they don’t feel too durable. Overall, the phone is well built, apart from the tacky back cover, and is comfortably slim and light at 143g. It has a functional design which looks presentable mostly because of the arc display.
Specifications and software
The core specifications of the Canvas 5 are unsurprising. We have an octa-core MediaTek MT6753 SoC running at 1.3GHz; 3GB of RAM; 16GB of onboard storage; and the usual suspects such as Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0, FM radio, GPS, and USB OTG. Storage is expandable but only up to 32GB. You get two SIM slots with Dual-LTE support for Indian bands(both FDD-LTE and TDD-LTE).