14 DAY TRIAL // Micromax has just introduced in India a smartphone that’s been launched in other countries first, which is unusual for the company. The Canvas Beat A114 was part of the first wave of affordable Android smartphones that Micromax made its debut in Russia with early this year.
It’s been almost six months since the release of the Canvas Beat in Russia and customers in India can finally order one for themselves as well.
For the time being, Micromax Canvas Beat is only available through Indian online retailer HomeShop18, where customers can purchase it for Rs 9,499 ($155 / €115) off contract.
Unfortunately, the smartphone is clearly overpriced and probably carries the same upfront price as the Russian version, otherwise we can’t see how a mid-range smartphone packing Canvas Beat’s specs could cost so much.
There are clearly better alternatives on the Indian market, such as the Unite 2, so here is hoping that Micromax will slightly discount the Canvas Beat if it wants to sell any units in India.
All in all, let’s see what the smartphone brings for Android users that would be interested in this mid-range smartphone. First of all, the Canvas Beat ships with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean operating system out of the box and there’s no telling whether or not it will receive any major updates in the future.
The good news is that Micromax Canvas Beat is equipped with a quad-core Broadcom BCM23550 processor clocked at 1.2GHz, which is complemented by 1GB of RAM. This should be enough to run most of the games and applications available in the Google Play Store.
The smartphone packs 4GB of internal memory, but only 700MB is available for installing apps and games, while 1.5GB remains for storage.
Furthermore, the Canvas Beat sports a large 5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display that supports qHD (540 x 960 pixels) resolution.
There’s also an enhanced 8-megapixel photo snapper on the back, which features LED flash, autofocus and video recording. In the front, the handset has a secondary 2-megapixel camera for selfies and video calls.
Speaking of which, Micromax Canvas Beat offers quite a range of connectivity options, including 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microUSB and GPS with A-GPS support. Obviously, the device also comes with dual-SIM capability.
The smartphone is powered by a 1900 mAh battery, which should provide users with up to 150 hours of standby time or up to 5 hours of talk time.