While Micromax may not be well known in most of the world, this company is the number one smartphone manufacturer in India. Micromax released the A116 Canvas HD, a 5 inch screen phablet, in February 2013 and it was immediately met with a lot of positive reviews.
The A116 has a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels and a pixel density of approximately 294 pixels per inch. The A116 measures 144 x 74 x 10.7 mm (5.67 x 2.91 x 0.42 inches) and weighs 156g. This phablet runs on a 1.2 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7, the MTK MT6589 chipset, PowerVR SGX544 graphics processing unit and 1 GB of RAM. The internal storage is 4 GB of which only 1.77 GB is available for the user. The phablet runs on Android version 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, though a planned upgrade to version 4.2 is in the pipeline.
The main camera takes photos at 8 megapixels and includes LED flash. Video recording is supported at resolutions of 280 x 720 pixels at 30 frames per second. The front faced camera runs at 2 megapixels. The A116 also has an FM radio and the sensors on the device include proximity, accelerometer and gyro. The battery is a Lithium Ion 2100 mAh battery.
While I have never handled a Micromax smartphone myself, I have read that this company produces robust smartphones. I have just read a comment by someone who owns a Micromax A116 Canvas HD on the popular site GSMArena. According to this guy, his A116 fell three times from a considerable height; however he could not find a single scratch on the phone. On the same lines, I know someone who dropped a Samsung Galaxy S3 once and the screen broke immediately.
The Micromax A116 Canvas HD’s price is around 14,200 Indian Rupees, which is about US $ 260 or € 200. While it is true that the phablet has less processing power, a lower quality screen, smaller internal storage and less battery power when compared to other phablet models, not everybody is ready to pay the premium price of a Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One or Sony Xperia Z.
