Budget smartphones today have really taken over a chunk out of the high-end flagship segment. Today, you can buy a phone with high-end hardware, even with a budget of Rs. 15,000. Micromax was one of the first ones to bring about that change in the trend. It has helped Micromax become one of the popular brands in India, helping them offer even better products at affordable prices. Recently, we’ve seen Micromax even more aggressive with their marketing campaign and the new Canvas 6 Pro seems to be at the centre of this. It’s priced just under Rs. 14,000* and packs a bunch of features. We find out if its performance holds true to Micromax’s bold claims.
Design and Build
The Micromax Canvas 6 Pro looks very simple. There is nothing unique about the phone, but when you hold it in your hand, you’ll realise how well it’s built. Even though it’s made of plastic, the Canvas Pro 6 feels solid and sturdy. The build feels lighter than it looks. At the front, you have the 5.5-inch screen protected by the Corning Gorilla Glass 3. It protects the screen from scratches, but also makes it very smudgy because of finger prints. Being a big phone, the Canvas Pro 6 is a little difficult to use in one hand. Even with the thin bezel, the phone feels very chunky. It can also be accounted to the thickness of the phone. While using the phone in one hand, we constantly had to stretch our thumbs to reach out far corners of the screen. If you have small hands, then you’ll have to spend some time getting used to the size.
Micromax has offered plenty of compensation for the big size. At the back, the Canvas Pro 6 features a smooth matte finish which provides an assuring grip. The smooth matte finish also extends all the way to the sides, offering all around comfort, no matter how you choose to hold the phone. The roundish edges and the smooth transition happening between glass and the matte finish here, make it comfortable to use the phone.
All the buttons are placed on the left of the phone. The camera lens and the flash are placed at the top-centre, at the back. The speaker grill can be found right at the bottom. There are no physical buttons at the front, so you get plenty of space to hold the phone and not touch the screen accidentally.
Features
The Micromax Canvas 6 Pro is packed with features you would see on a flaghship device. At its heart, is a MediaTek Helio (MT6795M) processor. It features eight cores and is clocked at 2 GHz. It’s known to be one of MediaTek’s power-packed processors. Mediatek claims that it’s smart enough to understand how much power to drive through each cores and also features a boost which enables a much smoother performance with heavy apps. So it’s known to be both efficient and powerful. Adding to that, it also brings 4G-LTE capability. One place where the Canvas Pro 6 will leave some flagships biting dust is multi-tasking. The Pro 6 features 4GB of RAM, something rarely seen. With that much RAM and the high-performing Helio Processor, running alongside, multi-tasking should be a piece of cake on the Canvas Pro 6. Above that, the phone also features a 3,000 mAh battery, which sounds pretty good for the screen size.
The 5.5-inch screen sports a full HD resolution. It supports a pixel density of 401 ppi, which is pretty good. Like other counterparts, Micromax hasn’t included any one-hand features that are usually seen on large-screen phones. On the other hand, Micromax has focused more on enhancing the media performance. The Canvas Pro 6 is equipped with MediaTek’s MiraVision tool, which offers a range of features that offer a better picture quality with games and videos.
One of the first tools built into MiraVision is the Clear Motion technology. This feature helps the screen in displaying a much smother picture with fast moving objects in a video. You can even see a demo of this in the ‘Settings’ menu. Besides this, MiraVision also allows you to change intricate details on the screen to your preference. You can adjust details such as contrast, brightness, colour saturation, sharpness and the colour temperature. We think this is a really cool feature. Most phones only let you change settings through pre-programmed modes, which is also included here.
With all the high-end hardware, it’s a little disappointing to see the Pro 6 run the older Android 5.1 (Lollipop) update. Micromax hasn’t mentioned anything about a Marshmallow (6.0) update yet, but we hope it’s in the pipelines. The UI looks very close to stock Android. Even some of the basic apps such as Browser, Calendar and Gallery are simply just reiterations of their Google counterparts. We would have preferred if they would have just used stock Android apps.
We like the interface being similar to stock Android. What we don’t like is the hoard of unnecessary apps loaded on the phone. The Pro 6 comes with a whole list of apps you may never use. The list includes apps such as Gaana, ixigo cabs, Scandid, VuLiv Travel and many others. With Opera mini also added to the list, you have three browsers to choose from, something not necessary. Some game demos are also included. The good thing is that you can uninstall them.
On the camera front, the Canvas Pro 6 comes with a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera. Video recording is limited to full HD resolution on the rear camera and the HD on the front. Even with decent hardware, the camera app is still pretty basic. Most of the features included are only available for rear camera. There are five modes available, including, Normal, Live photo, Motion Track, Panorama and the Mullti-angle. The front camera doesn’t support any of these creative modes. It only gets some basic features like HDR and Beauty Mode.
The rear camera also features a list of filters that you can choose from, by simply swiping right on the homescreen. The Motion tracking feature is just another term for continuous shot, which in the Canvas 6 Pro is supported up to a good 99 photos. On the Live Photo mode, the camera simply captures a sequence of footage, leading up to the image. We’re not sure how many people would really like this features and will use it often. Besides that, Micromax has also included Voice capture and Gesture control that make it easy to click photos on the big phone.
Performance
The Micromax Canvas 6 Pro is no slouch. Its MediaTek Helio processor keeps it on its toes all the time, offering a good performance all around. We found the interface to be really quick in many areas. Opening and closing apps is quick, even with large games and heavy apps. Having 4GB of RAM helps too. Scrolling and switching between heavy apps is no problem either. We had about 10 to 15 apps running most of the time and switching between any of them, was a piece of cake.
Heavy apps run with ease on the Canvas Pro 6 too. We ran quite a few games on the phone simultaneously, one after the other and we didn’t find lag here. We didn’t run into issues even with heavy games such as Real Racing 3, Asphalt 8: Airborne and UFC. The games ran quite smoothly. The only time we noticed the device running slowly was when we tried to switch between two heavy games, like Real Racing 3 and UFC. The game started stuttering little bit, but in a couple of seconds it was back to running smoothly.
The phone does heat up, but only when you try to push it beyond its limits. With us running multiple games and switching between them, the temperature went up quite a bit. This stops when we shut down unnecessary apps in the background. The only other time we noticed heating was when we used the camera a lot. The Canvas 6 Pro offers good picture quality even without MiraVision. The brightness levels are good. However, the reflective screen makes it a little difficult to use it outdoors and brightly-lit rooms. Having fine control over the way the screen looks is a very good feature to have, if you manage use it to your advantage. After making a few tweaks we were able to get a pretty perfect picture off the 5.5-inch screen. The details looked good after adjusting the contrast and colour saturation, giving the screen a vibrant look, without being overly gaudy.
Our only problem with the MiraVison is that you can’t change settings when you’re in an app, or when you’re playing a video. It’s only possible to do it in the Settings menu with the help of a reference image provided by the software. This makes it a little difficult for you to adjust the picture, to the specific content playing on the screen. None-the-less, it is still good feature to have as hardly any phones let you change these picture elements in detail. Our experience with full HD videos was pretty good. To our surprise though, 4K videos stuttered a bit. The rear camera clicks decent photos in bright situations, but struggles a lot to get the exposure right. Depending on the focus point, it makes photos look too bright or too dull. Photos don’t look very sharp either. Details around edges are hazy, especially when you try to zoom in into photos. Focus is quick in bright conditions, but in macro situations, it’s tricky. As a result you’ll notice your photos to go out of focus the moment you hit the shutter button on the screen. Face detection works very quickly on the front camera. It even maintains focus in shaky situations. In the photos we clicked, skin tones looked good, but the output still wasn’t that sharp. Pictures get even grainier in low light conditions. Added to that, there aren’t a lot of features to play around with here, which is little disappointing.
Verdict
The Micromax Canvas 6 Pro is good phone, but somehow we feel that Micromax has focused too much on projecting it as a high-end phone, while forgetting some of the other important aspects of it. We like the phone for its simple build, 4GB of RAM and fast Helio processor. However, running last year’s Android operating system, along with poor camera performance and the occasional heating issues, are setbacks. In other words, for a price tag of around Rs. 14,000* the Canvas Pro 6, is a decent buy, but it’s not much better than most of the competition in its category.
