First it were raining single cores, now its time for dual cores to dethrone their ancestors and invade the market. One can only begin to imagine how these Indian manufacturers, particularly Micromax and Karbonn can offer so much for so little money.
A 4 inch Android smartphone powered by a 1 GHz Dual Core processor and 512 MB RAM priced at around Rs. 6500.
Ladies(We doubt) and Gentlemen, please put your hands together for Micromax A89 - Ninja.
Key Features
- 4" WVGA TFT LCD display - 480x800 pixels
- Mediatek MT6577 chipset
- Dual-core ARM Cortex A9 - 1 GHz processor and PowerVR SGX531 graphics
- 512MB RAM
- 3.1 Megapixel Fixed Focus camera with VGA video recording.
- No LED flash
- No Front camera
- Quad Band 2G and Single Band 3G with data speeds upto 7.2 Mbps DL and 5.76 Mbps UL - SIM 1 & Quad Band 2G - SIM 2
- 4GB storage with microSD expansion slot
- Wi-Fi b/g/n
- Bluetooth
- GPS
- Proximity Sensor, Light Sensor and Gravity Sensor
- 1450 mAh Battery
- Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) OS
- SAR Value - 0.89 W/Kg
Micromax A89 has almost everything that you may need inside the retail box to get started – The handset, battery, screen guard, micro USB cable that doubles up as a charging cable for the A/C adaptor, single piece headset and a warranty card with the list of authorised service centres in India.
There’s no microSD card bundled with the phone.
DESIGN & BUILD QUALITY
The phone houses a 4 inch WVGA capacitive TFT LCD display. Above it is the earpiece and next to the earpiece are the proximity and light sensors. Beneath the display there are 3 capacitive keys – Menu,Home, and Back which have NO backlighting to them. The keys are haptic feedback enabled. A microphone sits below the back key.
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On the left side of the A89 we find the volume rocker.
The right side of the device accommodates the power button.
On the top side we find the 3.5mm headset jack and next to it is the micro USBport.
The back of the device houses a 3 MP Fixed Focus Camera. There is no LED Flash. On the bottom side we find the Micromax insignia and the speakerphone grille just below it.
Underneath the battery cover, we find a 1450 mAh battery, the micro SD card slot and the dual SIM card slots. SIM 1 supports both 2G and 3G networks while SIM 2 slot supports only 2G networks. The back cover is glossy and attracts fingerprints. Also, the display is prone to smudges and scratches, so applying the screen guard that comes along before the first use is recommended.
The bundled screen guard looks and feels very inferior to the ones you would find in the market(even the Screenward ones which sell for around 70 bucks)
Overall, for the price, the handset looks pretty decent and the build quality is quite good.
DISPLAY
Decent Display marred by poor viewing angles yet again.
The Micromax A89 features a 4 inch LCD display of WVGA resolution (800x480 pixels) and pixel density of 233 ppi. Auto Brightness is available as the phone houses an ambient light sensor.
The onscreen images are quite crisp with good colours(for the price) and nice contrast. Viewing angles are quite poor though since the display is not IPS. The colours get washed out very quickly when the phone is tilted from the top even very slightly. Although, the same behaviour is not observed when the phone is tilted from the bottom or sideways.
One can't really expect more from a display at this price point.
USER INTERFACE
The phone has a five-pane homescreen configuration and a standard set of widgets are included.
The notification bar has 12 toggles which include Brigtness, Display Timeout, Auto Rotation Lock, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Data, Airplane Mode, 4 Sound Profiles - General, Silent, Meeting and Outdoor.
The app drawer is pretty standard with 2 tabs. The first one is the apps tab which lists all the applications installed on the phone while widgets are listed under a separate tab.
PERFORMANCE
The Micromax A89 is powered by a MediaTek MT6577 chipset, which packs a 1GHz Dual Core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 512MB of RAM and PowerVR SGX531 GPU. It comes with 4GB of internal space out of which a total of 503 MB is reserved for Apps while 2.08 GB is available to the user.
Out of the 512 MB RAM, a good 472 MB is usable, out of which ~220 MB is freely available to the user. You have to be a little cautious with managing applications as the phone will start lagging as soon as more & more RAM is depleted. However, during my time with the phone, no lags were witnessed which is a commendable job by Micromax.
The CPU performance is pretty good which pulls its weight while executing apps and games and also making the interface feel relatively fluid.
Games like Temple Run, Temple Run 2, Angry Birds, etc. run lag free though the phone gets slight hickups in coping with more high-end games like Dead Trigger, NFS Most Wanted.
Here are some of the benchmarks –
TELEPHONY & MESSAGING
Although the earpiece does not output loud volumes yet the in-call sound was fairly decent. The phone offers nice reception and no dropped calls were experienced during the testing period.
The dialler is your standard Android affair. There are 2 call buttons on the bottom for either SIM card. To the left of the call buttons is the button that toggles the dial pad.
The dialler is just the first tab of the phone app, the other two being the Call log and the Contacts tab.
The dialler is fixed to a portrait mode even if auto rotation is turned on.
The speaker phone’s output is neither too loud nor too quiet. You will have no troubles hearing your phone ring in most places except in extremely noisy outdoor surroundings.
There is nothing special about the messaging app. It looks and works like the stock Android messaging app which is a good thing. Fortunately, Auto rotation works here.
GALLERY, VIDEO & MUSIC PLAYERS
The default view of the gallery is Albums. It lists all the folders with Photos and Videos in the phone. Getting inside an album displays all the photos or videos in a rectangular grid, which is horizontally scrollable.
Here is how the stock Music Player looks -
The audio quality is pretty darn good. The bundled earphones are very poor though and should be thrown in the garbage can straightaway..yes..we're serious. After using a better set of earphones, the sound quality was quite good though it slightly lacked the oomph bass and also minimal noise was present which is still better than loads of handsets in the market even from the ones manufactured by the likes of Samsung and LG. Overall, a very good performance in this department. It does sound miles better than the Karbonn A15.
CAMERA INTERFACE
The viewfinder takes most of the screen with the panel to the right for some of the controls – the gallery shortcut (which is a thumbnail of the last photo taken), the virtual shutter key and the camera mode switch.
The rest of the controls are overlaid on the right side of the viewfinder. They are the front/back camera toggle, a virtual zoom slider and the settings shortcut. The setting shortcut brings out options to control exposure compensation, capture sound, scenes and finally, more settings (photo resolution, face detection, color effect and anti-banding options are available here). Panoramas are easy to shoot - you just hit the shutter key and start panning left or right, the phone will take care of the rest. It will warn you if you're going too fast, but has no problems if you keep it in place for a while.
IMAGE QUALITY
As far as image quality is concerned, the Micromax A89 produces photos which are certainly passable for Social Networking. Low Light performance is poor and we suggest you to use the camera at night as less as possible. Overall, it outdoes the Karbonn A15 by a mile but that does not mean we suggest you to go ahead and get your photos printed from a photo studio.
Check out some of the camera samples here:-
VIDEO CAMERA
Despite the fairly capable processor, the Micromax A89 only manages to shoot videos upto 640x480 pixels(480p).
The interface is identical to the still camera interface. There are options to change the video resolution and toggle capture sound. The various video resolutions in which the device can shoot are VGA(640x480 pixels), HVGA(480x240) and QCIF(176x144)..
The video quality is reminiscent of the still image quality. It will suffice for sending videos as MMS but is not worth framing memories.
CONNECTIVITY
The phone supports 2 SIM Cards. The 1st SIM Card slot supports 3G as well as 2G networks with 3G speeds maxing out at 7.2Mbps downlink & 5.76Mbps uplink. The 2nd SIM card slot supports only 2G networks.
EDGE is supported on 2G networks for both the SIM slots.
The phone has no problems with receiving incoming calls even when data on the other SIM is being used.
Local connectivity includes Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi Hotspot and Bluetooth.
The phone has no Wi-Fi reception issues and I could browse the internet comfortably from a distance of 10 metres over a Wi-Fi N signal.
PS – Over 2G networks I would constantly max out at 150 Kbps speeds with this phone too whereas with a Samsung Galaxy S2 I would get around 200+ Kbps speed in the same spot.
WEB BROWSER
The stock web browser on the phone has always been brilliant and here due to the decent processing power the browsing experience is pretty pretty good. It is still miles ahead of Symbian browsers though but there are the occasional lags when trying to browse a multimedia rich webpage. Other Websites pose zero problems though.
After having side-loaded Adobe’s Flash player from XDA-Forums, it worked just fine with YouTube videos.
BATTERY LIFE
For the original link and the conclusion to the review please visit my blog - Quenching Your Tech Thirsts: Micromax A89 Review
PS - All the views expressed here are my own and your valuable inputs are very much appreciated.
Thanks for reading!
