A few days back Micromax had launched its latest smartphone Dual 5 in India for Rs 24,999. It is a value for money smartphone but it has not been made from scratch by the Micromax. As a matter of fact, it is a reworked (slightly) and rebranded version of the Qiku 360 Q5 which has not been launched in India.
Sources at China’s Qiku, who didn’t want to be named, have confirmed to The Mobile Indian that the Micromax Dual 5 is indeed a rebranded version of their 360 Q5.
Throwing more light on it, our sources said, “Qiku didn’t have any plans of launching 360 Q5 in India and when Micromax showed interest in the device they were more than willing to offer it to them.”
Micromax has made some changes in the device at software and Antenna level to customise it for India. In terms of design as well as specs there has been no change. Both the Dual 5 and Qiku 360 Q5 come with a dual rear camera setup having two 13-megapixel sensors, one being a Monochrome sensor and one being a regular RGB sensor. Both the devices boast of dedicated hardware security chip along with the software security features. To explain, fingerprint Password imaging and other passwords are usually stored at a software level but in Dual 5 and 360 Q5, all the user credentials and security passwords are encrypted and saved separately in the dedicated security hardware chip.
The devices come with a 5.5-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) AMOLED Display with 2.5D curved display and Corning Gorilla Glass protection. On the inside, they have a 1.8 GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 652 Chipset coupled with Adreno 510 GPU for graphics. Further, the devices come with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage which is further expandable via microSD card which sits in a hybrid dual SIM slot.
Lastly, both the devices packs in a 3200 mAh battery inside which also supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0.
So what’s the big deal in it?
Actually, there is nothing wrong in it as this was the de facto model for Indian handset marketers till the Chinese ‘vendors’ swamped the market with their own products. But in our opinion, Micromax should have mentioned the history behind Dual 5 on its own so as to set high standards of transparency. In the past, the Indian handset giant has come out with amazing products on their own and if this time round they found another product interesting enough to bring to Indian market they should have clarified it.
Should you buy Micromax Dual 5?
Yes, you can consider it. Micromax Dual 5 impresses on design, performance, Camera and security. It is a value for money device but the only thing that worries us is software updates.