Micromax has announced its first octa core Processor based smartphone, which is named as Micromax Canvas Knight. So if you have been waiting to buy the octa core handset, here is an exclusive first cut story of the Micromax Canvas Knight.
Design
The Micromax Canvas Knight is a sheer beauty. To start with, it comes in white as well as in black colours; we got our hands on the black variant which looks gorgeous. First of all, it will remind you of Sony’s flagship Xperia devices (Z1, Z, Z Ultra etc) with its rectangular designing, thick side panels, and glass covered back.
Micromax has wisely kept the back panel free from numerous logos that you would often see in other handsets. The back panel has a protruding 16 Megapixel unit alongside an LED flash; below these lies the laser printed Micromax logo (in silver colour in the black variant). Since it is a glass panel, the back panel is a finger print magnet but I wouldn’t think anyone would complaint about that considering the glamour quotient it adds to the phone.
Keys are also placed exactly at the best possible positions – the volume rocker and power buttons on the right, Micro USB port at the bottom, and the 3.5 mm jack at the top. The up and down keys of volume rocker are independent from each other which is again for the good as in the traditional volume key, many tend to increase the up key while wanting to decrease the volume. Besides, the three tiny buttons add to its looks.
There are two micro SIM slots which are placed on either side of the phone (right and left). Note that it has a non-removable rear panel and it does not have any micro SD card slot. In the front, there are three capacitive buttons below the display while at the top, lies a speaker grill and the front camera.
Display
The Micromax Canvas Knight comes with a 5 inch display. This IPS LCD display has full high definition (1920×1080 pixels) resolution. That means it has very high 441 ppi pixel density. The display has 10 point gesture input which is again good, though you would never need it.
However, the display has not enough brightness for outdoors which is definitely an issue in a country like India. The display is also a fingerprint magnet as well as quite reflective.
We played many games on the Canvas Knight during our short interaction with the phone and it never showed any lag or issues with the touch mechanism. Typing was also quite easy.
Memory
The Micromax Canvas Knight comes with 32 GB of Internal Memory of which 24.9 GB can be used by the user to store files while another 1.97 GB is meant for applications. The phone is armed with decent 2 GB RAM as well.
However, the Canvas Knight has no expandable storage slot. As per our view, 24.9 GB is quite enough for most of the user and anyway, you could transfer some items to your PC if you want to free up some memory but those who like to carry a dozen of movies and hundreds of music files with them apart from installing a dozen of high end apps and games, the limited memory may pose some constraint.
OS and User Interface
The Micromax Canvas Knight comes with the Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean operating system. We had though hoped for the Android 4.3 version if not the Android 4.4 KitKat which would have surely gained some accolades for the phone. The handset has the normal Android Jelly Bean user interface with negligible modifications.
As soon as you switch on the handset, it will simply give you two options – unlock the handset or go to Micromax App store which is quite absurd. There is no way to change the options either. Unlike the usual Android OS, the off screen settings icon provides several options including Add to Desktop (for adding apps, shortcuts, widgets to the home screen), Launcher manager (to increase/decrease home screens), Wallpaper, Effects setting, Manage apps, and System setting.
There is a usual notification bar at the top as usual which allows making some quick changes to settings (like WiFi, Bluetooth, Brightness, Data connection etc).
Performance
The Micromax Canvas Knight has the eight core based Mediatek MT6592 processor which comes with a maximum clock speed of 2 GHz. As I said above, it comes with 2 GB RAM. With such a specification, the phone isn’t expected to slow down. In our short interaction, the phone managed to run the Injustice: Gods Among Us, which is a pretty high end game, with ease. There were some issues while playing the Blood and Glory game though but I think it was due some problem with game and not the phone.
In a nutshell, the phone seems quite fast. We will however reserve our final judgment till we do more test on the phone vis-a-vis multitasking and we will like to play more high end games.
Battery
The phone comes with decent 2350 mAh battery. However it is a non-removable unit. A removable battery has two advantages – you can replace it on your own in future if the battery gets damaged and in case phone hangs during multitasking you can take out the battery to reset it. However, considering it has an octa core processor and 2 GB RAM we don’t think it to get hanged even during multitasking so you probably won’t have to bother about its non-removable battery.
Camera
The Micromax Canvas Knight has a 16 megapixel rear Autofocus camera. There is an LED flash light besides it in the back panel to assist it in low lights. This unit, as per Micromax, can capture high definition videos at 30 frames per second. In the front, the handset has a 8 megapixel camera.
To check the rear camera quality, we captured few images which you can check here
Images by Sushil Kumar