Micromax, the offline-first brand, has ventured into the online domain by introducing Evok series in India. The company has launched two new smartphones Evok Note and Evok Power for Rs 9,499 and Rs 6,999 respectively. Interestingly, both the smartphones will be available exclusively on Flipkart starting midnight today.
Though Evok Power will compete with the likes of Xiaomi Redmi 4A at this price point, it is Evok Note, which will have face a fierce battle with strong competitors like Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, Coolpad Note 5 Lite, and more. So will it be able to handle the competition easily or not? We got the chance to spend some time with the device and here are our first impressions.
Design and Display
Starting with the design language, the smartphone boasts a metal unibody, which is a welcome move, especially at this price point. The device has a brushed metal finish at the back, which resembles Micromax’s sister brand Yu Yunicorn. But unlike Yunicorn, this one has a flat back with a gentle curve at the edges, making it easier to hold and use. The front is dominated by a 5.5-inch screen with minimum side bezels coupled with a glass protection, which gives a premium look. The navigation buttons are on-screen and there is a fingerprint sensor at the base, which also acts as a home button.
At the top you will see, secondary camera, earpiece and the usual array of Sensors aligned perfectly. At the right, there are volume controls and power on/off buttons, while the left houses the hybrid Dual-SIM slot, which means one can either use two SIMs at a time or one SIM and one microSD card.
At the back resides the primary camera, which is flushed into back panel along with a LED flash, while at the base there is company’s logo. The bottom of the device houses a microUSB port flanked between two speaker grille. Overall, the smartphone gives a premium look and surely gives a stiff competition to its rivals at this price point.
Coming to the display, the device comes loaded with a 5.5-inch Full HD display with a screen Resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. During our brief testing period, we found out that the display has some good viewing angles and has a good colour reproduction, as colours came out to be vibrant and punchy enough and it would be interesting to see how well does it perform during our testing period.
Hardware and Software
The smartphone has entered in a market which is already overpopulated with some incredibly specced smartphones. The device also has some interesting specs sheet to offer. To start with, Micromax Evok Note is powered by an octa-core MediaTek MT6753 Processor along with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 64GB via microSD card slot. Though this is not something new we have seen in a smartphone, but still it can be considered to be decent specs at this price point. However, there are brands who are offering Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 series processor, which are considered to be better than MediaTek’s SoC. But still we will reserve our judgement here and we will suggest waiting for our review in order to rate the performance of the device.
On the software front, the Note runs with Android Marshmallow, which is pretty standard across this range. One thing we didn’t like about the UI is that it comes with lots of bloatware apps, which kind of spoils the mood. Though you can delete some apps, but the most of them are indestructible.
The company has also added an interesting security feature known as Secure Space through which users can use their fingerprint to encrypt applications in their smartphone and create encrypted notes and shortcuts on their phones. Interesting, indeed!
Camera
On the camera front, the device features a 13-megapixel rear camera with PDAF, 5P Largan lens, while for the front, there is a 5-megapixel front-facing camera for selfies and video calling. In our initial testing, the camera performed decently well. The colours were true to its source, but the detailing seems to be above average. The camera UI is pretty simple to use and you also have a host of filters.
There are different modes like HDR, smile to capture, slow motion etc., and one can also control exposure, scene preference, white balance and so on in the setting menu.
Battery and Connectivity
This is where it gets interesting. The Evok Note is juiced up by a 4000mAh battery. Big battery smartphones are now becoming a rage these days with many manufacturers offering bigger battery at an affordable price point. That said, it is a welcome move from the brand and it lets see how long it lasts.
On the connectivity front, the device support 4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, dual-SIM (hybrid) and microUSB port. This is pretty standard at this price point.