Round 1 goes to Micromax A116 Canvas HD

One device that has caught the attention of smartphone lovers in India lately is the Micromax A116 Canvas HD. The phone was launched earlier this week, just ahead of a big Samsung announcement, the launch of the Galaxy Grand.

In a recent poll, we asked Common Joe which handset they would prefer and the response has been overwhelmingly in favour of the A116 Canvas HD. Now, the poll has only been open for a couple of days, but the initial trend is heavily in favour of Micromax. As you can see, 85 percent of the votes were in favour of this phone.

The A116 Canvas HD's specs and price are winning over fans

Most commenters on the article believe that Micromax has a bad record of after-sales service. But they were willing to ignore some cons to land this bargain. And it is a bargain after all. The Micromax phone is expected to be priced under Rs 15,000, while the Samsung handset is officially priced at Rs 21,500.

The A116 leads by a huge margin

The disparity in price and specs is quite stark. Both devices sport a 5-inch display, run Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, have 1GB of RAM and an 8MP camera on the back. But the similarities end there. Even though the screen size is the same on both phones, the Micromax handset has a 720p resolution while the Galaxy Grand is stuck on a 2010-esque 800 x 480 WVGA resolution. This is a particularly suspect move on part of the Korean company.

“Samsung is stupid for sticking a low resolution display on a mid range smartphone, the price is is not that low that they couldn't provide at least a qHD screen on the Galaxy Grand. Bad decision and the sales will show,” one commenter said.

This comment sums up the reaction to Samsung's low-res display

It is surprising how much emphasis consumers place on raw specs nowadays and how much the proliferation of smartphones has informed them about the CPU performance, display technology etc. When it comes to processing power, Micromax has played the numbers game. The A116’s quad-core MediaTek MT6589 processor is expected to be efficient thanks to the 28nm manufacturing process. It should be fast and more than capable for everyday tasks and gaming. Samsung has included the Broadcom BCM28155, manufactured using a 40nm LP process, to handle the processing in the Galaxy Grand; it is not a laggard by any means, but it just might struggle when up against the MT6589. This will be clearer once we see benchmark scores for both the phones.

One commenter was certain that the MT6589 would consume less battery thanks to it being based on Cortex A-7 and having a 28nm manufacturing process. The Broadcom chip is certainly more powerful thanks to its Cortex A-9 roots, but the 40nm architecture means it will consume more power.

Of course, this is by no means a final verdict on the popularity of either device. The sales figure will be a more solid indicator. However, the initial response to the Micromax A116 Canvas HD’s specs and price gives us reason to believe that it is the more preferred device at the moment.