Micromax A75 Superfone Lite Review

When a company decides to call a handset a ‘Superfone’, it tends to render an understanding that the product should be quite exceptional in at least its specific class. This, the A75 is Micromax’s second handset bearing the same 'Superfone' extension. The previous model, the A85 did not prove to be too ‘Super’ in its overall functionality and we’re here to tell you if Micromax’s second offering manages to live up to its name.

Form Factor
Taking on a simple oval form, the Micromax A75 has a hint of the Google Nexus S, in the looks department. It feels quite sturdy and stable to hold with a well proportioned body structure that’s also evenly balanced. The large 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen sports a 320 x 480 pixel resolution, which isn’t too bad, but can be a little tricky to read in direct sunlight, even with the backlight boosted to its peak. Viewing angles aren’t too great, either. Micromax has equipped the A75 with touch sensitive, Android menus keys just below the display, a micro USB port to the left side and volume/zoom keys to the right. The power/Screen lock button and 3.5mm handsfree socket are placed at the top.

Dual SIM cards with a Hot Swap microSD card slot

It’s a GSM + GSM Dual SIM handset with 2 SIM slots under the rear panel, both of which are only accessible by popping the battery out of its resting place. The A75 also features a Hot Swap microSD card slot near the 3MP camera module. A VGA camera for video calls is located up front.

Well built handset this 'Superfone-lite'

The Micromax A75 is certainly easy on the eyes and comes off as a well constructed handset.

Features and Performance
Interface
With a 650 MHz processor running a slightly laggy custom UI on top of Android Gingerbread, the A75 doesn’t make the best first impression on start-up. The UI features a few settings of its own, but nothing to write home about. We installed Launcher Pro as an alternative and found that the overall functionality went up by quite a bit, although a bit of lag was still evident, but nothing you’d hold against a 650MHz processor. The SIM settings are quite unique, as far as Dual SIM handsets go. It allows you to select which SIM is used for what and if you’d prefer to have only one on at a time or both on simultaneously. It's colour coded to make recognizing the SIMs easier. The UI comes with a few preset themes to jazz up the device and icons are quite colourful, bordering on the gaudy.

Well managed Dual SIM settings

Single thread Linpack scores came in at 8.50 and Multi-Thread at 7.55. Not altogether impressive, but we didn’t expect too much from a 640MHz processor.

Media
As far as media features go, the Micromax A75 is just about adequately sorted out. The native music player has been provided with a set of EQ presets, a Bass Booster option and Virtulizer to help revive the otherwise plain audio quality. It does so with little increase in overall appeal. Using third party players, like Mixzing made a considerable difference, so at the end of the day, the A75 proved to be quite capable in the audio department. The handset's FM radio worked out well. It even has an option of playing without connecting the handsfree, only reception takes a bit of a beating without it in some areas.

Just so-so in the media department

Videos, unfortunately did not fare so well. For some odd reason, we were unable to install any third party player onto the handset. They just plainly refused to install onto the drive. The stock Video Player app was able to read a few AVI files and standard MP4 and 3GP formats, but playback was quite jerky even with files at a 640 x 480 pixel resolution. Lower resolution files played well enough, but didn’t look very good on the large display. The issue with the viewing angle was more evident in this context and videos didn’t quite play on the full screen, so the stretch-to-fit feature didn’t quite work out, either.