Review: Micromax Canvas Doodle 4, The Unimpressive 6 Inch Monster
Review: The Micromax Canvas Doodle 4 is a decent 6 inch budget smartphone for Rs 9,199.
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Micromax is a smart company that is on a mission to take on the big boys of the smartphone world like Samsung and Apple. Their key strength is budget pricing of their smartphones.
They came out with the Canvas Doodle a couple of years ago to take on the Samsung Galaxy Note series and this year they have launched the budget successor to the Doodle, calling it the Doodle 4.
Watch: Review of Micromax Canvas Doodle 4
This is a 6 inch smartphone . It is a rather big and bulky phablet form factor smartphone priced at Rs 9,199. But is that pricing disruptive for the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the iPhone 6 Plus?
To be blunt, the Micromax Canvas Doodle 4 is not even close. Its major competition is the Xiaomi Redmi Note.
What’s Good?
The Micromax Canvas Doodle has a beautiful build quality. It has a well rounded back that sits on your palm with ease without slipping.
The 6 inch form factor is a little too big for our taste, but the phone does not feel bulky at all. It is lightweight too.
The phone sports a 6-inch (960 x 540 pixels) qHD IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection that is big, bright and crisp. It’s a good smartphone to watch videos and play games on and offers a better viewing experience than the Xiaomi Redmi Note.
The 1.3 GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6582M processor is also smooth and is backed by 1 GB RAM which is sufficient for basic usage. The Doodle 4 runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop Operating System which runs smoothly on the device.
There is also a non-removable 3,000 mAh battery that lasts really long considering that the phone is not that power hungry. With our medium to heavy usage it easily lasted for about 16 to 18 hours.
For Rs 9,199 Micromax throws in a lot of goodies with the Doodle 4 like a Magnetic Flip Cover and a screen guard. So for people looking for something extra this might sound fancy.
What’s Bad?
The phone is dual SIM capable with 3G support. There is no 4G compatibility with the Doodle 4. Here is where the Xiaomi Redmi Note scores over the Doodle 4 - the single SIM version of the Xiaomi Note has 4G support.
The Canvas Doodle 4 sports a 8 megapixel rear camera with a really small LED flash. The throw of the flash to take photos in low light is amazing but the camera is under-powered and hazy. The 5P lens with f2.0 is just to add to the list of specifications on the phone - it hardly makes images better.
The focus is also not very fast so you need to take your time to frame the shot before taking an image. The image quality doesn’t match up to the Xiaomi Redmi Note.
The front facing 2 megapixel camera on the Micromax Canvas Doodle 4 is an absolute shame. Don’t even bother to take a selfie with this one.
Why Buy it?
Well, the Micromax Canvas Doodle competes closely with the Xiaomi Redmi Note. What the Doodle 4 has, Redmi Note lacks and what the Redmi Note offers, the Doodle 4 cannot.
It’s a hard choice to make, especially since you also have slightly smaller devices like the Yu Yureka that are amazing.
All in all, the Micromax Canvas Doodle 4 is an unimpressive 6 inch smartphone that you will probably get bored of in a couple of months.
We would say give the Micromax Canvas Doodle 4 a skip for now.
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