People visit an Android stand at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona March 4, 2015.
People visit an Android stand at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona March 4, 2015. REPRESENTATIONAL IMAGEReuters

Noticing the huge demand of super affordable smartphones among consumers, Micromax has launched a new affordable smartphone in the country. Dubbed as Micromax Canvas Spark, the smartphone runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box. Considering this, Canvas Spark counts itself in the Moto E2 league, which was till date the only available smartphone under ₹7,000 and runs the latest Android operating system.

With an available price of ₹4,999, the Canvas Spark will fight it out with Moto E2, Lenovo A6000, Infocus M2, Xiaomi Redmi 2 and the latest Lenovo release A6000 Plus. With the release of A6000 Plus, Lenovo has played a clever trick by just pricing it ₹500 more than Lenovo A6000 and offering double the RAM and storage space.

Design and Build

The Canvas Spark and A6000 Plus is almost identical candy bar shaped phones. The only distinction between the two is the materials used and the bezel. While Micromax Canvas Spark has used soft finished matte back cover, the Lenovo A6000 Plus uses the back cover to hide the bezels. Both devices have soft rounded corners, which comes handy to hold. The Moto E2 has a curved rubberised back cover, which looks tough and is ergonomic to hold.

[Read More- Infocus M2 Review: True Canvas Spark Competitor]

Display

The Micromax Canvas Spark and Moto E2 both feature qHD (Quarter HD) display with a dimension of 4.7-inch and 4.5-inches. In comparison to their 940x540 pixels resolution, the A6000 Plus features a 1280x720 pixels display measuring 5-inches.

Though sounds minimal, the qHD displays are quite useful for everyday tasks like mailing, texting, surfing and so on, the HD or 720P displays comes handy while gaming and watching videos. Bigger screen also offers comfortable multi-tasking and switching among apps, while the small screened devices are easy to carry and slip into wallet or pocket.

Specification

The Moto E2 comes in two variants, the 3G only edition features a Snapdragon 200 SoC, while the Moto E2 4G edition features the popular SoC Snapdragon 410. The 1.2GHz 64-bit Snapdragon 410 is also visible in Lenovo's A6000 Plus.

On the RAM specification, both the Moto E2 and Canvas Spark feature 1GB RAM while the A6000 Plus is the only device in the comparison, which packs 2GB RAM memory.

The Moto E2 4G edition scored 22,142 on AnTuTu. Though A6000 Plus packs similar processor, the bigger RAM will help it to score more than the two. According to the specification, the Canvas Spark should be able to achieve somewhere near 20,000.

[Read More:- Moto E (2nd Generation) 4G Review]

Software

As we mentioned earlier, Canvas Spark and Moto E2 both runs on the latest Android Lollipop operating system. While Motorola offers the Android 5.0.2 Lollipop, the Canvas Spark runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop. In comparison, the A6000 Plus still runs on the dated Android Kitkat 4.4. Earlier Lenovo has declared to roll out Android L update by second quarter this year. According to the release the A5000 and A6000 both will get the OTA update. We believe A6000 Plus will also get the update in similar time frame.

[Read More:- Moto E (2nd Generation) 3G Review]

Camera

The Canvas Spark and A6000 Plus both come with an 8MP rear and 2MP front camera. The sensor featured in A6000 Plus is similar to the A6000, which we have already reviewed. Both the cameras are able to snap images with good details and balanced colours. Micromax usually offers decent cameras for cheap, take Yu Yureka's sample images for instance.

On the contrary, the Moto E2 packs a 5MP+0.3MP camera combination with the Moto famed stock camera app. In decent light, it clicks good images but suffers in challenging lighting conditions.

[Read More: Moto E2 vs Redmi 2 vs Lenovo A6000 Head to head Review]

Battery and Storage

Canvas Spark and Moto E2 both offers 8GB inbuilt storage expandable up to 32GB while the A6000 Plus offers 16GB in-built memory with similar expandable capability.

In battery, the Moto E2 clearly stands tall than the two by featuring a 2390 mAh battery. We reviewed both the variants and found them extremely good for its price. The Lenovo A6000 Plus packs a 2300 mAh battery and we found it offering life around a day in our review.

The Canvas Spark packs a 2000 mAh battery, which sounds a tad inferior in comparison.

[Read More:- Lenovo A6000 Review]

Our take

For the price A6000 Plus offers great specification while it lacks on the operating system segment. The Moto E2 is an all round performer but price slightly steeper. The Canvas Spark is a good offering in its price minus the battery.