Micromax Dual 5 first impressions: A comeback that seems worth the wait

After a long break, Micromax has finally announced a new smartphone called the Dual 5. The new flagship from the Indian smartphone maker is a metal-clad smartphone that doesn’t look shabby. In fact, it is one of best looking smartphones coming from the company. It is also the first smartphone from Micromax to utilise a dual-camera setup at the back. The company claims that it took them 6-8 months to push this one out, but was it worth? Here is a quick look at the smartphone. Build and design The Micromax Dual 5 is a really well built device. It features a metal uni-body design with a curved back which makes the edges look thin. Its comfortable to hold and doesn’t slip out of your hand. The weight is just about average for a 5.5-inch handset at 164g.  At the front there is a 5.5-inch display and the bezels are slim. Not the best, but the screen-to-body ratio is said to better than the iPhone 7 Plus .  The power button and volume rocker are placed on the right edge while the SIM tray is on the left edge. There is also an extra hardware key that can be designated to open the camera, as a shutter button or just to open apps.  The bottom has the USB Type-C port with two speaker grills on each side. At the top you can see the 3.5mm audio jack and the infrared port. At the back are the two cameras stacked vertically with a dual-LED flash and a fingerprint scanner. Display The panel is Super AMOLED unit with a 5.5-inch dimension and offers Full HD resolution (1920x1080). Colours look nice and vivid and it didn’t seem to struggle under the sun. The company claims it offers 100 percent NTSC colour gamut. I was also quite happy with the touch response that I got in the few minutes of my usage. As for sharpness, text looked crisp and with a pixel density of 401ppi, it seemed great to view videos. Chipset, Storage and RAM The Dual 5 comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 octa-core chip inside clocked at 1.8Ghz (four ARM Cortex A72 cores and four ARM Cortex A53 cores). That is paired with an Adreno 510 GPU and 4GB of RAM. Now this is an old chipset and was seen in handsets last year, but it has proven to be quite good too. As for storage, there is 128GB eMMC 5.1 built-in memory making it one of the very few handsets that comes with such amount at its price point. The storage can be further expanded as the handset features a hybrid SIM card tray allowing to add a microSD card.  OS and Software The smartphone runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with a custom UI layer on top. It comes with flashy interface and is loaded with some features like App Freezing, wherein a user can disable apps so they don’t run in the background. There are also a bunch of security features to keep personal data safe, like using a fingerprint to open apps or when the SIM is changed. According to Micromax co-founder, Rahul Sharma, there are two instances of the OS running at the same time. Users can use the OS in the second space to keep confidential or office related apps and files. The OS did seem to be snappy, and I did see some bloatware, but a proper testing is required. Camera  This is one of the main attractions of the Dual 5. The smartphone comes with three 13MP cameras powered by Sony sensors. Two are at the back and one is on the front. While all the details have not been revealed, the rear cameras come with an f/1.8 aperture and a dual LED flash unit. The front unit is aided with a soft LED flash as well. The combination of the two rear cameras is claimed to offer great photography capabilities. I tested the camera for a few shots and it is indeed good. One of the sensors shoots monochrome and the other shoots in RGB. The combination of the two provides good pictures in bright environments. Indoor pictures were just about average. There are quite a few modes for the camera like pro mode, panorama, HDR, and the usual set of features seen on most mid-ranged smartphone cameras. The camera is also loaded with features like 4K video recording, 3D video recording, slo-mo videos, time-lapse and so on. The camera felt good for its price range, but of course I need a better comparison and thorough testing to come to a conclusion. Battery and connectivity Micromax has put a 3,200mAh battery on the smartphone with quick charge 3.0 support. It is claimed to offer a full day battery life and and can be charged from 0-100 percent in about an hour which is pretty good. As for connectivity it offers 4G LTE with VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, infrared, USB Type-C, GPS, and offers dual SIM option via a hybrid SIM tray. Conclusion The Dual 5 is definitely a great one from Micromax. I am not very convinced about the claims of how the company has worked on it for months, as it looks like a re-branded Qiku smartphone which was launched in China last year. However, keeping the originality of the phone aside, I think it’s not a bad handset. The implementation of the cameras seem good, and that processor should work well. Priced at Rs 24,999 Micromax will be selling the handset form 10 April on Flipkart as well as offline channels.