Micromax is a strong competitor to the top brands like Samsung, HTC and Sony. This Indian brand is known for manufacturing decent Smartphones at low prices. Micromax has gifted budget-oriented Indian Smartphone users with plenty of low cost phones with above average features and its Canvas series has become very successful in the market. One such affordable and yet feature loaded Smartphone from the company is the Micromax Bolt A35, which was released earlier in Febrauray 2013. Here is a quick review of the phone.

Processor and Operating System

The Micromax Bolt A35 has reached the market with Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread platform and there is no news for any recent update of the phone. The black colour of the phone looks attractive and impresses on the first look.

Talking about the hardware, users might not get impressed by it but the phone easily gets your job done. Micromax A35 is equipped with a 1GHz core processor and 512 MB of RAM and user available storage is 160 MB. The processor of the phone is powerful and can manage the daily processes with great convenience. You won’t find any lag that you see in high end phones; the processor delivers quicker performance and you can easily switch from one app to the other.

Important Features

With this new phone a new feature is introduced that is the Flash Transfer with which you can transfer your photos, files, videos, songs and apps with just a swipe. This is an amazing app which works with simple drag; users need to drag the files off the screen or shake it to share the content smoothly. This app is strictly for Android devices and works efficiently on Wi-Fi network and one device should be kept as hotspot and then sharing it on the private network.

This is a dual SIM phone with which you can receive a call on the second SIM while talking on SIM one. This dual SIM phone supports dual standby and it’s good. The sound quality can be appreciated; when you listen to songs or FM radio you’ll experience the crisp and better quality of sound from the speaker outlets given at the back. If you are a gaming freak, then this phone is not a good choice. Games with high end graphics cannot be played well here and in this case lag is seen.

Design and Display

The dimensions of the phone are 124 x 64 x 11.6 mm and weights almost 89 g which means it is light in weight and won’t be a problem in handling. The back panel of this device is so textured that better grip is offered. The uncluttered, bright and clear UI increases its charm. The appealing display of 4inches is a big deal to get in such a low price. This Smartphone has huge 4 inches of TFT capacitive screen with resolution 480 x 800 and displays colour up to a depth of 65k.

Storage Memory

Those who love to store loads of apps and games in their device can find memory a bit low, in that case memory expansion is the best option. However, the phone sports a micro SD card and memory can be expanded up to 16GB.

The internal memory offered is very less and without the help of SD card you’ll see a flashy notification saying low memory. Even if you store few messages and contacts, you might face this memory problem. So you have to buy a memory card to avoid memory problems.

Camera

At the back side, 2 MP of mediocre camera gives average pictures and the secondary camera offers VGA images. However, when you are in a hurry and trying to click a picture then you’ll come across an issue that is slow loading of the camera. Also the presence of flash disappoints the users in low light environment. Also, in normal climatic conditions the photos captured are not of standard quality; it seems Micromax has compromised with the camera and thus the price is less.

The loud voice of shutter might annoy you at the beginning but later you’ll get used to it. As said above, it’s better not to talk about the secondary VGA camera. Though you can record videos and audio with multiple formats, but results are not satisfactory.

Battery

The battery coming with the phone is of 1500 mAh and stay users connected with the phones for an appreciable time. This much battery backup offered by the phone is not that enough to play games, watch videos and surf internet. Within 2 hours the phone gets fully charged and if you are a frequent internet user then the battery might get drained quickly. On standby mode, the battery support is for 9 hours and offer talk time of almost 4-6 hours which is less.

Connectivity

Coming to connectivity, the phone has Bluetooth, GPRS and Wi-Fi and flash transfer is the biggest advantage for easy sharing of stuff. Lack of 3G is a miss and users were expecting this feature from the brand. The phone supports standard audio jack of 3.5 mm. Other than basic apps, the phone comes with some pre-loaded apps like M!Live, Texasholem and connect4battleship2.

Many users complaint about the frequent hung up and sudden switching off of the device which is very annoying. Also, the battery gets dry without any notification and phone becomes dead. Also, many of the games are not supported by the phone which is a true disappointment.

Verdict

For budget seekers the Micromax Bolt A35 is a decent choice but don’t expect it to deliver pretty graphics and extra features. The camera is also an average performer with no added specs. The most important part is its OS which is quite older as compared to the latest launched Smartphones. Users might prefer phones running on advanced Android versions instead of this. With a very basic price of Rs. 4,500 you cannot expect the phone to function like S4 or HTC One, but looking at its overall performance, the features are matching the price of the device, 4.5K.

The DNetWorks Team