Micromax Canvas HD A116 vs Samsung Galaxy Grand vs Karbonn A30

Smartphones with large screen seem to have been flooding the market in past few months, as most of the major brands have some or the other offerings launched in this arena. While it is not just the biggies like Samsung getting big in this segment, players like Micromax and Karbonn are not far behind. In fact these local yet potential brands are tightening their grip on the market for bigger screen devices by bringing out feature packed large screen devices at a relatively lower price point. And considering that India still is a price conscious market, these brands are grabbing a decent market share by offering the consumers Android based devices similar to the ones made by the likes of Samsung and HTC, however at an affordable price point.

Keeping the needs of users alongside price point in mind, Samsung recently has brought the Samsung Galaxy Grand to the Indian market. The device does pack in an array of interesting features, but at a price of Rs 21,500 will it really be able to give its desi competitors, Micromax Canvas HD A116 and Karbonn A30, a run for their money, we take a look at the specs.

The screen size is the most prominent factors that keeps the three devices running in the same line. Micromax’s latest addition to its Canvas series, the Canvas HD A116 is one feature laden smartphone as it comes with a 5.0-inch 720p HD IPS display. The Karbonn A30 boasts of a massive 5.9-inch TFT display with a WVGA resolution. The Samsung Galaxy Grand carries a 5.0-inch TFT display with a WVGA resolution. It supports HD playback. In terms of  dimensions Karbonn’s A30 is the largest of the three, in terms of the display resolution the Micromax Canvas HD holds the edge.

On software front, the Micromax HD A116 and Samsung Galaxy Grand run on the Android Jelly Bean, while the Karbonn A30 lags behind in this race with the Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. Apart from this, as the processor plays a vital role to boost up the performance of any device, the Samsung Galaxy Grand rocks a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and Karbonn’s A30 also works on 1GHz dual-core processor. The Micromax Canvas HD A116 surely comes with a surprise as it has a 1.2GHz quad-core processor.

Now the big deal out here is that the Micromax HD A116 leverages a quad-core MediaTek CPU that leverages the ARM Cortex A7 platform. Cortex A7 has a lower thermal footprint than Cortex A9 in the Galaxy Grand, but at the same time it’s not as powerful. That means we can expect the performance and battery longevity to be comparable, even though one is a quad-core smartphone, while the other one has a dual-core processor. That said, the Micromax HD A116 does have a PowerVR series 5XT GPU that allows for full-HD video, and 720p display resolutions. We don’t have any details about the CPU and GPU configuration of the Karbonn A30.

Apart from this, all three devices come with dual-SIM compatibility (not dual-active), feature an 8.0 megapixel camera and offer an expandable memory space.

Here is a spec sheet of the three devices:

	Samsung Galaxy Grand	Micromax Canvas HD A116	Karbonn A30
Dimension	143.7x77x9.6 mm	144x74x10.7 mm	166 x 91 x 10.7 mm
Display	5-inch WVGA TFT LCD display (480×800 resolution)	5-inch 720p HD IPS display (1280×720 resolution)	5.9-inch TFT display (480X800 resolution)
OS	Android Jelly Bean OS, v4.1.2	Android Jelly Bean OS, v4.1.2	Android Ice cream Sandwich OS, v4.0.4
Processor	1.2GHz dual core processor	1.2GHz quad core processor	1GHz dual core processor
Memory	1GB of RAM, 8GB internal memory	1GB of RAM, 4GB internal memory	512 MB RAM, 4GB internal memory
Battery	2,100mAh	2,000mAh	2,500mAh
Storage	MicroSD card slot (up to 64GB)	MicroSD card slot (up to 32GB)	MicroSD card slot (up to 32GB)
Camera	8-megapixel rear camera, 2-megapixel HD front facing Camera	8-megapixel rear camera, VGA front-facing camera	8-megapixel rear camera, 1.3-megapixel front facing camera
Price	Rs 21,500	Rs 15,000	Rs 11,500 (approximately)

A previous version of the post indicated that the Micromax Canvas HD had a dual-active SIM system, but we have confirmed that it indeed does utilize a dual-SIM system in which both SIMs are not active.