Micromax Andro A60

Full Review

The Micromax Andro A60 recently hit stores with the tagline ‘My First Android.’ Looking at the inexpensive price-tag, I would love to tell you that the Andro is a perfect way to get into the world of Android smartphones. Unfortunately, the A60 is just so filled with disappointments that I can't even recommend it as a regular phone, let alone an entry level smartphone.

Features

The Andro A60 looks set to impress with some decent specs. It’s powered by a 600MHz processor and has 150MB of internal storage. A nice bonus is the 2GB card bundled with the phone, so you won’t be running out of storage space anytime soon. Imaging is handled by a 3.15MP auto focus camera without a flash. The A60 also supports Wi-Fi, 3G and GPS.



The A60 runs Android 2.1 and as a result supports Google Mobile apps such as Gmail, YouTube etc. You can also download apps and games from the Android Market to meet your needs.

Design & Usability

Let’s get the good things out of the way first. The Andro A60 looks cute and is small enough to slip into your pants pocket. It’s also very light and its build quality is solid in spite of completely relying on plastic. The Micromax utilizes a central D-pad and a call-receive and call-end button apart from three touch sensitive buttons, all of which are placed under the screen.

The screen measures 2.8-inches diagonally and although a little small, fits among the other budget phones available in the market. However, the screen is of especially poor quality with terrible viewing angles and a tiny 56K color output. As a result, you see plenty of color banding and even the most saturated images look dull.

The Andro also might just be one of the least usable phones I’ve reviewed in recent times and falls in with ignominious company such as the Acer beTouch E101. The resistive touchscreen is awful to use and it just doesn’t work well with the Android UI. I mean, here I am used to quick swipes and brief taps to get things done in an Android phone and the A60 comes around and forces me to gingerly tap on everything without knowing if something will happen. The keyboard was also practically unusable until I calibrated the touchscreen at least four to five times.

Browsing, Multimedia etc.

Although the Android 2.1 browser has some neat features, the Andro’s small screen and off-kilter touch UI means that usability is low. However, I have to admit that browsing using Wi-Fi at this price-point looks like a good deal. If only, the touch interface worked better.

The Andro is pretty good at playing music and the audio output is loud and clear. It uses the default Android music player UI which is plain to look at but easy to use. There are no extra sound customization options and the Andro doesn’t have an FM radio either.

The Andro’s 3.15MP camera is decent for shooting casual shots but if you’re looking for good amount of details in images (especially indoors), then you’d better look elsewhere.  Outdoor images look sharp with the right amount of colors. One big issue I had with the camera is that it’s claimed to be an auto-focus camera and the “auto-focus” part never comes into play. In the entire duration of my tests, the lens didn’t make any effort to focus on a subject so I don’t really know how it’s supposed to work as an auto-focus camera.


Images shot outdoors & indoors with the Andro A60 (click on images to enlarge in new window).

Bottom Line

Granted at Rs. 6,699, the Micromax is really affordable but should it really be your ‘first Android?’ Quite frankly, no and if you can’t afford to spend about 2K for the Samsung Galaxy 5, then you’d be better off with a phone like the Sony Ericsson Cedar. The Micromax might just completely put you off the Android mobile OS instead.

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