The Micromax In 2c is an entry-level stock Android smartphone that doesn’t really have much else going for it. Priced at Rs 8,499, the phone’s performance is lacklustre when it comes to the camera, gaming, and charging. However, if you’re looking for a simple phone that performs well when it comes to basic, day-to-day tasks such as calling, texting, social media, and more, this phone works fine for that.
The budget smartphone segment in India is a burgeoning one owing to the price-conscious Indian market. There are multiple options on offer from companies such as Xiaomi, Realme, Tecno, Samsung, Infinix and others. Micromax is an Indian smartphone company that caters to the masses with its inexpensive smartphones. The latest budget smartphone on offer from the company is the Micromax In 2c. We got ourselves the unit a week before launch and have been testing it in various scenarios. So, is the Micromax In 2c a competent value-for-money product in the sub 10K price segment or will it be overshadowed by others? Let’s dive right into the review to find out.
The Micromax In 2c is a well-built budget smartphone with two colour options for users to choose from – Brown and Silver. We got the former for review and were quite pleased with the matte plastic back with a textured finish. Although, we would prefer another colour to the brown provided since it isn’t exactly the most appealing colour. The back has a radiating design originating from the camera module that looks pretty decent.
The camera bump houses two lenses and doesn’t jut out too much. The back also has the Micromax logo that is a little too large for our tastes. The phone feels solid to hold with little to no creaks when flexed. The buttons have good feedback and are quite tactile, which is not common at this price point. The front of the phone is adorned with rather large bezels and an even larger chin. The dewdrop selfie camera cutout looks dated, but we’ll give that a pass at this price point. The bottom also houses a 3.5mm audio jack, which is a welcome addition.
The Micromax In 2c’s display isn’t what we’d call a stunner in any way. It is a pretty simple 6.52-inch HD+ LCD display with no fast refresh rate. If you were looking for any frills in the display department, you’re not really going to find any. The glass used on the screen is not branded, so you’re not going to get the assurance of a Gorilla Glass display. You do get WideVine L1 support for high-definition content on streaming platforms, but Netflix did not play HD content on this phone for some reason.
The display’s colour accuracy is decent and it has good viewing angles. However, legibility takes a hit in direct sunlight and you may find it really hard to read the information on the screen. When testing, we got a peak brightness of 152 nits, which is extremely low. The display’s colour profile can be modified in Settings but we found the default version to be the most colour accurate. Overall, the phone is well-built but comes with a mediocre display at this price.
The Micromax In 2c is powered by the UNISOC T610 SoC with an octa-core CPU running at a clock speed up to 1.8GHz. The processor is running on the 12nm process and is a pretty decent SoC for general day-to-day usage such as texting, calling, social media, streaming, and more. The phone comes in one storage configuration with 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. There’s an option to expand the storage via a microSD card up to 256GB as well. As for connectivity, the phone supports 4G, 3G and 2G networks and comes with Bluetooth 5.0.
As we mentioned before, the phone is well-equipped to deal with general usage scenarios but gamers and power-users must steer clear of the device. The 3GB of RAM means that multitasking isn’t as smooth as one would hope, with app crashes happening often when you open multiple demanding apps such as games and benchmarks.
Speaking of benchmarks, let’s delve more into that. Running AnTuTu got us a score of 193233 which is neck and neck with its competitor – the Nokia G21. However, the Realme Narzo 30a, which is a much older phone in the same price range, beats it with a score of 201637. In GeekBench 5, the phone falls slightly behind the Narzo 30a in both Single and Multi Core tests. But it does beat out the Nokia G21 in the Single Core test. As for PCMark Work, the Narzo 30a beats it by almost 1,000 points but it scores around the same as the Nokia G21.
Moving on to GPU benchmarks, the phone does decently in 3D Mark Wild Life with a score of 524 but the Narzo 30a takes the lead here as well. We tried running GameBench to test Call Of Duty FPS and stability, but the GameBench kept crashing when we tried to do this, possibly due to the lacking RAM. When we played COD Mobile, the game ran at Low graphics and Medium framerate. The gameplay wasn’t exactly smooth, but the stutters and lags weren’t unmanageable. However, we still wouldn’t recommend this phone to a hardcore gamer at all.
So, the Micromax In 2c doesn’t do swimmingly in benchmarks and does hiccup quite a bit when multitasking. However, it is perfectly serviceable when running day-to-day tasks and playing less-intensive games such as Candy Crush.
The phone comes with Android 11 out of the box, completely devoid of any sort of bloatware in the form of third-party apps. We enjoyed the stock Android experience and it isn’t something we get to experience often. The OS operates smoothly with little to no stutters and lags when moving across screens and scrolling. The phone may slow down as you fill it with apps and photos though, so keep that in mind. As for software updates, the phone will get only 1 major OS update, which is disappointing.
The camera is not the Micromax In 2c’s strong suit. The phone is equipped with an 8 MP primary lens and a depth camera. It comes with a 5 MP front camera for selfies. The cameras have poor dynamic range with overexposed highlights and crushed shadows. The colour reproduction also leaves something to be desired.
The details in the photos you take is pretty good in bright daylight, but this goes south quickly when you’re in low light. Low light images are noisy and soft. Night Mode doesn’t make much of a difference, so the camera experience we had was pretty sour. Focusing on objects and people in low light is also hard since the phone doesn’t come with any kind of stabilisation.
The story is the same when it comes to video. The phone shoots 1080p footage at 30fps and the videos come out looking pretty mediocre. The colour accuracy is off and the dynamic range suffers as well. Overall, if the camera is important for you when purchasing a phone, we’d ask you to look the other way.
The Micromax In 2c houses a pretty sizable 5,000mAh cell with 10 W charging. The phone’s battery life is pretty decent and most users should be able to squeeze out a day and a half or two days’ worth of usage. We ran a gamut of games and benchmarks on the phone during our testing period and still got over a day’s worth of battery life.
Fifteen minutes of playing Call of Duty: Mobile drained the battery by 6 per cent while 30 minutes of Netflix streaming dropped the battery by 5 per cent. The 10 W charger is slow though and charged the phone from zero to full in 2 hours and 35 minutes.
The Micromax In 2c is an entry-level stock Android smartphone that doesn’t really have much else going for it. Priced at Rs 8,499, the phone’s performance is lacklustre when it comes to the camera, gaming, and charging. However, if you’re looking for a simple phone that performs well when it comes to basic, day-to-day tasks such as calling, texting, social media, and more, this phone works fine for that. However, we cannot fully recommend this phone to anyone since the Realme Narzo 30a performs better when it comes to camera and gaming by a significant margin and only costs Rs 500 more to purchase.