Review: Micromax Funbook:
These
days one can find Android tablets in every nook and cranny. That,
however, does not mean they are very good. This is clearly true at the
high end of the market, the situation gets even worse at the low-end.
These budget Android tablets are seldom usable, come with cheap
hardware, poor quality software and most times are not even compliant
with Google; hence they drop support for Google Mobile Suite (calendar,
maps and Gmail) and the Play Store. Obviously, in India we have many
examples of such low budget tablets. The Aakash is right up there, but
competitors like LACs, iBall, Beetle and the Reliance tablet are also
there, however none of them have the bells and whistles to dazzle the
average consumer.
Clearly Micromax thinks differently. It hopes that its Funbook will
provide a quality experience at a price point that will not hurt many
and at the same time will provide content for students. The presence of
the latest version of Android in its native state makes this device even
more enticing, but the proof of the pudding will be in the tasting. For
that read on.
Looks
Frankly,
there is nothing new out here. With its 7-inch form factor, the Funbook
has the same standardized tablet design highlighted with a glossy
plastic front end and a brushed metal finished back. Having said that,
rear part of the Funbook does not feel entirely metallic and perhaps
could have the same plastic exoskeleton as the front but with brushed
metal like paint. The sides of the Funbook have a very tasteful contour,
which makes the device ergonomically sound and comfortable to hold for
long durations. At 350 grams the Funbook is neither too heavy nor too
fragile.
Weirdly though, the Funbook has been designed in such a way that
landscape usage is encouraged. Looking at it from a landscape angle, the
power button and the volume rockers are positioned in the top right
hand corner and the rubberized Android buttons are placed on the right
hand side of the display. This design decision makes a few usability
tradeoffs. For instance, if a user opts to use the device in portrait
mode, the power button automatically gets placed at the very awkward
bottom right hand side area on top on which the volume rockers are
placed equally weirdly. Besides this, the placement of the volume
rockers is generally not very intuitive for the user either in portrait
or landscape modes are it falls in no-man’s land with it being in a very
odd top right hand side position in landscape view or at the bottom
right hand side in portrait view.
Micromax has cleverly decided to add a VGA front facing camera rather
than wasting its resources on a rear camera placed in such way that it
works perfectly in landscape mode. The bottom end (in portrait mode) of
the device is home to a myriad of ports such as mini-SD, HDMI adaptor
(sold separately), memory card, 3.5mm and the charger. Basically,
Micromax has packed in all the ports on one side of the device, which
leaves two ends of the device, completely unused. On the backside, there
is also a speaker grill coupled with the large Funbook branding.
Perhaps
the biggest gripe I have with the device is the presence of cheap
rubberized Android controls, which unfortunately remind of the shambolic
LACs Paprika tablet. Considering, Google had done away with the need of
hardware buttons on Honeycomb only, its not only weird to find these
buttons out here, but also shocking considering these buttons add no
value to either the design or usability of the device. Actually, these
buttons lend the device an air of cheapness associated with ultra-low
cost tablets, which is highly unfortunate as the product on the whole
feels quite solid for the price.
Hardware
Powered
by ARM Cortex A8 processor clocked at 1.2GHz with a Mali 400 GPU, the
Funbook certainly is no technical slouch. Adding to its firepower, the
device even has 512MB of RAM. When one couples this entire horsepower,
it should be a given that the Funbook should have adequate power to do
most daily chores.
The 7-inch capacitive display on the Funbook has a WVGA resolution
(800×480 pixels). It is of the LCD variety, however I do wish that
Micromax had increased the cost of the product and outfitted it with a
better quality display. It is not that the resolution is too low, but
the fact of the matter is the display is of a very poor quality. It has
poor sunlight legibility and average indoor performance. It becomes
particularly apparent if one reads a lot on the Funbook, which
automatically gives the Funbook a minus as an E-Book reader or even as a
web browsing apparatus.
Watching videos on the device is slightly better, but again the
viewing angles were not very impressive, however I am less prickly about
viewing angles as I prefer to watch my content straight from a 90
degree point of view rather than weird angles. Considering the Rs 6,499
price tag, this can be ignored.
Software
The
most exciting feature of the Micromax Funbook is that it runs stock
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) out of the box. Micromax should be
commended for bringing the new OS to the tablet and not customizing it,
at the same time, top manufacturers like Samsung, HTC and Acer should be
ashamed of themselves, as they are yet to offer a product in the tablet
space that runs Ice Cream Sandwich. While, the Funbook runs stock ICS, I
cannot confirm if the tablet would receive timely OS updates something
that plagues most Android tablets.
The presence of Ice Cream Sandwich makes the Funbook a fun experience
for the part. Navigating the UI for apps is particularly fluid,
something I have been unaccustomed to on Android tablets which have been
running Android Honeycomb. The optimizations Google has implemented on
ICS indeed work. In fact, the full GPU acceleration on ICS does not only
facilitate a more flamboyant UI but also a smoother one. At times in my
testing the tablet would even out-perform dual-core Honeycomb tablets
like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 620, but at the end of the day the fallacies
of the low-end hardware would become apparent. The device would work
smoothly for the part, but it also tended to choke out of no where for
no apparent reason.
Another area the ICS powered Funbook is superior to its Honeycomb and
Gingerbread counterparts, is the way it multitasks. For the first time
in the history of Android, quitting apps is easy. One just touches the
multitasking button and then a list of apps appears that can be swiped
away to oblivion. Part of the problem with Honeycomb was that there was
no proper way of closing apps and people would often end up with 20 or
30 apps open, which would result in the device coming to a grinding
halt. This problem is no where to be seen on the Funbook.
As
far as typing was concerned the Funbook was generally adequate for
typing and the virtual keyboard in ICS has been improved further from
that of Honeycomb in terms of spell checking and prediction, however at
times I found the experience to be slightly laggy. Web browsing is not
the Funbook’s forte. It loads pages slowly, very slowly. In fact, our
very own
BGR India mobile page would take more than a minute
open on a 4 Mbps Wi-Fi network, leave alone our full website. Besides
this, the video playback was pretty stable at even 1080p resolutions and
the same held true for causal games like Angry Birds Space and Cut the
rope. For heavy-duty games like ShadowGun and Dead Space I would
recommend getting a more powerful tablet.
Micromax
has promoted this tablet as an instrument for education with the device
having content from publishers like Pearson, Everonn, and Vriti. In
addition to this, Micromax also preloads a Zenga TV app, which works
smoothly and provides legal televised content. However, this is a paid
service, for testing the device I used my personal account. To provide
content more smoothly, Micromax has added its own apps market along with
the Google Play store. Users can get movies like Dabangg, or apps like
Times of India or even some educational content.
Performance
Without
any doubt the Funbook is an impressive performer for general tasks.
Navigation of the UI is fast and pretty fluid, apps start pretty swiftly
and one can keep multiple apps and widgets opened together with feeling
a lot of lag. The most surprising fact was that I was able to run live
wallpapers and not suffer performance lags on a regular basis. This was
indeed impressive. Obviously with innards like a 1.2GHz processor, 512
MB of RAM and 4GB of memory this should be expected, however all is not
perfect.
Web browsing is something that a device like the Funbook should excel
at, but in fact it performs very poorly. Because of the poor display
quality, reading is a painful experience even for person like me with
good eyesight (Thank God!). Even the glorious Holo UI of Ice Cream
Sandwich looks quite ugly in wake of the below par display.
On the whole if all you need is Gmail, minimal web browsing, casual
gaming and bit of entertainment in the form of movies and music, the
Funbook will perform perfectly. Problems will occur if web browsing and
reading were the main task for the Funbook and anything graphically
intensive, say, a game like Shadowgun would cripple the Funbook
experience. In terms of battery life, the Funbook lasts a good five
hours with consistent use of the web browser and a bit of gaming and
multimedia entertainment.
Verdict
Considering
the Funbook only costs Rs 6,499, it indeed is an impressive product.
Funbook buyers can also get a Tata Photon+ under a promotional campaign,
adding to its overall value for money. When it comes to competition in
the sub-Rs 10,000 Android tablet market, the Funbook emerges as a clear
winner. The cherry on the topping is Ice Cream Sandwich, which offers a
wide variety of newly updated Google apps like Gmail and Google Maps,
all in a package that even has a fluid and pretty UI.
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