Micromax Canvas Doodle 3, HTC Desire 210 Dual SIM heat up the sub-Rs. 10,000 smartphone segment

The price segment between Rs. 8,000 to Rs. 13,000 was once dominated by Samsung and Micromax jointly; however with the increasing competition we have more challengers now. The domestic and global handset makers are launching smartphone at competitive prices to compete against one another.

Micromax launched the third Doodle smartphone iteration, the Canvas Doodle 3 featuring a large 6-inch display at Rs. 8,500, a couple of days after HTC announced its 'cheapest' Desire smartphone dubbed HTC Desire 210 Dual SIM packing a dual-core MediaTek processor.

Let's compare the newly launched the Micromax Canvas Doodle 3 and HTC Desire 210 Dual SIM with the already available smartphones in the market such as Sony Xperia E1 dual, Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2, Nokia X and the Nokia Lumia 525, a non-Android device.

Firstly, all the devices listed above - except the Lumia 525 - are dual-SIM phones.

The Canvas Doodle 3 features a large 6-inch display offering a FWVGA (480x854 pixels) resolution, while the others offer a smaller, 4-inch of screen size with WVGA (480x800 pixels) resolution. Clearly, the Canvas Doodle 3 has a bigger and better resolution display than other devices in the segment, but the pixels-per-inch is much lower thanks to the larger screen size.

(Also see: Micromax Canvas Doodle 3 vs. HTC Desire 210 Dual SIM vs. Sony Xperia E1 Dual vs. Nokia X)

Both the Micromax Canvas Doodle 3 (1.3GHz, MT6572) and HTC Desire 210 Dual SIM (1GHz, MT6572M) are powered by dual-core processors, which seems to be the clock speed of the segment as the Xperia E1 dual packs a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 (MSM8210) processor; the Galaxy S Duos 2 comes with 1.2GHz dual-core processor; the Nokia X with 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and the Lumia 525 is powered by a dual-core 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor.

(Alse see: Micromax Canvas Doodle 3 vs. HTC Desire 210 Dual SIM vs. Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 vs. Nokia Lumia 525)

The Nokia Lumia 525 trumps all the other smartphones in the category with its 1GB of RAM which is twice the RAM (512MB) found in Desire 210 Dual SIM, Sony Xperia E1 dual and Nokia X, while the Galaxy S Duos 2 includes 768MB of RAM. When you add the fact that Windows Phone is not very resource hungry to begin with, that's a big win for the smartphone.

(Also see: Nokia Lumia 525 review)

The Canvas Doodle 3 and Desire 210 Dual SIM come with 4GB of inbuilt storage, just like the Galaxy S Duos 2, Xperia E1 dual and Nokia X. On the other hand, the Lumia 525 comes with 8GB of inbuilt storage, another plus. All six come with expendable storage, so there's nothing to separate them there.

The Canvas Doodle 3 and Desire 210 Dual SIM run the dated Android 4.2 Jelly Bean out-of-the-box, with the Galaxy S Duos 2 following suite. Meanwhile, Nokia's first Android smartphone runs Android Open Source Project (AOSP) with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as the baseline for its operating system, though it's not 'Android' as you know it.

(Also see: Nokia X review)

The Xperia E1 dual trumps all as it more recent version of Android (4.3), while the Lumia 525 runs Windows Phone 8, and it is slated to get the Windows Phone 8.1 update.

On the optics front, the Canvas Doodle 3 and Desire 210 Dual SIM sport 5-megapixel rear cameras, as do the Galaxy S Duos 2 and Nokia Lumia 525. The Nokia X and Sony Xperia E1 dual house a 3-megapixel rear camera.

The Micromax Canvas Doodle 3 with its 2500mAh battery is of a higher capacity as compared to the Desire 210 Dual SIM (1300mAh), Lumia 525 (1430mAh), Galaxy S Duos 2 (1500mAh), Xperia E1 dual (1700mAh) and Nokia X (1500mAh).