Why you should avoid Budget Smartphone brands likes Micromax Karbonn

Smartphone industry is one the fastest growing technology industry in India. Brands like Micromax, Lava, Karbonn, Spice etc are increasing their sales figures quarter on quarter. Many of these local brands are now ahead of big brands like Nokia, Lg, Sony etc. Micromax is India’s second largest cell phone manufacturer after Samsung. These local brands offers cell phone at a price 30-50% less than the global brands. All these local brands offers same feature phone as offered by global brands at a very less price. But what they don’t offers is the same quality and durability. 

Most of the Indian Smartphone manufacturers use cheap made in China parts. There is nothing wrong in using Chinese parts, even iPhone and iPad are manufactured in china by a Chinese company foxcon . Apple products too have china made parts. There is a huge gap between the quality of parts used in Indian brands and in global brands. comScore also said in its recent reports that most of budget android smartphone offered by Indian manufacturers are sub standard.

If you looking to buy a basic phone then you can go ahead with local brands, but if you are thinking to buy an Android Smartphone then I would suggest you to go with only the popular global brands. Here are my reasons why you should avoid brands like Micromax, Spice, Karbonn, Lava etc.

Low quality parts

Most of the Indian cell phone manufacturers use Chinese parts that are build with low quality material. As far as I know there are no cell phone parts manufacturing units in India, there are only parts assembling units. Because of low quality parts these phones are always highly vulnerable to dust, water and minor falls on the floors. The high end smartphones are IP55 and IP67 certified, they are dust and water resistant. The local brand phones are not that much resistant to dust and water.

• Also Read: Common Smartphone Problems that you can fix yourself 

Single Core Processors

Now almost every high end smartphone manufacturers are using dual core processors in their phones, many are even using quad core processors with dedicated GPU. While most of the low end manufactures are still having only single core processors with limited RAM in the phones.  The latest android OS requires high processing capacity and many apps runs only on multiple core processors. Local brands disappoints in terms of processing power.

No over the air android updates

When the latest version of Android gets released most of the high end smartphone makers provides over the air update, that lets you update the android operating system via internet. None of the Indian android smartphone makers provides such over the air update. The reason of this is that their phones doesn’t have the required processing capacity.

• Don’t Miss: Cheap dual camera android phones for video calls 

Poor Quality touch screens

Budget android phones uses poor quality touch screen which is of low resolution. Such screens suffer from responsive problems. Their responsiveness keeps on reducing with usage. Dead pixels is another common problem of such low-quality Smartphones.

Poor after sales service and support

Local smartphone brands have their service centers in limited cities and towns. Also their after sales service is poor. They take very long time to fix your phone and even after it is fixed, the same problem appears again repeatedly. Many times they charge for repairs even when the phone is in warranty period, saying those things are not covered in warranty.

My experience with local phone brands

I have used two micromax X294 and micromax Q5 fb. Both these phone have made me to suffer a lot. The q5′s track balls hardly works for 2 months. It has to get replaced regularly. Micromax service center charged me 250 Rs for the ball replacement, saying track ball in not covered in the warranty. X294 battery stopped charging after 20 days of purchase. The service center people said its IC has burned and burning is considered a physical damage which is not covered in warranty. Two months after the repair the phone again became dead. This time the service center said there is problem with the motherboard. They took 20 days to repair the motherboard.  Also one my friend who bought micromax A90 superfone had similar problem. First its touch screen stopped working and then after the repair it had problem with the motherboard

You can check the user reviews of micromax , karbonn, spice etc on sites like flipkart and mouthshout. You will find many users have complaints with such brands. If you are thinking to buy an android smartphone my advice to you is to go with the global brands. You can get cost effective smartphones from Samsung, sony etc in under 10k. Its better to spend little extra to enjoy a hassle free smartphone experience.