Micromax Gravity GC 700 [Review]

Hold the phone upside-down to switch from GSM to CDMA instantly

Until now, if you had to use the CDMA and the GSM networks at the same time, the only option was to carry around two phones; one for each type of network. However, Micromax has now released a phone - the Gravity GC 700- with both CDMA and GSM connectivity on the same handset. The Gravity has a unique design where you can hold the phone upside-down to shift from GSM to CDMA instantly. The acceleromater based UI turns around automatically to adjust the new position. The phone also has a large touchscreen display along with other features such as 2 Megapixel camera, Bluetooth and expandable memory. Read on for the full review of this interesting device.

Bundle

• Micromax Gravity GC700
• Charger
• Battery
• Handsfree Kit
• USB Cable
• Service Guide
• User Guide
• Stylus
  

Design & Construction

The Micromax Gravity has a very unique design. The top and bottom side of the front face are virtually mirror images of each other. There is a 5-way D-pad at the middle and two soft-keys flanking the sides. The front face is completely glossy with a large display in the middle.

On the right side of the phone is a miniUSB slot for connecting the charger and the data cable, while on the left side is a 3.5mm headphone jack.

On the rear side is the camera lens at the top with the phone name printed in the middle. The rear side is also glossy and hence also collects a lot of fingerprints.

The memory card is strangely placed beneath the SIM card. It can accept up to 4 GB of microSD card, however, there wasn't one provided in the bundle.

The phone is solidly built and feels very sturdy. It is also fairly light and slim and hence easy to carry around in your pocket.

Display

The Micromax Gravity has a 2.8", 240 x 400 pixel touch screen display capable of displaying 262k colors. The company website claims the display is a capacitive touch screen but contrary to the behavior of capacitive touchscreens, the Gravity display also works with objects other than your fingers.

The sensitivity of the touchscreen is quite good as you don't need to press hard to register an input. The picture quality of the display is also decent with good colors and brightness.

UI & Navigation

The interface on the Micromax Gravity seemed to be heavily inspired by the iPhone OS. Many of the details such as the 'slide to unlock' on-screen gesture, the rotating wheel for entering numbers in the clock settings and the shutter animation in the camera when it starts have all been borrowed from the iPhone OS.

Still that's just a minor portion of the UI and the rest of it is quite original. The phone does not have a separate stand-by screen as in most phones and the main menu screen is the home screen. At the bottom of the screen are some shortcut icons. The main menu is in the form of icons arranged in a grid, while the sub-menus are in the form of lists. Additional items appear at the bottom as tabs with the back key always available at the bottom right of the screen. The phone's UI rotates when you turn around the phone.

The overall response of the UI is satisfactory. The phone does not seem slow or sluggish, which is quite an accomplishment, as several phones these days could not achieve the same. The touchscreen's responsiveness also plays an important role here.

Connectivity, Calling & Messaging


The Micromax Gravity is a Tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz and single band CDMA 800 MHz handset. It also has support for GPRS, however, there is no 3G. Along with that there's Bluetooth (with A2DP) and USB connectivity.
The call quality on the Gravity is ok. The loudspeaker is also quite loud and the vibrator is also fairly powerful.

Messaging on the Gravity isn't much fun as the on-screen QWERTY keypad is quite small and cramped for use with your fingers. You have to use the stylus every time you want to type. The phone also supports hand writing recognition.

Multimedia

The Micromax Gravity has a 2 Megapixel fixed focus CMOS camera. The lens does not have any protection nor is there any flash. The camera software is heavily inspired by the iPhone camera app. The quality of the camera was pretty poor which wasn't particularly surprising considering the specifications.

The phone's music player supports MP3 and WMA formats. The interface is pretty easy to use. However, there is no way to categorize your music into album, artist, etc. The phone did have several equalizer presets to adjust the audio, but there is no manual equalizer available.

The audio quality of the phone is quite decent. The phone also has a 3.5mm headphone jack, which meant that I could use any headphones of my choice and was not restricted by the supplied earphones.

The phone also has an FM radio.

Web Browsing

The built-in web browser is quite basic. It is mostly designed to work with mobile optimized web sites and hence it struggles with full PC websites. However, the phone did come with the Opera Mini browser pre-installed. Not that you cannot downloaded it yourself, but it saves you some time and effort.

Battery Life

The Micromax Gravity has a 940 mAh Li-Ion battery. Considering that the phone is designed to work with both GSM and CDMA simultaneously, I feel that the battery is too small in capacity. The phone lasted me for a day and a half with just GSM usage, which included calls, messages, GPRS usage and Bluetooth usage. With both GSM and CDMA working simultaneously, the figure is bound to go further south.

Verdict

The Micromax Gravity GC 700 is priced at Rs. 12,999 (MRP). It is a good solution for those who don't want to carry separate phones for GSM and CDMA. However, even considering that I feel the price is on the higher side. The phone is decent overall, but I expected more in terms of battery life. In the end I would say that although the Gravity is an interesting product it needs to be priced lower.