Micromax A89 Ninja review

The Micromax A89 Ninja is a budget Android smartphone that first made an appearance on the company's website in late-January, though the listing was without a price tag. It started retailing online a few days following the listing for Rs. 6,490. This dual-SIM phone is one among Micromax's wide range of low-priced Android phones, but is it worth picking over a similarly priced feature phone? We try to find out.

On first look, the phone doesn't evoke any emotion. It more or less follows the same design language that we've seen in other budget Android phones from Micromax. It has rounded corners, a chrome frame and a plastic back cover.

The front features a 4-inch screen, three capacitive touch buttons - Menu, Home and Back, for navigation, and a light sensor.

The glossy back features a 3-megapixel-camera lens surrounded by a chrome ring, towards the top and a speaker grill near the bottom. The back also sports Micromax branding. The power/screen lock key sits on the right side, while the volume rocker is located at the left. All buttons also sport the chrome finish. The micro-USB port and 3.5mm headset jack is at the top of the phone. Build wise, the phone feels sturdy and durable.

The Micromax Ninja A89 is a dual-SIM smartphone and supports GSM SIM card in both the slots. The SIM Card slots and a slot for the microSD card hide behind the back cover just above the battery slot. Unfortunately, the SIM cards are not hot swappable and you'll have to take the battery out if you want to replace either one of them. The microSD card is hot swappable though.

The Micromax Ninja A89 comes with a 4-inch 262k-colour capacitive touch screen sporting a resolution of 480x800 pixels. We found the screen resolution to be decent for a device of this size, and the graphics and text appeared fine. The viewing angles looked good, and the under-sun visibility on the phone was decent, though we found the screen to be pretty reflective.

The handset sports three capacitive buttons - a Menu key, Home button and a Back key. Long pressing the Home key opens the app-switcher for switching between open/previously accessed apps. To be honest, we find the menu button redundant. Perhaps, Micromax could allow users to use the menu button exclusively as the app-switcher, on the lines of newer HTC phones. We're glad that the phone features stock icons, unlike the A110 Canvas 2.

During our use of the phone we noticed some minor lag, especially while playing games, but other than that, we'd rate our overall experience as above average. We expected a bit more from a phone that runs on a dual-core processor. We're not sure if the phone would get updated to Jelly Bean, which offers a smoother user experience compared to ICS.

The phone is powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor that is a MediaTek chip, and has 512MB of RAM on board. We did not encounter any crashes while working on the phone and multitasking was comfortable. We did notice some lag while navigating through the menu, and while playing some games. We were not able to play 1020p HD video clips, and 720p clips also stuttered. The phone also doesn't support .mov videos natively, but that can be easily fixed by downloading third-party video players.

The phone comes with the native Android browser and renders all webpages well. It doesn't come with Adobe Flash. The speaker on the phone delivers good quality sound with average volume levels. Also, since the speaker is located at the back, the volume levels further decrease when the phone lies on its back.

Call quality was good. The phone is a dual-SIM GSM phone with support for one active and the other in active-standby mode.

The Micromax A89 Ninja comes with a 1450mAh battery and it's one of the major pain points of this phone. With intermediate usage during the day, including playing games, an hour of phone calls, and e-mail and Twitter notifications turned on, the phone just lasted half a day, or just 7-8 hours on a single charge, which is very disappointing. But it's worth mentioning that we had turned off Wi-Fi and the phone was hooked on to a 3G network, with brightness set to the highest level, during our use.

The 24-year-old also trains on her own with renowned Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter Romulo Barral at Gracie Barra in Northridge - a choice Rousey fully endorses.

"I think it's good she has a little separate from me, her own jiu-jitsu place that she goes to and her own group of guys that are her friends," Rousey said. "You come into a new city and you don't really know one person, sometimes the only people you know are who they know. So she's really branching out and settling in in L.A. She's doing fantastic."

When Shafir isn't training with Rousey - like when she went with the camp to Big Bear to help the champ train for her first title defense against Liz Carmouche last month at UFC 157 - she's quick to defend her.

"She's done a lot for the sport, but that's what Miesha Tate and all these girls are hating on her game. Like, you need to appreciate!" she said. "She may have only been doing MMA two or three years, but hard work has been put in since she was 11. Who are you? Who ARE you? You have no leverage. I'm sorry. Not in my eyes, you don't."

And not lost on the native of Moldova, who moved with her parents to Albany when she was 5, is the incredible opportunity.

"It means the world to me. I was saying, the transition from Albany, New York, to here, one thing I really like is it's still very family-based. You've got family values still here," Shafir said. "Everybody carries themselves here like they're family. The loyalty's there and that means a lot to me. Because that's what I was raised on. That's what I know. It means a lot to me. I can show them what I know is also in their game plan. That's why we get a long so well and are moving forward and going in the right direction."