For my fair lady

Micromax's Canvas Selfie wants to make women 'more presentable' with its Photoshop-like camera features

Four female tennis players - French Kristina Mladenovic (ranked 68th by Women's Tennis Association), Slovak Daniela Hantuchova (45th), Indian Sania Mirza (fifth in women's doubles) and Serbian Ana Ivanovic (sixth) - had launched Micromax's Canvas Selfie smartphone, which lets "image-conscious" women touch up their photos. I'd like to leave the judgment part to you, but I've got to review the phone that boasts of features such as "Eye Enhancement", "Face Slimming", "Skin Smoothening", "Oil Removal" and mascara, eye-shadow, blush and lip gloss effects. I know the tech world is mostly made of pricks like me but this goes a bit beyond a dusky, long-legged lass pouting beside a BMW. Oh, sorry, I said the burden of judgement would be on you. So, let's look at the phone.

The Selfie is light and its 4.7-inch display would have made it easy to handle with one hand but for the false leather back that is too slippery. Besides, the power key is on the top edge despite space on the right and left edges, which house the dual-SIM tray and camera key and the volume rocker, respectively. The build and design are attractive. The 3.5mm headphone jack is on the top edge, while on the bottom are the USB port and a microphone. On the top of the display are the 13MP front camera, speaker and sensors, while the capacitive home, back and recent-apps keys are at the bottom. The back houses the 13MP camera with flash and a microphone on the top and the speaker grill at the bottom.

The Selfie's standard high-definition display, supported by ARM's Mali 400 graphics processor, is neat, crisp and balanced. The touchscreen responds quickly, helped by the 1.7GHz MediaTek octa-core processor. I suffered no lags between tasks or apps.

The camera comes with object tracking, that is, you can fix focus on an area so that even if you move the camera a little, that space remains in the focus. The tracking feature in the Selfie doesn't work perfectly, but it's not bad. You can touch up the photos in two ways - before the click and after. Once you've got the focus and lighting right, you can enlarge your eyes or sharpen the iris; "[slim] your face for a more youthful look [sic]"; smoothen the skin by removing blemishes and wrinkles; whiten your accursed dark skin and also your teeth for that perfect "first impression is last impression" smile; remove reflection and improve the surrounding lighting; and remove the dark circles under your eyes. Now click. Then to begin editing, tap on the image. The phone will tell you "smart beautication [sic] applied" and offer a closed spline with control points to decide the area that you want to improve. Next pick your tool from the vanity box icon - blush, mascara, eyeliner, eyeshadow, lipstick, lipliner and lipsharpener. Impressive. Pity the company didn't add a shaving kit, hair product and biceps inflator for men to increase the target market. Moreover, the 13MP Sony lenses disappointed, with pictures that were grainy and lacked detailing.

Rs 19,999 for this? Sorry.
MICROMAX CANVAS SELFIE

• Price: Rs 19,999
• Battery : 2,300mAh
• Display: 4.7 inches; 720x1,280 pixels
• Processor: MediaTek 1.7GHz octa-core
• RAM: 2GB
• Storage: 16GB; expandable up to 32GB
• Camera: (rear/front) 13MP/13MP, flash
• OS: Android 4.4 KitKat
• SIMs: Two (GSM/CDMA)