Pros:
4GB nVidia GeForce 1050TI
i5 8300H Upto 4GHz
Separate SSD + 1TB HDD
Backlit Keyboard
Crisp Display
Easy HDD and RAM Access
Decent Audio, Loud but Bass is bit less
Cons:
Runs Hot (Like “you can make omelette on it” hot)
Previous Gen Thunderbolt Port
Acer Warranty Only 1 Year
LAVA XOLO Q800 REVIEW
I bought this phone for its performance and its camera and I didn’t expect such an awesome phone from Xolo. Xolo is totally into making high performing mid range phones with its latest q series. It is the result of continuous effort that company is able to make such handsets. It is available online at a price of Rs 11500 but can be bought for less than 10,000 from mobile selling shops. It has some good features like shake function, Set screen on, Sleep timer for music player and turn over to mute and is a dual sim phone.
Inside the package:
It comes with a preplaced scratch guard on the screen and an extra scratch guard inside the box, a data cable, phone manual, warranty manual, usb charger and a hearphone. The phone loudspeaker is average but the head phone come with extra bass and produce a decent sound. The phone comes in two colours: white and black. I bought the black one as it looks good but if you want it in 1k or 2k less price than buy the white one.
Specfications: Value For Money
Phone name: Xolo q800
Chipset: MTK MT6589 OR MTK MT6589 (in new phones)
Gpu: Power SGX 544mp
Ram: 1 GB
CPU: 1.2Ghz Quad core Cortex A7
Display: IPS Lcd 16 million colours
Size & Resolution: 4.5”inch, qhd display (540*960), 245ppi, (540*960)
Android OS: 4.1.2 JB (default), 4.2.2 OTA update available
Battery: 2100mAh
Memory: 4 GB (available1737.3MB) internal, Expandable up to 32 GB
Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.0, 3G(HSPA+) Downlink- 21mbps, Uplink-5.76mbps, Micro USBv2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Wi-Fi direct, Wi-Fi Hotspot and GPS
Colours: White, Black
Sensors: Accelerometer, Proximity, Ambient, Light sensor, Gyroscope, Compass
Camera: 8MP BSI sensor, Automatic Focus, Led Flash, Stills-3264*2448pixels Video Recording- 720p@ 30fps, 3gp format, Front camera: 1MP, Stills-1280*720 pixels
Dual Sim: Yes
Weight: 143.5 gm
The Specifications are good for this kind of price. The phone doesn’t lag and is good for any person looking for a mid range gaming phone.
Pros in specifications: Good display, no lags and Value for Money
Cons in specifications: No Usb On the go support and plastic body
Display: Very Good
Xolo has provided an ips lcd screen with 245ppi and the display is very good and the screen is visible with 50% brightness under sunlight. I recommend you to buy a cover for this phone as the screen is made up of glass and it might break if it slips from hand.
Battery life and Connectivity:
The phone comes with a 2100 mAh Li-Ion Battery which is pretty average but you can download xolo care app from play store which really saves the battery.
The phone comes with 3g, wi-fi, bluetooth and other options but the device would have been more good it had other things like Otg(USB-On-The-Go) ,HDMI or NFC.
Phone Design and UI: Good
The q800 doesn’t look like a 32k phone but it has a good look and a better build quality than other phones in its category. The back panel is made of plastic which can break if not handled properly. The back panel provides a good grip but design is not what for you should buy this phone for.
User Interface: Android 4.1.2 jelly bean(default) but can be updated to jelly bean 4.2.2
The UI maintains stock android and the company has not made many changes to the UI. The phone comes with a file browser, xolo care, xolo power and the essential apps. The contacts page has been modified a little but it doesn’t make a big difference. It has a xolo care app which looks after the after sales service of xolo brand.
Camera: Average
The xolo q800 is equipped with a 8mp hd camera. It includes a bsi sensor to assist low light conditions photos. The bsi sensor doesn’t work well as the images i took had a lot of noise and were average in detailing. It comes with other feature such hdr mode, macro, indoor,portrait, night mode. It also includes burst mode which can capture 40 or 99 images at a go. It also lets you adjust iso and other settings. It can shoot 720p videos which are good as compared to other phones in the same category. The outdoor images are good but night images are average. It also comes with other effects such as sepia sketch etc
Aperture: f/2.2
Shutter speed:1/5s
Focal length:3.7mm
Camera Samples
Outdoor:
Low Light Photos and Indoor photos:
Performance: Best in its range
This is the main reason for which is bought this phone. It doesn’t lag and has a smooth interface. Web browsing is really fast with opera mini or other fast browsers. I installed some heavy graphic and processor demanding games and they ran very smoothly. Heavy games like dead trigger, iron man3, nfs most wanted and vice city run smoothly at high graphic settings. It passed the multitasking test with ease.
I compared my device with Samsung galaxy s2 and it was ahead of it in most aspects and antutu benchmark score was 12513.
The phone loudspeaker is average but the headphones that come in the package produce a decent sound.
The phone takes around 25 seconds to start and 6 sec to shut down and 720p videos work well on mx player but 1080p videos only work in s/w mode.
Conclusion: A phone that delights you
The xolo q800 is best in performance, better in camera than other phones in its price range and really a good phone from Xolo, moreover I recommend you to buy this phone if you need a mid range gaming phone.
I was looking for a droid around Rs. 15000 andI I bought Sony xperia l. Why?? Read on to know.
The Pakage
Well, it has all the essential things in the box. Headphones, Charger, USB Cable, The phone itself, battery and few books (warranty, user guide etc).The charger still says Sony Ericson on the side. I got the Rose Red as it is possible to replace it to black later which wouldn’t be possible with the white one.
The Design
It’s a stylish phone with Sony’s Arc Design; it is thick at top and bottom while thin in the middle. A silver colored metallic strip runs along the sides and it has slant edges on front top and bottom. The complete unit looks rich and stylish. The silver strip at the bottom also acts as the notification LED, which is not customizable as it was in the previous Xperia phones.
The front side has a camera in the top left corner, a sensor, ear piece, and mic at the bottom. The back holds the main camera lens which is again stylishly designed with a sliver circular metal around it. The LED flash next to it and a noise cancellation mic.
I bought a yellow silicon back cover and installed launcher 8 to make it look like Lumia and it worked people were confused and few of them literally believed that its a windows phone 😛
The other phone in the above picture is my old HTC Explorer as I thought it deserves a mention on this review as it has served me well for almost 2 years.
Dimensions
• Size 65×128.7×9.7 mm, Weight 137 g
At 9.7” it’s not too slim but who cares it really looks sexy thanks to its curves 😛
Display
• TFT Size 4.3 Inches FWVGA, 480 x 854 Pixels (though antutu detected 480×782 only, maybe because of the on screen buttons), 16 M colors, Multitouch up to 4 Fingers, Scratch Resistant
The Screen clarity (228 ppi), Colors are good however there are other devices available with much higher resolution and Amoled displays in this budget.Antutu It’s not a gorilla glass however Sony says it’s Scratch Resistant. Though I got a screen guard to be on the safer side (Well, I had to be cautious, Because I know what all you may go through if you brake the screen, My cousin broke his S III’s and it cost him a bundle to get it replaced ).
Under the hood
Connectivity
• Single SIM, GSM (Normal One no need to get a smaller SIM)
• Operating Freq GSM – 850, 900, 1800, 1900; UMTS – 2100
• GPRS,EDGE,3G,WiFi and Portable Hotspot, USB with Tethering, GPS, Bluetooth 4.0,3.5mm Audio Jack
The Wifi Reception is not too good when compared with my 2 year old HTC Explorer. One other bug/Problem I found is Data Transfer acts funny sometimes when transferring using USB cable. It doesn’t allow me to paste data in the internal storage sometimes. Even the games folder is gone leaving no clue. There was no such problem while transferring data using the Bluetooth except for the extremely slow transfer rate.There’s a cool widget to manage all connectivity options.
Antutu detected only 4 sensors, shown in the above picture.
Hardware
• CPU: 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Play, Dual Core ARM v7
• GPU: Adreno 305
Now, this is one of the main reasons why i bought L. It has one of the most powerful chipset in this price bracket right now. I ran Antutu and it managed a very respectable score of 12211.The user interface is fast and you won’t see any lags at all.
Gaming
I installed NFS Most Wanted, Real Racing 3, Iron Man 3 and Dead Trigger. All these Games ran just fine without any lags or glitches.However the temperature was too high (53C) after playing Real Racing for half an hour.
Software
It came with android jelly bean 4.1.2 which is old, 4.2 is available from Sony however I would upgrade it to 4.3 directly (heard from a friend that 4.3 would be out by December).
It has lots of pre installed apps and I found file commander, Neo Reader, Officesuite and half a dozen others useful while Goolgle Play Movies, Books,Xperia Link,Sony Select and a bunch of others are of no use for me.
It has walkman, it would be great if it also had bravia and I wonder why don’t the camera says cybershot anywhere 😛
The UI is pleasant with the user friendly drag n drop features. There’s also a gamut of widgets and apps to spice up the user interface. The ones i like the most are album widget and walkman.
Memory
• Internal 8 GB of which only 5.67 GB is available (1.57GB as Device Memory and 4.1GB as Internal Memory )
• Expandable Up to 32GB with memory card.
• RAM 1 GB RAM (785MB Available).
The RAM is sufficient, however Sony could have provided more internal Memory (Even Samsung Advance had 16GB variant for 13k).
Battery
• 1750 mAh
Battery is not great it hardly lasts a day with normal usage and maybe 6-8 hours if you play
Games or movies.
The Camera
• 8 Megapixel Primary Camera with Smile Detection, HDR (for both image and Video), Autofocus, 720p Video Recording and LED Flash.
• 0.3 Megapixel Secondary Camera
Sony’s official website says Camera Expertise on phone. However I found mixed results from the phones camera. The images were overall okay but full of noise.
below are some snaps I took. for more pictures click here
The HDR vs Normal mode. Its clearly visible that HDR works good but the noise spoils the overall clarity.
I will upload some video samples later.
The Conclusion
I bought it for Rs. 15200 here in pune(India).
Xperia M, Galaxy Core, Galaxy Quattro, LG L9, Galaxy Grand are worthy competitors.
Xperia M has a smaller screen only 4” and a lower resolution camera 5mp but the same chipset and dual sim option.
Galaxy core doesn’t support 720p recording and Quattro has an A5 CPU and a lower resolution display.
LG L9 is costlier yet the CPU and Camera is not as good as L’s.
I personally feel that Grand has a better camera than Sony xperia l and it supports dual SIM but it costs more and has a Broadcom processor.
Another good phone is Xperia C but it costs way more than what everyone was expecting.
Considering all these factors I’m pretty much satisfied and would suggest it to anyone on a budget of 15k rupees looking for an android phone.