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The Vietnamese smartphone maker Mobiistar officially entered the Indian market early last month with an ambitious plan. At an event marking the launch of the company's first smartphone models in the country, the XQ Dual and the CQ, leaders have even announced that India would now be the global headquarters of Mobiistar. The XQ Dual is the most expensive of the two and boasts of a dual selfie camera setup. We seized it to put it to the test.
With a price tag of Rs. 7999, the Mobiistar XQ Dual faces immense competition from the Xiaomi Redmi 5 (Review), InFocus Vision 3 (Revue), Tecno Camon i Sky, and even the basic variant Oppo Realme 1 (Revue). Let's see if the Mobiistar XQ Dual can surpass these options in terms of use in the real world.
Mobiistar XQ Dual Design
As is the case with many other economical smartphones on the market, the Mobiistar XQ Dual borrows some elements from current and old iPhone models. The back of the phone has gold accents in an attempt to look upscale, but they seem a little garish against the black body. On top of that, the backside is extremely slippery and we ended up dropping the phone more than once during our test period.
It's 2018 and the market is filled with smartphones, across the price segments, which shows 18: 9. However, the XQ Dual sports a traditional 16: 9 panel, with thick borders above and below. On the other hand, this 5.5-inch IPS panel has Full HD resolution (1080×1920 pixels) which gives this phone an edge over its competitors. The maximum brightness is good, but the display does not become dim enough for comfortable use in a dark room.
[19659002] Above the screen is a dual selfie camera configuration with a primary sensor of 13 megapixels and a secondary sensor of 8 megapixels. Beside this are the earpiece, a LED selfie light, and a couple of sensors. There are capacitive buttons for the Home, Back and Overview functions on the screen.
The left of the smartphone has volume buttons accented in gold, and right the lock / power button as well as a hybrid dual SIM tray that makes you choose between a second SIM card and a microSD card. Finally, the Micro-USB port, the speaker grill and the microphone are placed at the bottom. The retail box of the Mobiistar XQ Dual includes a 5V / 1.5A (7.5W) adapter, a USB cable, a SIM eject tool, a screen protector and some guides to help you get started .
Mobiistar XQ Dual Specifications and Software
The Mobiistar XQ Dual is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octa-core SoC, which is rather outdated but not surprising for a smartphone that costs less than Rs. 8,000 The SoC has four Cortex-A53 processor cores running at 1.4 GHz, and four Cortex-A53 cores running at 1.1 GHz. The graphics management is an integrated Adreno 505 GPU, which is slightly less powerful than the Adreno 506 in the Snapdragon 450 used by the Redmi 5. There are no variants of this phone, and you do not can get it with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.
4G VoLTE runs on one or the other SIM cards at a time. There is also a 3.5mm headphone jack, FM radio, GPS, 802.11b / g / n single band (2.4GHz) Wi-Fi connection and no NFC. With regard to the sensors, the smartphone receives an accelerometer, an ambient light sensor, an electronic compass, a gyroscope and a proximity sensor.
[19659002] The Mobiistar XQ Dual runs a highly personalized user interface called Star Launcher on Android 7.1.2 Nougat, this which is really disappointing in mid-2018. The first competitor of this phone, the Redmi 5, still runs Android Nougat with MIUI in the lead, but we know that an update is in progress. Our review unit Mobiistar XQ Dual also ran the relatively outdated security update Android February.
There is no application drawer, and all application icons are placed on the home screens. Interestingly, in the preinstalled File Manager application, we found some files named "Qiku Launcher", suggesting that Mobiistar could use resources similar to Qiku, a Chinese phone maker who tried to enter the Indian market a few years ago
. The user interface is half-cooked, it's the least we can say. There is no design consistency between the application icons, some of them having an ugly white border and others being enlarged.
A pre-installed application called Freeze can be used to suspend applications that the user does not want to use for a while. to reduce the load of the system. However, once you "thaw" the apps, they are just sent to the last home screen, and rearranging them is frustrating.
There is also something called Intelligent Screen, accessible when you slide your finger on the first screen of the screen. 39; home. Aside from a few shortcuts to the applications you use most frequently, the screen is filled with links to sensational reporting, and there is a noticeable interface lag when browsing them.
The Settings menu contains some interesting additions. The Anti-Theft feature allows you to download the location of the smartphone when the battery is low, so that the user can know his last known location in case of theft or misplacement. There is also a gesture shortcut to launch the camera application, start and stop programmed, and an SOS function.
Mobiistar XQ Dual Performance, Cameras and Autonomy
In our experience with this phone, the performance was disappointing. With all applications closed, the system alone used about 1.6 GB of RAM. In terms of use in the real world, the smartphone runs below average, with frame drops observed while even using applications such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter. Lag was persistent when we multitasked between more than a few applications. Stutter was particularly visible on the Intelligent Screen, which was unusable until content was loaded.
Regarding benchmarks, the Mobiistar XQ Dual achieved an AnTuTu score of only 57,472. The performance in Geekbench 4 was also low, with a single score of 643 and a multi-core score of 2403. In the browser-based Basemark Web 3.0 benchmark, the XQ Dual scored 65.22. These results are inferior to those of the Xiaomi Redmi 5, but slightly higher than those of the InFocus Vision 3.
We have tried some casual games such as Subway Surfers and Candy Crush on the XQ Dual. do not notice any loss of load or unusual heating after 30 minutes of testing. We also tried other games like Temple Run 2 and Asphalt 8, and we experienced a slight shift in the latter.
The fingerprint sensor is one of the few features of the Mobiistar XQ Dual that shines. It was extremely accurate and fast enough in our experience. Face recognition is not supported. The loudspeaker's volume was average, as expected a smartphone in this price segment.
The Mobiistar XQ Dual sports a 13-megapixel rear camera with f / 2.0 aperture and two-color LED flash. Photos taken in daylight were poorly exposed and lacked details. The color reproduction was decent in a favorable light, but this phone struggled with details, even in close-up. Shooting in low light conditions seemed grainy, but fortunately, no lightening of the software produced excessive noise.
Press to see samples of Mobiistar XQ Dual in real size
Selfies are supposed strong point of the XQ Dual, with its 13-megapixel and 8-megapixel cameras in the front . The ones we took seemed pretty decent for occasional use, but they are not very clear when you zoom in full size.
There is no portrait mode in the camera application because the secondary camera does not act in depth sensor, and the effect is not applied using software either. There are several manual settings in the FaceBeauty option that include polishing, whitening, enlargement and thinness. There are seven preset levels for beautification. The FaceBeauty option is also available for the rear camera but has not really improved the quality of the pictures taken. The secondary camera has a wide angle lens and allows you to attract more of your friends in a selfie, which is good.
Like many other budget options on the market, the Mobiistar XQ Dual an illuminator. It is too bright for our taste, but it helped us to get clear selfie shots in low light. Around the price of the XQ Dual, the Honor 9 Lite is the only other option with two selfie cameras
With moderate usage, since performance was limited, the 3000mAh battery of the Mobiistar XQ Dual lasted until about 17h-18h in normal day operation with only one full charge, so you might need a boost during the day to help run it to bedtime. Interestingly, there are three levels of battery power saving on the smartphone, and this can not be completely off. At the lowest, the phone managed to work for 9 hours and 42 minutes in our HD video loop test.
Verdict
The Mobiistar XQ Dual is one of the first smartphones of the Vietnamese company to arrive in India. shores. It has a poorly optimized user interface, an in-your-face design and an average build quality. Cameras are decent for a phone at this price level, but you can get a lot better if you increase your budget a bit. The fast fingerprint sensor is one of the only features that really stands out. At the price of Rs. 7999, we expect better software and build quality.
If you have a tight budget, you are better off choosing options like the Redmi 5 (Exam). Or, if you can put a few thousand more rupees, the Oppo Realme 1 (Review) and Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 (Review) both offer better value for money.
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