First Look: XOLO BLACK 1X



After the launch of the bigger brother XOLO brings to us it's younger sibling . Though priced at a lower price-range this device feels much more premium, don't be fooled by it's form factor this is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Compared to the Original BLACK this comes with a more compact display size of 5 inches, still keeps the same resolution of 1080p which translates to a higher ppi of 441. Under the hood it runs on a Octa-Core Mediatek MT6753 clocked at 1.3 Ghz coupled with 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 32GB of Internal Storage all for Rs9999. That's a Sweet Deal!

Talking about Sweets it runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop underneath the HIVE Skin.

Key Features

• Dual-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE; quad-band 3G with HSPA; 4G-LTE
• Dual-SIM (Nano + Nano/MicroSD Hybrid)
• 5.0" 16M-color 1080p IPS-OGS capacitive touchscreen; 80% NTSC Gamut coverage
• Dragontrail Protection
• Android OS v5.1 Lollipop with HIVE UI
• Octa-core 1.3 GHz Cortex A53 CPU, Mali T720MP3 GPU; MediaTek MT6753 chipset
• 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM
• 13 MP ISOCELL camera with phase-detect autofocus, 1/2.6" sensor and LED flash
• 1080p video recording @ 30fps
• 5 MP front-facing camera, 480p video recording
• Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct
• GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS
• 32GB of built-in storage
• microSD card slot; Upto 128GB (Hybrid-SIM)
• microUSB 2.0 port with USB OTG
• Bluetooth v4.0
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Accelerometer, 3-axis GyroScope, Magnetometer, Gravity Sensor, Light and proximity sensor
• 2,400mAh battery

Main disadvantages

Hybrid SIM Slot; Though the device has ample storage of 32GB

Below Average Front Camera

Design and Build Quality

Build Quality is good. The device is super-light but feels sturdy in hand, the device has a glass finish on the back leather textured finish on top and bottom with metal on the sides.

It weighs on 125gm and is 7.6mm thin, it's a very unique looking device and is certain to catch a lot of eyes.

We give XOLO a thumbs up for such a premium looking device as so low price.

There's metal lining around the display,camera and flash which gives it a vertu like looks.

The Front has the earpiece and beside it resides the 5MP camera with Flash, the Notification LED and the light and proximity sensors, Below the display are 3 Capacitive touch buttons for Menu, Home and Back and they don't light up when pressed.

On the Top there's a 3.5mm Earphone Jack

On the Bottom there's the Micro-USB port with OTG support and the Speaker and Microphone Grills

On the Right side there's the Hybrid SIM card/MicroSD card Slot

On the Left there's the Volume Rocker and Lock/Power Button.

The back is made of Fibre Glass and Front has Dragontrail Glass Protection,

The Back has XOLO Branding on it.

Overall the design is minimalistic but the materials used are over the top.

Display

The Display on the device is a 5" 1080p Display with a PPI of 441. The color reproduction though not the best but very good for the price. The viewing angles are excellent there's no loss of color even it seen at a angle of 170 degrees.
The contrast is good the blacks are deep but has a very slight yellow tint to it.
It has MediaTek Patented MiraVision Engine for better color reproduction which has a Standard, Vivid and User Modes.
In the user mode you can change the contrast, Saturation, Brightness, Sharpness and color temperature according to your taste.
Theres also a Dynamic Contrast Mode.

 

User Interface

The UI is almost Stock Android with a little pinch of HIVE to it.
HIVE features include a theme engine with EDGE, you can also change icons with it. Other thsn that you have Underground App Hider , Secure, FusionX Music Player and Comet Browser powered by Opera.
We liked the BLAWB icon pack on Android Classic theme.

The UI is smooth and fluid with no lags, the Apps open fast there's no issue with Multitasking as we have around 2.5 GB of RAM Free on first boot.

         

Camera

The Rear camera is a 13MP Samsung made unit with a LED flash and Phase Detection AutoFocus which claims to focus in 0.15 seconds

We tested the camera it's not the best but it's good for casual camera users, the colors are accurate and not oversaturated, we felt the brightness of the shots to be little low than our 8x-1000.

The Front camera is not good colors and brightness is poor, the front flash helps a little.

                                   

                               

Camera samples Xolo Black smartphone with dual rear cameras shows the camera features like adjustable focus and live filters.

Out of focus

With filters effects

In focus

First smartphone from Xolo under the sub-brand black will be focusing on camera preformance. According to sources will feature  a dual rear camera. Unllike all other smartphone cameras comes with depth-sensing support, which seen one like HTC One (M8). With this you could use your smartphone's camera to find dimensions in depth feel. Also refocussing after pictures are taken them. 

The new Xolo black smartphone comes with the dual rear camera. What is it? Whats the advantage of having two cameras? lets find out.

• Xolo Black Smartphone Brand Everything you need to know 

Unlike other smartphones that comes with a single rear camera: the Xolo Black allows you to capture images with two cameras at the same time. This will be useful if you apply the same technique as what you see through your eyes. try to observe an object closing one of your eye. and switch to other. you can see two different angles of vision. The camera of Xolo Black can capture the same object in different angles. they record the two sides of the images in separate. using some software techniques it combines to get a processed image with the in depth vision.

There are other smartphones that use this  unusual features like the new HTC One (M8) and  Huawei's Honor 6 Plus. 

Using this features you can 

• focus easily to the subject like never before. and even afrer the clicking image you can change the focus and refocus image.
• You can detect the distance to the subject, find the depth of an object using some software
• you can take some pictures with special focus effects like background blur like DSLRs.
• have different focus points using some apps like in HTC M8.
• "Foregrounder" effect is "Colorize," which gives the background an artificially muted coloring effect that really makes the foreground pop.
• "Cartoon" effect makes your entire background look like it was colored in by hand while leaving your subject in full normal focus
• You can change the focus to behind even after picture is captured.