Broadcom, a company that powers most of the WiFiac chips inside smartphones these days had been very quiet in the SoC business, but they had recently announced new chips and a partnership with Xolo for their Quad Core low end chip. The fruition of that partnership is the Xolo Q1000 Opus, yet another Q1000 that looks and performs nothing like the other one. This low-mid range device, that launched to retail in December last year, is priced at Rs. 9,990 and has modest specifications to rival the competition in the same segment. We have got this phone for testing in our labs, so as a first order of business, here is our unboxing with a quick look at the hardware and an overview of the minimally modified software –
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF_4qpUaOrA
The box contents are pretty normal, but considering that this is a phone that retails under 10,000 INR, it was surprising to see that the box packs a sturdy flip cover with decent build quality. Here are all the box contents laid out –
Box Contents
- Xolo Q1000 Opus Smartphone
- Flip Cover
- Scratch Guard
- 3.5mm in-ear headset with mic
- USB charging plug
- micro USB data transfer and charging cable
- User manual and warranty booklets
The flipcover and the scratch guard are pretty much standard with any Xolo phone these days, but it was still good to see it in the box, as major manufacturers still avoid anything like it in the packaging. The earphones too are of good build quality and thankfully colour matched in white.
The phone itself looks like the Galaxy S III from the back, as this design language has been a thing going in the industry for quite a while now. Without the Xolo branding on the back, it would be very hard to tell between this and a Samsung phone, and that goes for the plastic quality on the back too. Nevertheless, this is a standard 5 inch phone with predictable specifications like –
- 5-inch (854 ×480 pixels) FWVGA capacitive touch screen display at 196 ppi
- Dual SIM (GSM + GSM) with Dual Standby
- Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) OS
- 1.2 GHz quad-core Broadcom BCM23550 processor with 312 MHz VideoCore IV GPU
- 5MP Auto Focus Camera with BSI sensor, LED Flash, 720p HD video recording
- 0.3MP front-facing camera
- Dimensions – 72.9×143.3×8.95 mm
- 3.5mm audio jack, FM Radio
- 3G HSPA+ up to 21 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and USB OTG
- 1GB RAM, 4GB of internal memory, Expandable memory up to 32GB with micro SD
- 2000 mAh battery
The main USP and the differentiation factor is the performance, which is expected to be really good thanks to VideoCore IV, but only synthetic benchmarks and gaming tests can tell us how good it is. Will it be better than the dual core 28155 chips, the ones on the S Duos 2 and the Grand Duos? Is the Cortex A7 Quad Core chip faster than the competition? We will be finding out in benchmarks and gaming performance tests real soon, so hang on and stay tuned to the blog for the impending coverage. More pictures of the box contents –