The world has been anticipating Intel’s move into the smartphone world and it sure took us by surprise when it was announced that they would partner with Lava to make India the launch market. Bringing in a potent mix of high end hardware and a good price point , the XOLO X900 has a lot going for it. Does it impress ? Read on to find out our first impressions.
Lava has retained the exact hardware from Intel’s reference platform for its Medfield chip. This is both good and bad as while we get performance just as Intel intended it , the build quality left us quite disappointed.
Powered by the Intel Z2460 chip , it delivers 1.6Ghz of processing power coupled with Hyper Threading. The graphics core is clocked at 400 Mhz. In our brief time with the handset there was nary a hint of lag to be noticed. Everything from Full HD video to 3D games worked flawlessly.
The front is adorned in a glossy finish plastic with chromed out borders. Capacitive buttons are present at the bottom allowing for Android menu navigation. Talking about Android , the phone still runs on Gingerbread which is a major drawback. The company provides to push out an ICS update in the coming weeks.
The screen resolution is really good at 1024 x 600 at 4.03″ which is unheard of at this pricepoint. While an LCD panel , the panel quality is above average. As expected , black levels are however nowhere close to those on AMOLED or for that matter even HTC’s SLCD panels.
While not particularly bulky , the XOLO X900 is hardly the slimmest phone around. Coming in at just under 11mm the phone feels like a chunky block of plastic in the hand.
One of the most touted features of the X900 is its ability to shoot upto 10 full resolution images in under 1 second. The burst mode is definitely appealing when shooting sports or kids but the actual camera quality is quite disappointing. We’ll investigate this further in depth in our full review.
The bottom of the phone houses a lone microUSB connector for sync / charge purposes. The handset is also equipped with HDMI output to allow for full HD video output. The X900 also features an NFC chip.
Overall the device looks promising in terms of internal hardware and performance. Hardware quality was fairly plasticky and not very reassuring and we’d really expect Intel and Lava to up their game in that regard. Priced at Rs. 22,000 the phone will be sold via Croma and online via Xolo.in. We’ll have a full indepth review for your viewing pleasure very soon !