XOLO, a brand emerging as an initiative by Lava International to enter into the performance segment, shows a lot of promise. And this is in uncharted waters, as serious multimedia performance is often overlooked by local mobile phone brands. Many stick to the tried and tested Mediatek chipset, but the XOLO Play T1000 is willing to take the leap of faith. Does the risk pay off? Read on.
So hello to the Tegra
For the first time in the Indian mobile phone history, an Indian company has tied up with chip architect Nvidia to launch a device that sports the Tegra chipset.
The XOLO Play T1000 features a Tegra 3 chipset. To give you a little background about the Tegra 3, this is the same chipset used in the Android gaming console, the Ouya. Other models include the HTX One X and the Motorola Droid X2. Both of them are top-notch performance devices. So the Tegra 3 is by no means just any other GPU, it is aimed at providing quality gaming performance in quality handsets. All in a handset costing INR 15,000 (Snapdeal is selling for INR 13,500).
Likewise, the XOLO Play T1000 turned many eyebrows post it’s announcement, and it most definitely got us super excited. Tegra games are awesome, providing almost console like quality on a smartphone or a tablet. At that price, we couldn’t wait to get our hands on this phone.
Specifications
- Display: 4.7-inch display (1280 x 720 pixels)
- CPU: 1.5Ghz Nvidia Tegra 3 quad core processor
- RAM: 1GB RAM
- Memory: 4GB + microSD
- Camera: 8MP/2MP front camera
- Battery: 2,000mAh
- Operating System: Android 4.1
- Weight: 167g
Design and Build Quality
Understatement is the word, fellas. The XOLO Play keeps its design minimal. There is nothing standing out in any aspect of the phone’s build. The front is straight forward, with three touch buttons for Home, Back and Menu. The rear is a matte finish rubberized plastic, which is of decent quality. The good thing is, holding the phone in your palm feels sturdy, as this phone presents a heavy and strong build.
Throwing first impressions aside, some major flaws become evident. XOLO doesn’t specify the glass being used in the front panel, and knuckling it with my index finger the protrusions are plenty. The front panel is also very prone to smudges. This would pass off as a cheap unbranded front panel. Doing some research, Tech2 mentions that the XOLO Play is a carbon copy of a Chinese handset, the Beidou Little Pepper Q1, both internally and externally. So, there you go.
When the XOLO Play vibrates, a high pitched hiss is what it emits. This suggest the presence of voids, loosely fitted components or large hollow spaces inside the phone, and that is a bad thing. That makes the phone very prone to breakage and very sensitive to static and moisture.
The Display
The display is huge (4.7 inches) and supports a high resolution (1280 x 720 pixels). Watching a movie, playing a game, browsing through pictures all look beautiful. The XOLO Play’s screen produces lush and vibrant colours. But there isn’t any functional use to the display lushness, since the build of the screen is one of the worst I’ve ever seen.
The visibility under sunlight is at most below average. Not saying that its a deal breaker, but it is just not upto the mark of other similar handsets. Speaking about deal breakers, the quality of the glass panel is what really bugged me. Half of the times your presses and clicks do not register. Hell, the phone started registering random touches on its own. And this wasn’t a one time thing, it was frequent. I placed so many random calls to random people on my contacts list without even realizing it. Gah! There was also this random flicker on the top corner of the screen, which kept switching on and off randomly.
Using the Phone
Yes, the XOLO Play features a 1.5Ghz quad core processor, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to a smooth OS performance. The 1 GB of RAM is definitely a bottleneck, wouldn’t have hurt the Lava guys to go for 1 more gig. 1 GB of RAM in this day and age is archaic, why can’t manufacturers just realize that! Demon’s Score, a Tegra based game alone consumes 600 MB of RAM. If you use SwiftKey, a popular Android third-party keyboard, it alone consumes 200-250MB of RAM. I’m not the one to say, but how was XOLO thinking to pull off a gaming device with just 1 gig of RAM? It’s amusing on one side and equally disappointing on the other.
The XOLO Play sports the Android 4.1 OS. Slowdowns, delays and random freezes are common. I kept the phone for a week only for the purposes of a review, and that week was one of the toughest in recent memory. I have never had such a flimsy mobile phone experience.
A Tegra 3 processor doesn’t really make much sense in the XOLO Play, since the phone is flawed at the most fundamental levels. The user experience is cumbersome and uncomfortable. XOLO’s proprietary Contacts app is a gimmick too, to say the least. Why move away from the default Android Contacts app?
Gaming on the Phone
Gaming is what the XOLO Play calls it’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition), and it was the feature I was most interested in, especially considering the modest price the phone carries. My first step in testing the gaming capabilities of the phone was to test games that officially support Tegra, duh!
The first game I ran was The Conduit HD. It ran beautifully for the first ten minutes. The FPS ticker was giving a good 30 frames. Do note, it was still a terrible experience playing the game because of the XOLO Play’s touch screen, but the performance was good. Ten minutes in, and the game starts slowing down, it dropped almost 5 frames per second.
Running other Tegra-intensive games like Demon’s Score and Dark Meadow: The Pact was pretty much a failure. These are graphic intensive games, that run perfectly on the Google Nexus 7 which also sports the Tegra 3 chipset. The XOLO Play was bought to its knees with Demon’s Score, managing to clock a maximum of 15 fps. Not to mention, the insanely long loading times.
Thereotically the XOLO shouldn’t have performed this bad running the above mentioned games, but it did. Why so? I suspect that is because of the 1 GB of RAM the phone carries, which I will re-iterate again, is suicide on a gaming phone. And that is considering that RAM is usually the cheapest amongst other chips of the smartphone ecosystem.
I simply cannot call this a gaming device because it misses out on the most primal feature for gamers, i.e. to provide a smooth, hassle-free gaming experience.
Battery life
A 2000 mAh battery comes fitted in the XOLO Play. That is only a number though. How does it hold up?
- 8 Hours: A day spent with minor gaming, 3G always on, minor browsing, minor GPSing, 1 hour of talktime.
- 3 Hours: A day spent with no gaming, 3G always on and heavy talktime
- 5 Hours: Moderate gaming, 3G always on, moderate browsing, moderate GPS and 1 hour of talktime.
You’ve got the numbers. Now, what is your call?
Buy the XOLO Play if you
- Have a friend/sibling looking for a new phone and you really want to bug them.
- Have anger management issues and are looking for an outlet. One week with the XOLO Play is the treatment you deserve. (Thank me later)
- Are a collector of Tegra 3 devices, which you plan to auction 20 years later.
- Are a fan of Fruit Ninja. The XOLO Play touch screen will really test you. Ping me with your high score.
- Want a gaming device that reads “Gaming device” just for the swagger.
Don’t buy the XOLO Play if you
- Own an iPhone 4.
Image Source: www.xolo.in
