Showing posts with label 8x. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 8x. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Xolo 8X 1000 Review A Fresh New Face
We have reviewed a number of Xolo smartphones in the recent past and have been quite impressed. The company is clearly trying to break away from the general perception that Indian brands only sell cheap, low-quality products that can be dumped into the market with zero actual effort. Of course Xolo phones are manufactured in China just like all others are, but you can generally expect better looks, build quality and hardware than youd get from other brands.
Xolo has taken the next step in its journey of differentiation by developing its ownAndroid software overlay. All the major Android players, from global giants Samsung,Sony and LG to Chinese upstarts Lenovo, Gionee, Oppo and Xiaomi have their own custom Android skins, and now Xolo has decided its time to join the club.
In a sea of affordable Android phones with nearly identical specifications (and quite a few recycled design ideas), software is the only way to stand apart and do something unique. If Xolo can manage to come up with something really good, it might help attract and retain customers. On the other hand, companies do tend to go overboard with the razzle-dazzle, making us wish they had just stuck to stock Android. Were looking forward to seeing whether Xolo has managed to balance features, improvements and bloat.
Software aside, the Xolo 8X-1000 is also a pretty interesting device, and were going to give it the full review treatment.
Look and feel
At first glance, the 8X-1000 looks like a solid black slab with almost no markings of any kind. You wont see anything on the front face, but youll just about be able to make out where the front camera, sensors and earpiece are. It would be very easy to pick this phone up and try to use it upside down. Theres a shiny silver Xolo logo on the rear and silver accents around the camera lens, flash, headset socket and Micro-USB port - thats it for design flourishes.
The front and rear are shiny, reflective and immensely easy to smudge up with fingerprints. Xolo says the device is protected by Asahi Dragontrail glass over the screen as well as Gorilla Glass 3, presumably on the rear. There top, bottom and sides are a simple matte black, with a slight bevel wrapping around the rear. The 8X-1000 doesnt open out, which means the battery is not accessible.
Theres one tray on the right edge for a microSD card, and another on the left for the two Micro-SIM cards. The power and volume buttons are also on the right edge, but theyre all too low to be reached comfortably with a thumb.
The 8X-1000 is meant to look stealthy and minimalistic, but it almost feels as a bit too cold and severe. Its very well built and feels quite solid; its just not the kind of design that everyone will automatically love.
Specifications and software
The Xolo 8X-1000 is powered by an octa-core MediaTek MT6592M processor running at 1.4GHz with integrated Mali-450 MP4 graphics. Theres 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage space. The 5-inch screen has a decent resolution of 720x1280. Theres an 8-megapixel camera on the rear and a 2-megapixel one in front. Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi b/g/n are supported, along with the usual proximity sensor, ambient light sensor and accelerometer.
The phone runs Android 4.4, but Xolos Hive UI is a massive departure from stock Android. Most things are in their usual places, but they look completely new. The style is very modern and fresh, which we have to credit Xolo for. However, not all the changes are positive.
The lockscreen is the perfect example of this. Youll see four bars across the screen and four icons at the bottom. You can drag any of the bars downwards to unlock the phone and jump to a particular feature: the bottom one just takes you to the homescreen, while the others are for the phone, messaging and camera apps respectively. The icons at the bottom show you how many missed calls, unread messages, emails and appointments you have. It looks great, but the bars are a bit too narrow, and you have to pay a little more attention than usual to make youre swiping in the right place.
The homescreens also look great, and everything from the colour scheme to the wallpaper and font is slick and modern. Theres a bit of unnecessary animation which adds 2-3 seconds of lag to unlock transition. This is also where we get our first look at Xolos software efforts - there are four hexagonal icons labelled Edge, Secure, Power and Connect. Icon styles arent really consistent and youll notice a mix of hexagons and squared-off circles in various styles everywhere in the Hive UI.
The apps themselves are interesting. Edge is a store for themes, ringtones and wallpapers, but with a social twist. You have to register for a "Hive Key" account, which can be done with one-tap Facebook or Google authentication. Your votes and comments on the stores contents are then displayed in a stream and on content pages for all other users to see. Theres quite a diversity of tastes and styles, including some slick modern themes. Everything seems to be free, which might change in the future.
Edge ties in to Conncect, which is another social app designed to let you communicate with the Xolo team regarding support issues and feature suggestions. Conceptually, it reminds us a lot of Dells ongoing Idea Storm initiative. You can vote on ideas and see which ones have been accepted by the team. The app also includes detailed contact information for Xolo customer support and a list of service centres (with map links). In its current state, the comment stream is full of complaints, spam and unintelligible gibberish. There appears to be little moderation or guidance to help new users, but we do have to commend Xolo for trying this.
Xolo Secure is an anti-theft solution that lets you track a lost or stolen phone, lock or wipe it out remotely, and back up your contacts and messages. Xolo Power lets you enable a power-saving mode or selectively restrict background data transfers, check out how much time you have left to get various things done, and see which apps are consuming the most power.
Theres a lot more to be seen. Xolo has totally overhauled the quick settings tab of the notifications shade - youll see two prominent circular dials for the screen brightness and timeout settings, plus regular icons for the usual Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and more. The app launcher is totally new, but a bit confusing. You can sort icons alphabetically, by usage frequency, or in categories. Theres no custom order, which is odd. You cant reorder icons in any of the views so that your favourites are more easily accessible - youll have to set up homescreens for that. There are a few neat widgets, such as a dashboard for Xolo Power, though styles still tend to clash.
The phone, messaging, contacts and other apps are significantly overhauled. The contacts app deserves special mention for presenting each entry like a social network profile page with a large cover photo and links to messages and a history of interactions. Facebook and Google connections let you sync contacts with those services too.
The camera, gallery and music player apps are brand new and even the Android browser has been reskinned. The custom apps are designed well for the most part, but not all the changes are major improvements over the stock apps. The gallery app is easy to scroll through, and images are sorted neatly into folders. You get basic filter, frame, crop and correction tools but also a few neat features such Photoshop-style RGB curve adjustment. Another neat feature is that you can tweak brightness, saturation and contrast in selective parts of a photo, to adjust over- or underexposed areas.
The music app is called FusionX and relies on the same circular control metaphor, but in this case its just extra-fiddly for no reason. You can create playlists and adjust the EQ, which are nice feature to have. FM radio is part of the app, and theres a section called Charts that lists a few current and old Hindi movie tracks which you can stream with a tap. YouTube and Last.fm are also integrated so you can see related videos and recommendations, which are not always relevant.
One more thing to note is that the 8X-1000 does not use on-screen buttons. The space beneath the screen looks blank but there are three capacitive buttons here, denoted by tiny dots that light up only when you touch that area. This lack of labelling is very problematic - youll only learn by trial and error that the Back button is on the right, and the button on the left is for the old-style Android menu, not recent apps. The buttons are difficult to find and use, which is an extremely basic thing to get wrong.
Camera
We were very pleased with the performance of the 8-megapixel camera. It uses an Exmor-R sensor with a fixed f/2.0 aperture. Xolo advertises a five-stage lens for better quality. We were surprised by how bright and clear images were in daylight, regardless of cloud cover. Low-light performance was also quite good. Images actually look a lot better on a big screen than they do on the phone itself.
(Click to see full size)
The camera did not always autofocus on the areas we expected, but this can be fixed very easily. Photos came out sharp, detailed and mostly accurate in terms of colours, without too much compression. The front camera isnt half as good, but is acceptable for video chats and a few odd selfies now and then.
The camera app provides loads of options, but most are buried inside a menu. You only get quick access to the flash, modes and effects settings. Theres a Pro mode that gives you control over white balance, ISO and exposure level. The rest of the options include voice triggering, face detection, burst, a self timer, electronic stabilisation, and image or video quality.
Performance
Eight CPU cores might sound like a lot, but we already know that MediaTeks popular MT6592 doesnt always match up to quad-core offerings from more established rivals such as Qualcomm. This time, Xolo has gone with the low-power MT6592M, which is a bit slower.
The 8X-1000 did adequately well in our benchmark tests, but definitely wont be setting any performance records. Scores were notably lower than those of other devices based on the MT6592. We logged 26,278 points in AnTuTu 5 and 11,055 overall in Quadrant. The 13.9fps score in GFXbench is reasonable, and youll be able to play casual 3D games without much trouble. We did notice significant tearing in our high-bitrate 1080p video test, but other 1080p videos played well. The upper half of the phones rear got uncomfortably hot when we did anything even a little stressful with it.
There are two grilles on the phones bottom which look like stereo speakers, but only one is actually a speaker. Its pretty loud and surprisingly clear, though sound is still very thin and high-pitched. It works much better for voices in videos than for complex music.
We were especially disappointed by the battery life - the Xolo 8X-1000 lasted only 4 hours, 9 minutes in our video loop test. We wouldnt expect this phone to last even a full day if youre doing anything more basic than making calls and surfing the Web.
Verdict
Its clear that a lot of effort and even some original thought has gone into the Hive UI. Considering this is the companys first release, its very polished and no major features are missing. We hope to see regular updates that improve usability and flexibility. A few months from now users might prefer stock Android L to any custom skin, so it will be interesting to see how Xolo evolves the Hive UI from here.
The 8X-1000 seems to be targeted at style-conscious users who like to stand out and are more concerned with features than performance. There are of course things about it wed like to change, but again, its a sign that the company is moving in a good direction. Weve said before that Xolo stands out from the crowd of Indian smartphone brands, and now with this new combination of hardware and software, its almost ready to leave them all behind in the dust.
This is not the phone to buy if youre concerned about battery life or raw performance, but it does come across as a viable alternative to similarly priced models from Gionee, Oppo, Lenovo and other value-oriented brands.
Monday, January 26, 2015
HTC Windows Phone 8X Smartphone Reviews Specifications and Price
HTC Windows Phone 8X Smartphone Reviews, Specifications and Price, Microsoft wants to go new ways with its new operating system from Redmond. An OS for computers, tablets and smartphones alike. The Windows Phone 8X by HTC is one of the first smartphones that feature this new software and, in order to present it properly, it naturally needs exceptional hardware. The mix of an IPS touchscreen with a 720p resolution, a Snapdragon S4 SoC (system-on-a-chip) with a clock frequency of 1.5 GHz, 1 GB of working memory and an appealing casing design are to ensure the new operating systems successful kick-off. Other Windows Phone 8 contenders vying for the number one position in the high-end field are Nokias Lumia 920 and Samsungs Ativ S.
More interesting than the hardware inside HTCs 8X is certainly the completely new software. The metro design of the modern UI surface is known from the previous Windows Phone 7, but it has been completely refreshed. The home screen can be compared with widgets known from Android systems. Applications are continuously updated, are never idle and imply high dynamics. Naturally, the looks can be customized. Interesting features are noticed when scrolling through the innumerable settings. This is Microsofts attempt at making its new device interesting for company use. The smartphone can be furnished with a corporate account and consequently allows the company to have a better control over its smartphones because highly sensitive data (e.g. email traffic) might be stored on them. Thus, the boss can disable the SD card or delete all data on the device via a remote application.
Another setting is dubbed "Kids Corner", which enables assigning certain applications, games or videos to a specific target group. It is very obvious that the developers have put a lot of thought into software usability. The entire handling is very intuitive; the functions are easy to understand and are self-explanatory within a short time. Those already using Windows 8 on their computer or tablet will immediately find their way around on the metro design and can get started. The interface for coupling a computer, tablet or smartphone is refined. Synchronizing content via Microsofts Skydrive cloud service extremely facilitates work and exchange among devices.
All in all, the system already runs very well and reliably just after its unveiling and is very enjoyable for the user. How the Windows Phone 8 asserts itself against the strong contenders will be seen in the next months. There definitely is potential and Windows app store is continuously being filled with applications and games.
Specifications HTC Windows Phone 8X
- Processor ; Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8260A 1.5 GHz
- Memory : 1024 MB
- Graphics adapter : Qualcomm Adreno 225
- Display : 4.3 inch 16:9, 1280x720 pixel, kapazitiv, Multi-Touch, Super LCD 2, diagonal: 10.9 cm/4.3" Corning Gorilla Glas 2, 342 DPI, glossy: yes
- Harddisk : 16 GB SSD, 16GB integrated
- Connections : Audio Connections: 3.5 mm stereo jack, Sensors: A-GPS, GLONASS, accelerometer, digital compass, NFC, ambient light sensor, micro-USB
- Networking : 802.11a/b/g/n (abgn), 3.1 +EDR Bluetooth, HSPA/WCDMA: 850/900/1900/2100 MHz
- Size : height x width x depth (in mm): 10.1 x 66.2 x 132.4
- Weight : 0.129 kg Power Supply: 0.055 kg
- Battery : Lithium-Ion, 1800 mAh, built-in
- Price : 549 Euro
- Operating System : Microsoft Windows Phone 8
- Additional features : Webcam: 8 Megapixel rear camera, 1080p (30 fps), LED, Autofocus, HTC ImageChip, 2.1 MP front-facing camera, 1080p, Speakers: mono, Smartphone, USB cable, modular PSU, headset, SIM tool, documentation, Internet Explorer 10, YouTube, Facebook, Picasa, Twitter
Thursday, January 22, 2015
HTC Windows Phone 8X
A new, iconic design that keeps you connected while also reflecting you. Unique color options, a seamless look, a screen to personalize—all serving up people and passions that matter most.
8X features an ultra-wide-angle front camera lens that fits in every face in the group and the surrounding scenery. Share it all on the brilliant screen that is rich and vivid—even when viewed in bright sunlight.
HTC Windows Phone 8X is companys flagship Windows Phone 8 coming with a powerful spec sheet wrapped in a svelte 0.39" body in nice candy colors. The 8X by HTC sports a 4.3" LCD 2 HD screen, which, if the One X display is any indication, should be a sight to behold, and has the respectable 342ppi pixel desnity. It ups the WP ante with a modern 28mm dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 chipset, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory, thus equating its specs with the fierce WP8 competition in the face of the Samsung ATIV S, or the innnovative Nokia Lumia 920, which, however, has a lot more going for it with the PureView camera.
How does the HTC 8X intend to differentiate from those? Why, Beats Audio, of course. The prominent branding is featured proudly on the back of the phone, promising deep bass sound and clearer audio. "The Windows Phone 8X by HTC featuring Beats Audio also offers a unique audio amplifier powering the 3.5mm audio jack and the speaker, boosting the audio signal for even better sound no matter if you’re listening to music, playing a game or watching a video," says HTC.
As for the sniping capabilities, we have an 8MP shooter on the rear with dedicated shutter key, equipped with HTCs exclusive ImageSense technology, which is essentially a proprietary ISP, allowing for some additional photo trickery, like ultra fast capture times, and continuous shot mode that takes multiple frames per second. It sports ultra wide f/2.0 aperture, just like on the Lumia 920. Whats even more interesting, is that the 2MP front-facing shooter is with the same ultra wide 88 degree angle, "allowing up to four people and more to be captured at once", and can shoot 1080p video as well
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