Indian handset brand, Xolo, recently launched its new smartphone or rather phablet, the Xolo Q2000, which features the company's biggest screen on a smartphone, yet. The phone boasts of decent hardware specifications and promises to offer all the features of a modern phablet at an economy price point.
Build
When you first look at the Xolo Q2000, you realise it is a big black slab with a utilitarian design, not evoking any emotions. The phone's front features its massive 5.5-inch IPS display, the three capacitive touch buttons for navigating around the phone's interface placed below it, and the sensor array and the front-camera lens, placed above it. Enclosed in a plastic frame, the bottom edges out, creating a small chin-like extension. The Q2000 is rectangular with corners that are not rounded, giving it a sharp look.
Display
The Xolo Q2000 features a 5.5-inch IPS display with a 720x1280 pixel resolution and pixel density of 267ppi. The panel supports 5-point multi-touch. The viewing angles of the Xolo Q2000's display looked good, and the brightness of the phone was optimum. Outdoor visibility was above average though the screen was a bit reflective. While the display sports a decent resolution, at times it looked pixelated, probably due to the bigger screen size resulting in less number of pixels per inch.
Volume Rocker
The left edge of the Xolo Q2000 features Screen lock key, while the left edge houses the volume rocker. Both the keys are made of plastic and offer decent tactile feedback. The top edge sports the Micro-USB port and the 3.5mm headset jack. The edges feature a sturdy frame which appears to be made from polycarbonate, bearing a glossy finish.
Camera
The Xolo Q2000 features an 13-megapixel autofocus shooter that takes great images in daylight. Even in low-light conditions, apart from some noise, we felt that the rear shooter does a nice job of capturing stills.We were also satisfied with the quality of pictures taken by the Xolo Q2000 indoors, though we did find them to be a little grainy occasionally.
Xolo Q2000 can record full-HD videos and we found that the quality of videos captured through the back camera was good. It also offers EIS or Electronic Image Stabilisation to minimise distortions caused by shaking of hands while shooting a video. Unfortunately, the camera saves videos in the archaic .3GP file format. The 2-megapixel front facing camera on the Xolo Q2000 also takes decent quality shots with good lighting conditions and is great for video calls. Overall, the phone is pretty good for casual photography.
Battery
The back of the Xolo Q2000 features a thin plastic cover that hides the battery compartment holding a 2600mAh battery, apart from the SIM card and microSD card slots. The cover sports a matte finish, and felt very flimsy in contrast to the otherwise sturdy-build of the phone. A rectangular strip, made from the same material that we have seen on the edges protrudes out, right at the top, featuring the rear camera lens. Overall, barring the back cover, the Xolo Q2000 looks and feels solid, though it's not really optimised for one-handed usage.
Apps and Modes
The Xolo Q2000 comes with a customised Camera app, and allows you to capture photos in HDR, 'face beauty' mode, Panorama modes, 'auto-scene detection', and 'best shot' modes in addition to an EV bracket mode for taking multiple exposure photos. The Q2000's camera app also comes with the usual controls including settings for Exposure, Colour effect, White balance, Scene Modes and ISO, among others. The phone's camera also supports continuous shots taking up to 40 shots in that mode, smile detection and face detection. Some of the options in the camera app's interface are not self-descriptive which makes it a little unintuitive for new smartphone users.
User Interface
The Xolo Q2000 runs Android 4.2.1, and the company has not customised the user interface much, except for offering four preloaded themes, namely Mint, Mocha, Raspberry and the default theme that bring minor changes in the phone's colour scheme.
Features
The notification tray on the Xolo Q2000 features a settings shortcut and a clear-all notifications button, along with expandable notifications. It features the same setting toggles shortcut that's found in stock Android and adds some of its own as well, for quick access to airplane mode, battery status, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, data connection, data usage, audio profiles, brightness, screen-backlight timeout and auto rotation. Similar to most other Android devices, there are five customisable home screens on the Xolo Q2000's UI that can be filled with app shortcuts and widgets. The three capacitive buttons, Menu, Home and Back, help in navigating through the phone, with the Home button also doubling up as an app switcher on long press.
Performance
The Xolo Q2000 is powered by a 1.2GHz Mediatek MT6589 quad-core processor. It has 1GB RAM onboard, and PowerVR SGX 544MP chip for processing graphics. There is 8GB of internal storage, which is expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card.
Call quality of the Xolo Q2000 was good during our testing process, and phone was also able to get a GPS lock rather easily while using the Maps app. It is also worth pointing out that we had turned off Wi-Fi and auto-brightness, and the phone was hooked to a 3G network. Altering these settings might help in running the phone for a longer duration, depending on your usage pattern.
Decree
At a price of Rs. 14,999, the Xolo Q2000 is a good budget phablet that delivers decent performance, without burning a hole in your pocket. However, the display, which is one of the major factors for choosing a large screen device, could have been better in terms of resolution, and definitely in terms of overall touch sensitivity. Overall, the Xolo Q2000 just falls short of being the perfect economy phablet.
Drawback
One issue that we encountered with the phone was its inconsistent touch sensitivity. A number of times, the onscreen keyboard failed to register key-strokes. This issue makes using the phone frustrating. Also it has flimsy back cover and low resolution screen.