Xolo Q600s Review


Introduction

The Xolo Q600s is among the entry range smartphones that try to offer as much as possible for the price. The Xolo Q600s falls well in the value for money category of smartphones and is alongside Motorola’s Moto E, Micromax Unite 2 and Lava Iris X1. The Xolo Q600s comes with a sturdy design, a qualified internal specification and runs on Android 4.4.2 KitKat out of the box. For Rs. 7499, lets see how it delivers.

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Video Review

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlAWhTuOurg

Build Quality, Design and Handling

Design and build quality are finally starting to seem important to the manufacturers as even their entry range offerings seem good looking and feel solid in the hands. The Xolo Q600s definitely looks like a costlier phone that it actually is. The combination of sharp edges on the top and bottom along with the smooth curved edges on the sides give the phone a distinct look and good handling.

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In terms of looks, the Xolo Q600s is quite the looker. It comes in white and black color options and we have the white variant with us. Both the variants are good although the black one looks better as the white one can get ugly and dirty with time. The design language on the Xolo Q600s seems to be different from the other Xolo phones.

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Lets have a quick hardware walk through.

On the front, we have the 4.5inch qHD display. The bezels on the sides aren’t too thin and the bezels on top and bottom are quite big.

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Above the display, we have the earpiece on the center, proximity and ambient sensor combination on the right side and the front facing camera on the top left corner.

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Below the display, we have three capacitive touch keys that light up when needed.

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Moving to the right side of the phone, we see the volume rocker and the power lock button.

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On the bottom, we have the mic and the microUSB port for charging and data transfer.

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On the left side of the phone, there is absolutely nothing. On the top, we have the 3.5mm audio jack. On the back of the phone, we have a semi glossy and semi matte finish material that is sometimes slipper and sometimes grippy.

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On the top left, we have the 5MP camera along with a LED flash. There is a Xolo branding towards the center of the phone and the loudspeaker grill is towards the bottom of the back. The back cover is removable and on removing the cover, we have a microSD card slot flanked by a microSIM card and a miniSIM card slot. The 2000mAh battery is user removable.

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In terms of handling, the phone feels solid in hand, but the sharp edges on the top and bottom can be a little icky for certain users. The back cover is very fragile and within a few days of usage, we could see the bumps and dents on the back cover and it seems odd. Overall, the Xolo Q600s looks good, but doesn’t feel the same way in the hand.

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Display

The display on the Xolo Q600s is a 4.5inch qHD unit and has a pixel density of 245ppi. The display is probably the strongest thing about the phone after its affordable pricing. The display looks crisp and sharp. The display is no Full HD unit, but isn’t bad at all. You will not notice the pixels unless you are looking for it. The color levels are good and the saturation is accurate. The viewing angles are quite good for a phone at this price.

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Overall, the display on the Xolo Q600s is very good.

Camera

The Xolo Q600s comes with a 5MP auto-focus camera on its back that can record 720p videos. There is also a VGA camera on the front for video calling. The combination of these cameras offers a reasonable experience for the price.

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The camera interface looks like a Nexus camera interface, but there are some shortcuts on the left side of the view finder as well. The settings and options aren’t plenty and there aren’t many shooting modes.

The camera quality is average and you can check out the samples below.

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The Xolo Q600s can record 720p videos from the rear camera and you can check out a sample video right below.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyXcEFvK1u8

Overall, the camera performance is – you get what you pay for. Average is a word that would suit well.

Hardware and Performance

The Xolo Q600s is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core Broadcom SoC – BCM23550 and the graphics are taken care by Videocore GPU IV. There is 1GB RAM to help the processor.

Xolo Q600s Benchmarks

The internal storage is 4GB and for phones at these price, it is pretty much the only option. There is a microSD card slot to expand your storage space. The 4GB internal storage is divided to two parts – one for the apps 845MB and the other that can be accessed by the user for storing music and videos – 1.65GB.

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Like how the display is the strong suit of the Xolo Q600s, the performance is its huge letdown. Being powered by a quad-core processor, having 1GB RAM and running on Android 4.4.2 KitKat(which is optimized for lower end devices), you would definitely expect a better performance. The performance is slow and laggy throughout the entire user interface. Everything you do on the phone seems to take a long time – be it opening apps, or opening the app drawer or switching between apps.

You can check out the entire benchmark performance of the Xolo Q600s over here, but you can get an idea with a few scores right below.

Xolo Q600s NenaMark 2 Xolo Q600s Quadrant Benchmark Xolo Q600s Vellamo 2 Metal Xolo Q600s Vellamo 2 HTML5

Overall, the Xolo Q600s is loaded with good specifications, but its performance is very poor.

Gaming Performance

The gaming performance is also reminiscent of its general performance. We tried out a mixture of games with casual games like – Temple Run 2, Subway Surfer; medium graphics intensive games like – Shadow Gun, RipTide GP2 and high end games like Asphalt 8. The device was unable to handle gaming generally, but you can try casual games like Temple Run 2 and Subway Surfers. Xolo Q600s couldn’t handle Asphalt 8 at all and you wouldn’t want to get the Xolo Q600s for hardcore gaming.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmNw9CwhzkM

Software

The Xolo Q600s runs on a near stock version of Android 4.4.2 KitKat. Despite the absence of bloatware, the phone always seems to under perform. Xolo has surprisingly removed Google’s own apps from the Q600s and you don’t even get Chrome pre-installed. You can always install it if you want to, but Xolo is giving the users a flexibility. The UI is mostly stock except the coloring of Network indicators on the notification bar. As with Xolo phones, you get three Xolo apps – Xolo Care, Xolo Secure and Xolo Power.

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Battery Life

The battery life of Xolo Q600s is good thanks to the 2000mAh battery on it. On full charge, the battery can last a day of normal to heavy usage and if you are a really heavy user of the smartphone, then you are better off carrying a charger. For just taking phone calls and checking mail occasionally, the phone will last a day and a half. We got around 6 hours of continuous video playback.

Conclusion

The Xolo Q600s is one of the few budget smartphones that is priced very low and tries to offer a lot. The Xolo Q600s is a blend of good looks, great display, average battery life and camera coupled with a very poor performance. If you are one of those, who likes a fast and smooth phone for any price, then the Xolo Q600s isn’t for you. Or if you are one of those who likes a fancy phone, watches a lot of videos, but don’t mind the slow UI.

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Pros

  • Excellent display
  • Good solid build quality
  • Value for money

Cons

  • Performance is bad – UI is slow and sluggish
  • Camera isn’t great
  • You cannot install a lot of apps and games because of the low internal memory

Author: Monish Kumar

Monish is passionate about smartphones who is also interested in User Experience and Design. He is currently using Samsung Galaxy S3. You can follow him on Twitter and Google+