Chinese smartphone Bluboo is set to enter the Indian smartphone market with its affordable 4G handset, dubbed as XFire.
We received the the new Bluboo XFire and here is our review of the handset.
Design and Display
The Bluboo XFire comes with a compact candy-bar like structure made out of plastic. It measures 140.2 mm long, 71.5 mm wide with 9.3 mm thickness. It weighs 145 grams and fits comfortably even in hand, enabling easy one-hand operation.
It sports a 5.0-inch qHD (960x540p) display having pixel density of 200 ppi (pixels per inch). Some of it's rivals such Redmi 2, Canvas Xpress 4G in the budget category have a HD (1280x720p) screen.
XFire owners won't be missing much. Many research studies have indicated that the human eye won't be able differentiate resolution on smaller screens in smartphones.
Processor performance
The Bluboo XFire houses 1.5GHz MediaTek (MTK6735) quad-core processor backed by 1GB RAM and 8GB inbuilt memory.
It scores a commendable 19159 points on AnTuTu. It has be noted that it's more superior rivals such as Xiaomi Redmi 2 and Lenovo A6000, which are powered by Snapdragon 410 SoC (System on Chip) made by Industry leader Qualcomm, could only muster 20,736 and 19830 points on the same benchmarking app.
It also beats popular 3G based Moto E (2 Gen) hands down as the device scores just 17,748 on AnTuTu.
Camera
The Bluboo XFire boasts of an 8MP camera with LED flash on the rear-side and a 5MP snapper on the front.
Images taken from the rear-side were of good quality. But under low-light condition, there was some loss of clarity.
The front 5MP camera is impressive too. You can view them in the slide-show below.
Bluboo XFire front-camera image sample 2IBTimes India/Rohit KVN Bluboo XFire front-camera image sample 1IBTimes India/Rohit KVN Bluboo XFire Rear-side camera image sample 2IBTimes India/Rohit KVN Bluboo XFire Rear-side camera image sample 1IBTimes India/Rohit KVN
Battery:
Besides the camera, battery (2750 mAh) is another note worthy feature of the Bluboo XFire. In our normal day-to-day use, we did some calling, browsed Internet and played some videos, and the handset lasted the whole day.
On standby mode, it was able to last for close to a week.
However, we also noticed that the battery drained a bit faster when we played some power intensive games.
Mobile Operating System
The Blueboo XFire runs on the Android 5.1 Lollipop OS with custom skin on it.
Verdict
The Bluboo XFire fares well in terms of specifications and user-experience. Its camera and battery are impressive. But due to lack of brand recognition in India, the device may get sidelined by other brands such as Lenovo, Motorola, Xiaomi, Micromax and other domestic players.
If Bluboo manages to launch XFire under Rs 5,000, then it may be able to pose a threat to the aforementioned devices in India.
