Bluboo XTouch Review: A premium phone with a pocket-friendly price tag

Chinese smartphone maker Bluboo in collaboration with Aircel recently launched a new handset dubbed as XTouch in India.

Soon after the unveiling, we got our hands on the Bluboo XTouch review unit and we are pretty impressed with the kind of features it offers for just $179.99 (around Rs. 12,000). It boasts full HD display, high build-quality, finger-print sensor, Sony camera and a lot more.

Let's get on with the review and see how it fares:

Design and Build-quality:

Bluboo XTouch comes with compact candy-bar rectangular shape. It measures 153 mm long and 71 mm wide, making the phone fit comfortably in a hand. Even those with small hands can operate the phone single handedly.

The company has placed volume (up & down) and power buttons on the right side of the bezel. Dual-SIM slot with a provision for microSD card on the other side.

Though the Bluboo phone costs less than $180, it is constructed with sturdy materials and looks premium too. It flaunts high-quality metal around the bezel and to make it look classy, the company has incorporated shinny polycarbonate-based shell assembled with cut-glass sections giving diamond like reflection on the surface.

Display:

The Bluboo's mid-range phone sports 5.0-inch full display with pixel density of 440 ppi (pixels per inch). We played high-quality videos on the phone and it succeeded in delivering a rich viewing experience.

View: Bluboo XTouch Review: First impression [Photos]

Processor, OS, RAM and Storage:

XTouch runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop powered by 1.7GHz MediaTek (MTK6753) Octa-core CPU backed by sumptuous 3GB RAM and 32GB inbuilt storage space.

We ran some benchmarking app to test the phone's capacity. Here are the results.

Basemark OS II (over-all): 801

AnTuTu Benchmark v5.7.1: 30,999

Geekbench 3: Single-core - 622; Multi-core- 2835

In a real world scenario, it was quite quick in response time despite the device running tweaked version of Android. We played Asphalt 8 game on the phone, it showed very less lag and worked perfectly fine until we stretched the game for extended time, there we witnessed heat building up on the back of the phone. But, to be fair any phone if used extensively, will get heated up.

So all in all, XTouch lived up to its potential.

[Note: Higher the RAM capacity the more efficiently the device performs.]

Camera:

As said in the beginning of review, one of the USP of Bluboo XTouch is its camera. It boasts feature-rich 13MP camera with Sony sensor, dual-LED flash, auto-focus, HDR and many more.

In our tests, the phone's camera captured really good snaps with sharp details of objects in the scence, particularly in the well-lit environment.

In the low-light conditions, the change in quality was quite discernible for a naked eye. That said, XTouch's primary camera is still better in comparison to other devices in sub-Rs.12,000 category.

As far as 5MP front-camera is concerned, it does take good selfies, but it has no stand-out feature as such.

You can see the test samples below:

Battery:

XTouch comes with quite a big battery for a 5.0-inch display phone. It houses 3000 mAh cell and in our tests, the device managed to run for almost a whole under-mixed usage. That's an impressive feat for an Android phone in this price-segment. But if the user plays high-intensity games, the battery drains faster.

Audio Out-put:

Bluboo XTouch excels in this department thanks to engineers of the device for placing dual-speakers on the bottom bezel. No matter how user places the phone (on its back or on its display); the audio out-put does not get distorted.

Value-added feature:

Bluboo has incorporated fingerprint sensor (on Home button) in XTouch to provide second layer of security for secured unlocking of the screen-lock. This type of bio-metric technology is provided by less than a handful of mid-range phones in the market.

Verdict:

All-in-all, Bluboo XTouch is a smart-buy considering the top-end features it offers for $180 (Rs. 12,000). In our tests, XTouch consistently delivered expected results and in some cases like battery life exceeded our expectation. It has all the ammunition to take on the heavy weights like Xiaomi Mi 4i, Micromax Canvas 5, YU Yureka (& Plus), Lenovo K3 Note and other mid-range phones in the market.

That said, Bluboo XTouch's brand is quite new and we do not know the company's after-sale service strategy. Bluboo has to focus on improving brand recognition in India, if it hopes to grow big in this market.