Yet another Chinese smartphone brand has entered the Indian market, joining the large hoard of established manufacturers in the country. QiKU is a joint venture between Chinese Internet company Qihoo 360 and handset maker Coolpad, which has already started selling smartphones in India. Now the brand but their first offering sounds like a promising mid-range smartphone.
Called Qiku Q Terra, the handset looks very similar to the recently launched Gionee Elife E8 with a round fingerprint sensor and unibody metal design and a unique dual-13MP rear camera system.
The handset might not be a workhorse but the specifications of the handset doesn’t make it slouch either. The smartphone uses a 6-inch full-HD (1080x1920) Sharp IPS display and is powered by a Snapdragon 808 six-core processor clocked at 2GHz which is the same that powers the LG G4 and the new Nexus 5X. Along with that there is 3GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage which can be extended to up to 128GB via a microSD card.
The main camera is a bit interesting as it has an arrangement of two 13MP camera sensors along with two f/1.8 aperture lenses and a dual-tone LED flash. The reason for using such an arrangement is that one of the two 13MP sensors captures a normal colour image, while the second captures a black and white image. The combination of the two images produces is picture which has better colour accuracy, which is what QiKU claims. The camera also features a ‘Fast Focus’ feature (can focus in .01 sec) along with the capability to shoot 4K videos.On the front there is an 8MP front facing camera with f/2.4 aperture which can also shoot in video full-HD resolution.
The handset supports 4G connectivity as well as two SIM card slots. The battery life should be rather good as there is a 3700mAh battery inside and assumingly a 1080p display would consume less juice. The handset runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with the company’s own UI layer called Qihoo 360 OS with some security features as well as the ability to uninstall any preinstalled app. The handset is priced at Rs 21,999 on open sale but will be available for Rs 19,999, through an invite system the Qiku website or Gadgets360.
