Mobiistar XQ Dual Review

Mobiistar, a popular Vietnamese affordable smartphone brand recently launched their new smartphone Mobiistar XQ Dual in India. 

Mobiistar XQ dual is a selfie-centric budget smartphone in India which costs Rs 7,999. XQ Dual is one of the very few smartphones in the market which comes with dual front cameras in this price range. 

We used Mobiistar XQ Dual for a few days and here's what we think about the new Mobiistar mobile.

Mobiistar XQ Dual features a 5.5-inches FHD (1920x1080) IPS display with 400 PPI pixel density and 2.5D Glass. Though many budget phones these days are offered with 18:9 ratio but Mobiistar sticks with traditional 16:9 ratio. What’s great is the phone’s full-HD display which isn’t offered in many phones of this category. The overall display quality is great, the auto brightness works fine and it fully makes things visible in direct sunlight.

Mobiistar XQ Dual comes in two colors- gold and black, the review unit we got was black which has golden accents around fingerprint sensor, rear camera, and antenna lines.

The phone’s body is made of metal and has a matte finish which gives it premium look but also makes it slippery and prone to smudges. 

The power button and dual SIM slot are placed on the right side of the phone whereas the volume rockers are placed on the left side. You can directly jump to the camera by pressing the power button twice.

3.5mm headphone jack is placed on the top while the bottom houses a micro-USB port and two speakers. 

The handset has thick top and bottom bezels, the top bezel of the phone is accompanied by the dual front camera, LED Flash, earpiece, and proximity sensor and the chin of the phone comprises a capacitive home button, multi-app handler, and a back button, which are not backlit. 

The fingerprint sensor is placed at the back of the phone which unlocks phones in 0.50 seconds. The placement of the fingerprint sensor makes it easy to unlock it with the index finger while holding the phone.

The new Mobiistar XQ Dual runs on Android 7.1.2 along with the 1.4GHz Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor coupled with 3GB RAM. It has 32GB of internal storage which is expandable up to 128GB through a hybrid dual-SIM configuration where second SIM slot doubles as a MicroSD card holder. 

Snapdragon 430 is an outdated chipset which is also available in Redmi 5A, a much cheaper phone. Mobiistar XQ Dual handles most of the day-to-day tasks easily but heavy apps like Asphalt 8 lag on this phone. Unlike many other handsets out there in the market, XQ Dual comes with a very few bloatware. 

Talking about benchmark results, Mobiistar XQ Dual scored 57,483 on AnTuTu while Geekbench gave a score of 652 and 2,518 on single-core and multi-core tests, respectively.

Talking about the cameras, the front has a dual camera setup which includes 13 megapixels (f/2.0) and 8 megapixels (f/2.2) sensors with LED flash and face beauty. There is also a wide-angle mode where you can take group selfies. The images taken from front camera came out to be good for a phone at this price. 

On the rear is a 13-megapixel camera with f/2.0 aperture, dual-tone LED flash, Phase Detection autofocus, HDR, Night mode, Face Beauty, and Professional mode. The rear camera captures good images in good lighting conditions but when the light is absent, the camera’s performance sinks. 

The phone is packed with 3000mAh battery which perfectly works for whole 1 day only if there is no heavy use. It takes around 2.5 hours to charge the phone from zero to hundred percent. 

Connectivity options available for this handset are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.1, Micro-USB 2.0, GPS, and 3.5mm headphone jack.

Should you buy the Mobiistar XQ Dual? If you are someone who clicks a lot of selfies and tight on budget, Mobiistar XQ Dual will definitely suit you. Priced at Rs 7,999, the handset is a value for money product which offers, good display, beautiful design and great front camera for its price. But people who use many apps on their phones can also consider Redmi 5, Asus ZenFone Max Pro or Honor 7C as these phones don’t lag often on heavy usage. 

The smartphone’s USP is its dual selfie cameras with LED flash which not many other smartphone brands are offering in this price range. 

Aakriti Bansal

BW Reporters The author is intern with BW Businessworld