The XonPhone 5 is not a phone worth recommending because it has too many things going wrong for it. Oplus is using the tried and tested recipe to make a budget smartphone but still manages to mess it up. The only praiseworthy thing on the phone is the 16GB of internal storage which is overshadowed by the dodgy performance of the phone.
Design & Display
The XonPhone 5 is intriguingly designed with a clean metal frame that runs around the phone, an OGS (One Glass Solution) display and all plastic back. And every part of the phone seems to fit snugly except the oddly protruding camera. All in all, the phone is solidly built and gives the impression that it can take a few knocks.
The 5 inch 720p HD display on the phone is sharp enough for a Rs. 8,000 phone but if I don’t consider the price, the Redmi 1S or the Zenfone 5 offer a much better and refined display. Colours on the display are on the cooler side of the palette and though the indoors legibility is okay, outside legibility of the phone on a bright sunny day is iffy.
Hardware and Performance
In terms of hardware Oplus has packed a quad core MediaTek chip clocked at 1.3GHz which runs smoothly for the most part. But beyond that, tasks like watching a 1080p movie or running an intense game like “Asphalt 8” gave birth to issues like stutters and crashes. I was also able to make the phone freeze while playing “Batman: Arkham Origins”.
Other than this, multitasking was at par with any other quad core sub-10K phone. It was was able to post decent scores in the benchmarks as shown below except in 3D Mark. One more downside is the battery life since I was able to kill the charged phone in less than 3 hours while watching a movie.
Software and UI
The XonPhone 5 UI is almost the stock Google UI but with some visual customizations. A couple of bloatware apps are included in the phone but nothing that can’t be ignored. The UI performance and animations are smooth and since the phone comes with a generous 16GB serving of storage, most of your regular apps will run just fine. The XonPhone runs on the almost latest 4.4.2 Android Kikat but there is no word on future updates.
Camera
The 8MP camera at the back takes average photos whether outdoors or indoors. Photographs came out to be dull and grainy. In order to mask the shortcomings of the camera sensor the phone tries to post-process the pictures rather unconvincingly and this takes a toll on the picture quality.
Videos captured from the phone were also unconvincing due to the low quality camera sensor. The front facing 2MP camera is okay and you certainly don’t look like a shady character to whoever's on the other side of the video call.
Bottomline
The Oplus Xonphone 5 is an unconvincing smartphone for a number of reasons including the higher price, a poor camera, a weak battery and the fact that the phone freezes occasionally. Even though the phone uses the same SoC as the Android One phones, has a HD screen and comes with a generous 16GB of internal storage, it lacks in everything else a smartphone should have.
So, If you are looking for a sub 10K phone which can work even if you try to push it then get the Asus ZenFone 5 or the ZTE V5. Even the Moto E would be a better choice for that matter.
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Hardik Singh
Light at the top, this odd looking creature lives under the heavy medication of video games. View Full Profile
