The Indian smartphone market has seen the entry of a lot of new Original Equipment Manufacturers in the recent years. Some of the Chinese OEMs managed to make a solid ground here but the rest couldn’t live up to its mark. Amidst the stiff competition from Chinese OEMs in India, there is a new entry in the Indian smartphone market today, Mobiistar XQ Dual.

Mobiistar is a Vietnamese smartphone brand and the company is launching its first smartphone in India. Today, at an event in Delhi, the company took wraps off its first self-centric smartphone in India, XQ Dual. The XQ Dual is a budget oriented offering from Mobiistar and sports specifications like an Octa-core processor, Dual Selfie camera, 3000mAh battery, FULL HD display and more.

The smartphone is priced at ₹7999 and will be available exclusively on Flipkart starting May 30,2018

We have been testing the smartphone for more than a week now and here are our initial impressions of Mobiistar XQ Dual

Unboxing:

XQ Dual comes in a bright packaging with the image of the smartphone covering most of the box. Slide opening the box, you will find the XQ Dual itself wrapped under a plastic and on further digging in, you will find another box which holds the User Manual. Mobiistar has also given a Soft plastic case for the XQ Dual. Furthermore, you will find the usual set of accessories like SIM ejector tool, Wall Adapter, and Micro USB cable. There are no earphones present in the box. That’s it for the box contents.

Specifications of Mobiistar XQ Dual:

Display: 5.5″ FULL HD display

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 430

RAM: 3GB

ROM: 32GB

Camera: Rear-13MP and Front 13MP + 8MP 120-degree wideangle camera (f/2.0 + f/2.2)

Battery: 3000mAh

OS: Android 7.1.2

Colors: Black and Gold

Sensors: Accelerometer, Ambient Light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, E-compass, and Gyroscope

SIM slot: Hybrid SIM slot(Dual SIM / 1SIM+1MicroSD)

Other features: Freeze App, SOS, Anti Theft, Themes, Smart Battery Saving, Intelligent Assistant

Build Quality and Physical Overview:

Mobiistar XQ Dual sports a 5.5 inches 16:9 display to the front along with a Dual Selfie Camera, Front facing LED flash and the usual sensors. The build quality of this smartphone is very good. The materials used by Mobiistar are good and it is built well and feels solid in hand.

There are three capacitive buttons i.e., Home, Back, and Multitasking. To the left, you will find the Volume rockers and to the right, you will find the power ON/OFF button along with the Hybrid SIM slot.

To the top, there is a 3.5mm headphone jack and a secondary microphone. The Micro USB port, Primary microphone, and the speaker are located to the bottom. To the back, you will find a 13MP Rear camera along with a Dual-tone LED flash. The antenna lines with a nice golden accent are present at the rear of the XQ Dual. It is then followed by a Finger Print scanner and Mobiistar branding.

Display:

Mobiistar XQ Dual sports a 5.5 inches FULL HD IPS Display that has a resolution of 1920 X 1080 pixels. It is a standard 16:9 display and not an 18:9 display.

Our first impressions on the display quality were good. The colors are vivid, natural and you won’t notice any pixels unless you are wearing a Virtual Reality headset. The display itself is a 2.5D one and you will notice subtle curves to the edges which gives the smartphone a premium feel. When it comes to the display protection, Mobiistar has used Asahi Dragontrail glass to protect the smartphone from scratches.

When it comes to touch responsiveness, the XQ does a good job here as well. It is fast and responsive and we did not face any issues with it. The outdoor legibility on the XQ Dual is decent. Overall, our initial impressions, the panel used by Mobiistar on the XQ Dual is good.

Camera:

Mobiistar XQ Dual is marketed as a selfie-centric smartphone as it sports Dual cameras to the front. It has a 13MP camera to the rear which has an aperture of f/2.0 and there is a dual camera setup to the front. It is a 13MP+8MP combination and the second lens is a 120-degree wide angle lens. For group selfies, the second lens would be helpful as it covers a wider field. The front-facing cameras are also accompanied by a Soft LED flash to aid in dark situations.

We have been testing the camera extensively and in our initial impressions, the pictures taken with the rear camera was decent and the selfies taken with the Dual front-facing cameras were quite good. We will have more to say about the cameras in our full review.

Camera Samples:

Software and Performance:

Mobiistar XQ Dual is powered by an Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor which is clocked at 1.4 GHz. It is coupled with 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. The storage can be expanded via MicroSD up to 128GB.

XQ Dual runs a custom UI v3.0 of Mobiistar on top of Android 7.1.2 Nougat. With our time with the device, the smartphone impressed us with its performance. Although it has a custom skin, it was able to handle most of the tasks thrown at it with ease. The UI is fluid and jumping between apps were smooth, thanks to the 3GB RAM. It could keep 4-5 applications before booting out from the memory. When it comes to gaming, we noticed minor lag in graphics intensive applications like Asphalt 8, Mortal Kombat X etc.

The software has additional nifty features like Anti Theft, Intelligent Assistant etc. We will have more on that in our full review.

Battery:

XQ Dual from Mobiistar is backed up by a 3000mAh non-removable battery. Our initial impressions on the battery were decent and we will have more to say on that in our full review.

Overall, our initial impressions of the device are quite good and stay tuned for our full review which should be dropping very soon!