Xolo Era 2X First Impressions: Most Affordable Smartphone With Fingerprint Scanner

Earlier today, Indian smartphone maker Xolo introduced the successor of Era 1X in the Indian market at a starting price of Rs. 6,666. The USP of the smartphone is its fingerprint scanner, which makes it the most affordable handset in the Indian market with such security feature. Xolo Era 2X will sell in two variants; one with 2GB of RAM and the other offering 3GB of RAM priced at Rs 6,666 and Rs 7,499 respectively. The company will sell the smartphone exclusively through Flipkart starting January 9, 2017.

We were present at the launch event and here's our first impressions of the Xolo Era 2X.

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Design

For a smartphone priced at Rs. 6,666, Xolo Era 2X does a decent job. The smartphone is made out of plastic and has a rubberized matte finish at the rear panel, which is removable and houses a 2,500 mAh battery unit, two SIM card slots and one microSD card slot. For a 5-incher, Xolo Era 2X is quite compact and easily fits in one hand because of its rounded corners and curved edges. Overall, Era 2X is a decent looking handset but fails to match the likes of metal clad Xiaomi budget handsets.

Xolo Era 2X will be available in two colour options- Black Gunmetal and Latte Gold version. The Latte Gold colour version will be available in a couple of weeks.

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Display

Xolo Era 2X features a 5-inch (1280×720 pixels) HD IPS Oncell display, which seems quite bright and also offers natural colours. However, during our brief stint with the smartphone, I found the touch response quite stiff compared to other handsets in this price point such as Redmi 3S Prime, Coolpad Note 3 lite, etc. More so, the display fails to match the likes of aforementioned handsets in terms of sharpness.

Hardware and Software

Xolo Era 2X will easily manage everyday tasks such as music playback, web browsing, email, light games, etc. with the underlying quad-core MediaTek 6737 chipset paired with 2GB and 3GB of RAM. However, we do not recommend the handset for users who love to play heavy games on their smartphone and run more than 15 applications simultaneously.

Easily put, it's a handset for first time smartphone users, who are making a shift from a feature phone platform.

Xolo Era 2X runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box with a customized layer, which is mostly stock Android. The UI is pretty much smooth.

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Camera

Xolo Era 2X comes with an 8MP auto-focus rear camera that uses 5P Largan lens and has f/2.0 aperture. The rear camera offers smart camera features like Beauty mode, HDR, Panorama, Gesture recognition, Voice capture, Smile shot, Face detection, Self-timer and can even record Time lapse videos, a great feature to have in this price-point.

We took some shots with the 8MP rear camera and were not very pleased with the results. The rear camera seems quite sluggish in capturing a shot and the overall image quality was unlike other handsets we have tested in this price-point.

However, the 5MP front camera seems quite decent in capturing selfie shots.

Battery and Connectivity

The smartphone is backed by a 2,500mAh battery unit, which as per Xolo comes with a standby time of 322 hours. We will review the handset later this month to evaluate such claims.

Connectivity is a strong point of Xolo Era 2X. The smartphone offers Dual SIM (4G+4G) connectivity with VoLTE support enabling users to access Reliance Jio benefits on the handset. Besides, Xolo Era 2X has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.

Verdict

Xolo Era 2X have a tough road ahead. While the smartphone offers decent specifications on papers, the initial impressions fail to please. We will stress test the handset while reviewing it in detail to give the final verdict.

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