The sub-INR 10K price segment is currently filled with some of the great set of devices while there is still room for some improvements. Few companies, mostly Indian brands have a big local presence in the country, while they are not much popular in the online tech communities, there are few brands like XOLO that tries to experiment with their devices. This time company is more focussed on providing better software experience to its users rather than just providing basic hardware features. They have developed a custom Android interface called Hive UI, which promises to be better than others. Well, we have heard those types of claims by many mobile vendors and only a few of them have succeeded, much less lasted in the market.
The XOLO Omega 5.5 is the Guinea pig here while 8X-1000 was the first to receive this interface on XOLO smartphones, it won’t be last. Now let’s take a further look at how the Hive UI increases the chances of the Omega 5.5 to make a mark in the ever-growing sub 10K range of smartphones.
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Design
When talking about the device, the first thing comes into a mind is how comfortable it is to hold the design, and does it worthy to hold in public. Well, the Omega 5.5 might not be the classiest device you would own, but it certainly has some elements of clean design and round edges. Although, the first thought that would come into your mind when you pick up the device, is that it is very heavy at 152 grams, but not heavier than the 199 grams of Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G.
The chrome finished edges of the device gives it a premium-ish look. On the right edge, you can see a power/unlock button while the volume rocker keys are placed on the left edge, whereas the bottom edge is left empty. The microUSB and the 3.5mm jack is placed on the top edge. Coming to the front part, company choose to offer capacitive buttons instead of the screen buttons. The Brand of the XOLO is placed on the front top of the device alongside are the sensors and c=front camera module. Talking about the back, their rear camera is placed in the center with flash, and below that you can see the second XOLO branding. The speaker grill can be found on the bottom of the backside of the device.
Hardware
The Omega 5.5 features a 5.5-inch 720p IPS display, which has a pixel density of 267 PPI, which is close to the average pixel density on most of the large screen devices. The device is powered by a Mediatek Cortex –A7 Octa-Core processor clocking at 1.4 GHz, which is accompanied by Mali-450MP4 Graphical Processing Unit. It packs 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, which can be expanded up to 32GB via a microSD card, so you needn’t worry about the storage space on the device.
Talking about the camera department, it sports a 13MP rear camera with features like Autofocus and LED flash, which boasts several photo modes like smile detection, panorama, and HDR. While the front facing camera on the device is of 2MP, which gives decent output for your selfie needs, although, not much can be said about the video calling. It has waves of connectivity features like 3G, Bluetooth, A-GPS, microUSB and Wi-Fi. All this is powered by a 2600mAh battery that should be good enough to last a day, while to know the further usage details about battery, you would have to wait once we test it for couple of days as our daily driver.
Software
This is the USP of the device, as for the pricing of around INR 8K it might not have the best hardware specs in the market, but the Hive UI based on the Android 4.4 Kitkat OS does give a great sense of satisfaction which is not available on any other Android smartphones, well, at least on a smartphone offered by an Indian vendor. According to the company, they are the only Indian mobile vendor that provides a specific platform needs to their users with HIVE UI. Meaning, there are no other manufacturers that have developed a proprietary UI for consumers.
The HIVE UI is something clean and beautiful that one would like on their Android smartphone. With this custom interface, company has tried to integrate as many things that it possibly can offer with dedicated apps. There is a Connect platform which encourages collaboration by the user and for the user, as company monitors the activities here like, users asking for bug fixes, new features or share any ideas worth improving the content on HIVE. And the company claims that they roll out the updates as soon as possible, which is what we experience after using it for a couple of hours. We did receive a minor size update, which had some interesting bug fixes and new additions.
It’s a fact that there is a tool for everything in this world, and with HIVE company has done just that. You can see a dedicated app for security, power management, media playback, gallery, file manager, as well as to back up and rest the content. Right now, we have only found reasons to like this UI, since, it has been used for only a few hours. While we are not looking forward to getting disappointed by the UI, but there’s a thing that popped into my mind after using it for few hours. What if the company made this UI available for all Android device, just like MIUI, CM and other open interfaces. That would give company’s UI an interesting point of view, where it would allow them to expand their UI much faster than right now, as it is only limited to only handful of company’s smartphones. MIUI and CM are one of the largest UI community right now, and HIVE can be in the same league if company takes measures for that. Now even if the company only developed this UI for their devices, it makes sense that they should expand more, and developer community is the best help they can get. We hope company do take this in mind and think about the prospects.
Initial Thoughts
The XOLO Omega 5.5 is decent smartphone with a UI being its USP. It doesn’t have over the top hardware specs, which can give tough competition to the likes of Xiaomi Redmi Note, Yu Yureka. It may lack little in the hardware part, but the HIVE UI on the device begs for it to give it a chance. Well, you can’t buy a smartphone just based on that, so that’s why we are here to give a detailed review of the device, where we would explore more about the pros and cons of the device.
