Mobiistar XQ Dual: Unboxing, first impressions, and more

Vietnamese company Mobiistar made its India debut on Wednesday with the launch of XQ Dual smartphone. Mobiistar XQ Dual is priced at ₹7,999 and will be available starting May 30 via Flipkart. The smartphone is the latest entrant in the competitive budget segment joining the likes of Honor 7A and Oppo Realme 1.

Mobiistar XQ Dual's highlight is the dual-selfie camera setup which comes with a 120-degree wide-angle support. This also places the smartphone against Xiaomi's selfie smartphone, Redmi Y1.

Mobiistar XQ Dual unboxing
Mobiistar XQ Dual comes in two colour options of gold and black. We have the black colour variant of Mobiistar XQ Dual. Inside the box, the smartphone comes along with a charger, SIM ejector pin, a screenguard, a transparent rubber cover, and a warranty card.

Mobiistar XQ Dual first impressions
Design is the first thing about the smartphone that will catch anyone's attention. The 5.5-inch full HD display is quite broad with the display quality appearing quite good during my brief usage. The top bezel which houses the two cameras is quite thick which could be off-putting for some users. The bottom bezel houses three capacitive touch buttons.

The smartphone has gold antenna lines running along the top and bottom of the rear panel. The gold accents are visible on the fingerprint sensor, camera sensor, volume rocker, and the power button. Although subjective, the gold accents look quite tacky and the company could have gone ahead with a much simpler design.

Coming to the highlight of the smartphone, it sports a dual-camera combination of 13-megapixel and 8-megapixel sensors with f/2.2 aperture for selfies. There's a 120-degree wide-angle camera for selfies, along with an HDR mode. The 'FaceBeauty' mode also comes with features like buffing, whitening, enlightening, and slimming. There's a 13-megapixel rear camera with f/2.0 aperture.

Mobiistar XQ Dual uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 425 processor for performance paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. The smartphone comes pre-loaded with Google apps but it doesn't have any excess bloatware. The smartphone is fuelled by a 3,000mAh battery.

On the software front, it runs Android 7.12 Nougat out-of-the-box. Running an older OS could prove disadvantageous as its competitors like Honor 7A and Oppo Realme 1 run the latest Android Oreo. There's a custom UI layered on top as well.