It is raining Chinese phones in India. Every other day, we see a new Chinese phone being flooded in the Indian market and top of it, they come at fraction of cost compared to the established brands!
Today, we saw entranc of QiKU in India. QiKU brand is owned by Chinese Internet company Qihoo 360 and handset maker Coolpad. QiKU has launched its first flagship smartphone in India, the QiKU Q Terra. This smartphone will be available from December 5 exclusively on Gadgets 360. Surprisingly, this smartphone will also be sold via Q-Invite system, the tradition for which was started by OnePlus and also via open sale. The price for open sale for this phone will be Rs. 21,999 and if bought via invite system, then it will cost Rs. 19,999. The details about how to get Invites will be available from 5th December on QiKU website and its forum.
From the hardware perspective, this phone looks quite impressive. This phone flaunts a huge 6 inch full HD (1080×1920) Sharp IPS display having a pixel density of 386ppi with 2.5d curved glass. The display has 83% screen to body ratio and has 1.4mm thin bezel. For protecting it against stains and scratches, the display comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 3.
Under the hood of the QiKU Q Terra is Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor clocked at 2GHz with Adreno 418 GPU. To prevent the problem of heating, this phone incorporates Airspace cooling system. We shall be able to comment on this if we get the chance to use the phone for quite sometime. This phone comes with 3GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage, which can be expanded upto 128GB via microSD card.
One of the highlights of the QiKU Q Terra is its Dual 13MP rear cameras, which the company calls them Duoscopic cameras. These two cameras have 13MP Sony Sensors and f/1.8 aperture and dual-tone LED flash. These cameras have features such as Fast Focus, which is claimed to be as low as 0.1 seconds so that you do not miss any crucial moment, Geo-tagging and 4K HD video recording. The purpose of providng two cameras in the rear is that the first sensor (Sony IMX278) will capture the normal color images and help in 40% increase of brightness and 78% low light noise reduction. The second (Sony IMX214 Mono) sensor will just captures a black and white image, and when the results of both the cameras are combined, you will get more detailed and accurate color reproduction in your clicked images.
For selfie crazy audience, this phone also house an 8 MP front facing camera with wide f/2.4 aperture to include more people in the selfies. This camera is also capable of shooting videos in full-HD resolution.
The QiKU Q Terra is fuelled by a massive T-shaped 3700mAh battery with support for Quick Charging. This is Dual-SIM phone and supports Micro-SIM and Nano-SIM. It offers connectivity options of 4G LTE with 300mbps download speed, Bluetooth 4.1, Wi-Fi etc.
This phone runs on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with company’s 360 OS on the top. According to the company, their custom OS does not have bloatware and one can uninstall stock apps to have less drain on the battery. It also has ICE Box feature, which automatically freezes applications which are not active for 15 days in order to unclutter the memory and one can unfreeze thee apps once you need them back.
The QiKU Q Terra comes with a fingerprint sensor, which is well-placed on the rear of the device behind the rear cameras and this is quite fast and can unlock the device in just 0.5 seconds. Besides providing security features, with fingerprint sensor, you can receive the calls and also click the selfies.
This phone has an unibody metal design. It is made of Magnesium Aluminum alloy, which the company calls Magnalium and the back of the device has matte finish with Zircon sand blasting. This device has dimensions of 157.6×79.8×8.6mm and its weight is 185 grams, which is quite bulky. Its overall thickness is 8.6 mm but from the corners it has thickness of 4.5mm.
The company claims to have 200+ service centers across India and promised to give the list of the same in due course of time.
We spent few minutes with the device and our quick impression is that apparently, it looks good in hardware and performance. But it is quite bulky and we do not appreciate the policy of the company to sell it via invite system. If you have a good device and are ready with service networks then the prospective buyers should get it on the spot should they decide to buy it. There is no fun in imitating the highly criticised method of selling of OnePlus and that too when you are new to India and does not have brand equity.
