The XOLO A500L falls into the same emerging category in the budget dual-core smartphone segment in India as the Karbonn A12+. However the A500L is costlier and comes with a 3 MP camera compared to the 5MP camera on the Karbonn A12+. The A500L does have better build quality and premium appeal, but does that justify the higher price or does it perform better than the A12+ with the same 1.3 GHz dual-core processor and 512 MB RAM. Keep reading to find out or watch our embedded video. Comparison between benchmark scores of the XOLO A500L, Karbonn A12+, Lava Iris 402 and the Micromax Canvas Fun A74 follows after the detailed scores.
Hardware Overview
XOLO A500L is powered by a 1.3 GHz dual-core MediaTek MT6572 processor, with 512 MB RAM and 4 GB internal storage. There's a 4-inch WVGA display that's sharp and bright, although has a slight hue imbalance which makes it prefer cooler colors.
It has a 3-megapixels primary camera with single-LED flash accompanied by a front-facing VGA camera. The phone also has some sensors, namely:
- Proximity Sensor – As the name suggests, it checks how close objects are. The proximity sensor is calibrated in such a way that while you are in a call the screen goes off as the sensor detects that your face is close to the device.
- 3-axis Accelerometer - To detect the change in motion from the initial configuration of the device, i.e. laid flat on a surface.
- Light Sensor - Detects changes in ambient light, used for automatic brightness control.
You can see our hands-on images and watch the Unboxing of the XOLO A500L here.
Benchmarks
Quadrant
Quadrant is a CPU, I/O and 3D benchmark app for Android, which provides total as well as separate scores of the tests it conducts. Based on the total score, a graph is generated to show where the phone lies wrt to other devices.
The A500L got an average Quadrant score of 3465, which lands in the same proximity as the Karbonn A12+ and the costlier Canvas Fun A74 which got a score of 3478. We had to run the benchmark several times to get a consistent score, and it fluctuated between 3300 to 3500.
AnTuTu 4
AnTuTu is a comprehensive benchmarking tool, which tests the complete hardware of the device including the CPU, GPU, RAM as well the storage attached to the device. Its an additive benchmark which adds component test scores rather than taking their average as Quadrant does.
XOLO A500L scored 11,032 on the full AnTuTu benchmark, some categorized scores are given below:
- CPU 1666
- GPU 3665
- RAM 1300
- I/O 1378
These scores are comparable and higher than some devices available in the same segment.
NenaMark2
NemaMark is primarily a graphics benchmark which uses real rendered screens to check the performance of the GPU of the device.
We got a Nenamark2 score of 40.9 FPS on the XOLO A500L. High-end games should be playable with acceptable framerates on this smartphone using its Mali 400 MP GPU.
Vellamo
Vellamo has several chapters, we tested the HTML5 chapter which checks mobile browser performance, which includes SunSpider JavaScript and V8 benchmark. The Metal chapter measures CPU performance.
The A500L by XOLO scored 1683 on the Vellamo HTML5 test which puts it above the HTC One X and the Galaxy S3, which are both quad-core devices. It scored 467 on the Metal benchmark putting it between the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S3, proving that its not a slouch in the performance department, again.
Linpack
Linpack is a standard CPU benchmark, which scores your smartphone's processing capabilities in terms of MFlops. The XOLO A500L scored 58.35 on the single thread test while the Karbonn A12+ scored 51.55 on the same test. The XOLO A500L scored 80.77 on the multi-thread test. But this test also depends on the ROM and CPU governor, therefore the scores are pretty consistent.
Multitouch Test
We tested the multitouch capabilities of the XOLO A500L and found that it supports just 2 points of touch, hence it has a 2-finger multitouch display.
Although the Karbonn A12+ does support 5 points of touch, and is available for less than the A500L. If truth be told, you rarely use more than 2 fingers on a display. Therefore, its more a matter of specs than actual usability.
Benchmark comparison of the XOLO A500L with Karbonn A12+, Lava Iris 402 and Micromax Canvas Fun A74.
In our benchmark review the XOLO A500L scored brilliantly for the price at which its available and got similar results to its competitors, making its superior build quality a plus point.
Conclusion
The XOLO A500L is a serious contender if you want to buy a budget Android smartphone today, it has better build than the Karbonn A12+ and a better display in terms of touch sensitivity. In performance tests as well as daily tasks, the A500L is no slouch and should easily bear the brunt of daily usage. We will have more details in the full review, till then if you have any questions just hit in the comments section below or on the embedded benchmark review video.
