While most budget-friendly phones have started to lean over to the mid-end segment, the Xolo A500S (and others) which has gone live in India, brings Android down to the entry-level without compromising on specs and price. Xolo has optimized this smartphone to run on 4.2 Jelly Bean and it has also preloaded its Secure anti-theft application that not only tracks the handset’s location remotely, but also backs up call logs and text messages.
The A500S is designed to be slim, lightweight and stylish. It measures less than 9mm in thickness (125mm x 63.2mm x 8.98mm) and features a matte look. The phone is the successor to the A500 which was launched on the Android Ice Cream Sandwich platform and it comes with a decent set of improvements. Instead of the Snapdragon S4 MSM8225, the MT6572W processor is fitted on the inside and, albeit still dual core, the clock speed has been bumped up to 1.2GHz with Mali 400MP graphics. The RAM and storage, on the other hand, remain untouched at 512MB and 4GB, respectively.
It has dual SIM card slots onboard, one for 3G HSPA+ and the other for 2G networks. Visuals are delivered through a 4-inch WVGA TFT touchscreen with 233ppi pixel density. Other attributes of the phone include a 5MP camera, a VGA front snapper, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS. Lastly, the device packs a 1400mAh battery that can deliver up to 8 hours of 3G talktime, 4 hours of browsing or 53 hours of music playback.
The Xolo A500S is on sale in the country carrying a price tag of just Rs 6,999. It is available in 4 color shades, namely black, blue, red and white.