Until the battery life-increasing technologies currently developed by researchers become mainstream, the only option available now to mobile manufacturers is to increase the capacity of the batteries.
Bluboo is not exactly a newcomer on the Chinese smartphone market, but the company seems to have been dormant last year, as it only launched a couple of devices that didn’t grab the attention of the public. This year, however, the manufacturer will surely make some heads turn with the X550 and several other great performing and competitively priced devices.
Much like the Elephone P4000, the Bluboo X550 sports Mediatek’s MT6735 chipset with 4G LTE World Mode. Included in that chipset are a 64-bit Cortex A7 CPU running at 1.3Ghz, and a Mali-T760 GPU. All of this is paired with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, to make sure that multi-tasking doesn’t represent a challenge for this phablet. The storage can be furthermore expanded using a microSD card. On the software side of things, the X550 will run Android 5.1.
The 5.5″ OGS display may not have a great resolution (it only features 1280×720 pixels), but it still has a decent pixel density of 267 ppi. Below the display are the three capacitative buttons almost all Android smartphones have, but these lent a bit from Google’s Material Design.
The pictures taken with the 8MP rear camera or the 2MP front-facing camera should look sharp enough on this display. Given the small resolutions, relative to the cameras found in the competitors’ phones, I’d dare to say that these are not interpolated, but we’ll have to wait until the phablet hits the market to see how its cameras compare to others.
Bluboo lists the following frequencies for the X550:
- 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
- 3G: WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100MHz
- 4G: FDD-LTE 800/1800/2100/2600MHz
Besides these, the phablet includes GPS, Bluetooth, and USB connectivity. NFC or HotKnot would have been nice, but such features will probably make their way to Bluboo’s more expensive models.
The most important feature of the X550 remains its battery capacity. This phablet allegedly comes with a 5300mAh battery, which is definitely something other manufacturers cannot say about their phones. Charging such a large-capacity battery would normally take ages, if it weren’t for the quick charging technology. Coupled with the HD resolution, the battery should be able to keep the phone up and running (and I literally mean screen-on time by that) for up to 10 hours or more. As a result of packing such a hefty battery, the phablet tops the scale at 198 grams, but the battery life should make this worth it.
Bluboo X550 is currently available on pre-sale at GearBest, where you can pre-order yours for $152.89 if you apply coupon code X550 during the checkout procedure. The pre-sale will end on May 19, so orders placed by then will start shipping towards the end of next month.
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