A Chinese phone that will be soon 'Made in India'

The much awaited OnePlus X is finally official and near-about ready for the Indian release. Here's what works and what doesn't for OnePLus X

The speculations and leaks prior to the official release had everybody guessing, and the dual SIM mobile phone looks good enough to make some serious waves in the budget segment.

That the Chinese firm is also pushing the device as a 'Make In India' initiative, the device is surely ticking all the right check boxes. Only the cringe worthy invite system and hybrid SIM-cum-memory card slot makes up for some not so pleasing news.

OnePlus has rendered the phone in two different variants: Onyx and Ceramic. The former version is the lightest and slimmest phone offered by the company yet, and comprises of glass rear panel. The onyx version weighs 138 grams. The limited edition ceramic version on the other hand is 160 gms in weight and as per the company, takes 25 days to manufacture.

As for the screen, the OnePlus X happens to be the company's first 5-inch mobile phone, and with a Full HD AMOLED display panel, users can look forward to some real eye candies on the device. The screen with 1080 x 1920p resolution within a budget segment should raise the bar for the competitors.

Moving onto the hardware inside, OnePlus X carries a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, with a Quad-core 2.3 GHz processor. 3 GB of RAM should prove more than enough for the tasks and users should not see any lags with their intended usage. Adreno 330 handling the graphics department sounds
about right for the budget device.

The OnePlus X carries an inbuilt storage of 16 GB, while the users can increase it further, upto 128 GB via a microSD card. That the users will have to sacrifice one of the SIM card slot to avail the memory expansion option doesn't give good vibes. This really should have been avoided.

The phone will be running the latest version of OxygenOS user interface, which in turn is based on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. It would have been better if Marshmallow was the underlying OS, but a quick OS update should fix that shortcoming. The phone also carries over the alert slider button from OnePlus 2. It remains to be seen how much traction the reappearance will gather this time round.

In the connectivity department, OnePlus has made sure to keep the phone well fed. The phone supports the Indian bands for 4G LTE connectivity. Apart from that, the usual features like Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth (version 4.0) are included as well. AGPS and GLONASS show up for navigational assistance, where as the inclusion of FM radio is a nice and thoughtful touch. Indian users still prefer FM radio especially for their budget phones and this should further bolster the phone's chances to get picked up.

OnePlus X seems to be well beefed up in the camera and battery department as well, since the rear camera is a 13 MP affair, coming along with its LED flash module. The auto focus lock is claimed to be attained in 0.2 seconds. The front side of the phone has an 8 MP camera for selfie enthusiasts.

As for the battery, a non-removable 2525 mAh unit powers the device, and should prove ample for at least a day's worth of charge.

On paper, OnePlus X looks well poised to take the crown in the budget segment. Both the variants of the phone will be available exclusively on Amazon India site, but will require an invite for the purchase, which might prove frustrating. To make matters worse, the ceramic edition are only 10,000 in numbers available for world wide sale, so expect them to vanish before batting an eyelid.

The Onyx model is priced at Rs 16,999 and will be made available for sale on November 5, whereas the ceramic version will go on sale on November 25 and will cost Rs 22,999.

As for customisation, OnePlus will be making available cases for the phone in Rosewood, Bamboo, Black Apricot, Sandstone and Karbon options.

While the first batch of the phone will be coming in from China, second batch and onwards will see the phone being manufactured in Hyderabad, India.