The Zopo Speed 8 seems like a powerful phone, with the deca-core processor and 4GB of RAM.
Zopo smartphones will be completing a year of operating in India next month, and over this time, the company has launched nine smartphones in India. All of these smartphones are meant for the budget segment, except for the Zopo Speed 8 that the company launched yesterday. This new phone is equipped with a MediaTek Helio X20 SoC. For the uninitiated, this is a deca-core SoC, making Zopo the first company to launch a smartphone with ten processor cores in India. Zopo is marketing this as a flagship smartphone, and at Rs. 29,999, it is priced like one. Here's looking at what it stands for.
Let’s begin with the build quality of the phone. At first glance, the phone looks quite similar to the Zopo Speed 7 Plus launched last year. Like the Speed 7 Plus, the new smartphone also comprises plastic build. This may not have been the best decision, as every other phone at around the 30k pricing features a metal build. That said, the plastic build of the phone is not too bad, and features a metal finish, which does not feel really premium. The rounded back combined with the slightly chamfered edges provide good grip on the phone, but the lack of premium material is disappointing for a phone priced in the range of flagships.
The display, on the other hand, seems quite good. On initial inspection, the 5.5-inch display on the Zopo Speed 8 felt quite responsive and offered good viewing angles. The colour saturation and vibrance of the display looked decent, but we would need to test the display further to give more detailed opinion on it.
The best part of the phone, however, is the new deca-core MediaTek Helio X20 SoC. This is the first phone in the Indian market to offer this new SoC. The Helio X20 is based on the previous Helio X10 SoC, but instead of the dual cluster layout, the Helio X20 adds two more cores and features a tri-cluster layout. So, now it has 4xCortex-A53 cores @ 2.0GHz, 4xCortex-A53 cores @ 1.4GHz and 2xCortex-A72 cores @ 2.5GHz. The GPU used here is the Mali-T880 GPU, which is the same that Samsung used on the flagship Exynos 8890 SoC. However, the Mali-T880 GPU used here has four cores instead of the 12 used in Exynos. There is 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. Navigating through the UI, closing and opening apps felt quite seamless in the little while we spent with the device. The storage, though, is not expandable, and may not go down well with some.
Another thing that we liked about the phone is the UI. Zopo’s marketing manager, Charles Bird, told us during the press conference that the company did a survey asking users on what they would prefer between stock Android and a custom UI, and the survey came in the favour of stock Android. Hence, Zopo is providing stock android interface on the Zopo Speed 8. While the phone feels like stock Android on initial impressions, we will be checking on those claims even further once we get the device for review. What we would really like to know is whether Zopo will be providing regular Android updates on the new phone.
There is a 21MP rear camera on the phone that uses a Sony IMX230 image sensor. We took a few photos inside a well-lit hall, and the images seemed average at best. Zopo claims that the phone can shoot a photograph in 0.2 seconds, but that need to be checked thoroughly in more than one kind of light. The phone also offers an 8MP front-facing camera, which is aided by a single front-facing LED flash, so you can take selfies in night time as well. The 3600mAh battery on the phone is sealed in, and supports fast charging.
Overall, the Zopo Speed 8 seems like a powerful smartphone with the all-new Helio X20 SoC, but how it'll fare against the more popular Qualcomm Snapdragon 820-powered devices such as the Xiaomi Mi 5, OnePlus 3 or the LeEco Le Max 2 is yet to be seen.
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Hardik Singh
Light at the top, this odd looking creature lives under the heavy medication of video games. View Full Profile
