Xbot Senior Review

With the smartphone market now entering a virtual standstill, brands now are being forced to think outside the box in order to bring something new to their customers. One of the brands who is actually bringing something new to the table is the Dubai based consumer electronics company, XTouch. The brand has revealed four new handsets which are part of the ‘Robot’ lineup, and in this review, we are going to look at the flagship piece, the Xbot Senior.

At first glance, you will notice that the Xbot Senior is not like your ordinary smartphone, the build is robust, the design is robust and the specifications just make this whole thing click. Robust smartphones have not really found their place in the market thanks to exorbitant costs, but there has always been an intrigue in people about how these phones actually hold up in real life and whether or not they can stand up to their more sleeker siblings. So without further ado, lets jump right into the Xbot Senior.

As I mentioned before, the Xbot Senior is the flagship of the Robot Series of Rugged smartphones brought out by XTouch. It is also one of the very few phones that comes with IP69 certification which makes the Xbot Senior Dust, Drop, Water and Jet Spray proof. While not many phones in the market boast of an IP69 certification, it remains to be seen what the Xbot Senior packs under the hood to judge its true capabilities. Coming back tot he IP69, the phone has been tested under a high-temperature Jet Spray to the tunes of 80 degrees, and it came out just fine, which shows the thought and hard work that has gone into the product. Overall, the smartphone has been tested for use under high activity such as skiing, swimming and hiking as well, but this phone withstood them all with ease making this smartphone a must buy if you are into high octane activities and need a device that can withstand the wear and tear.

Coming to the interiors, the Xbot Senior runs on Android 8.1 powered by the Mediatek 6739V which is capable enough to handle the rigours of multitasking and also providing the premium performance that we all so crave. The benchmark scores, however, spoke a different language, grading the phone average to below average and not so great for graphics intensive apps. A Snapdragon would have changed this for the brand, but since the call for Mediatek was made, customers will now have to tolerate an underwhelming performance in a rather out of the world chassis. Coming to the storage, the Xbot Senior features 3 GB of onboard RAM and memory that can be expanded to 128GB. A pretty standard affair for upper mid-range phone, but when it comes to flagships, they need to go all out in such departments.

Coming to the camera, the Xbot Senior features a 13 MP sensor on the rear. The performance is not out of the world in this case but you can expect some decent looking photos under good lighting conditions. Same goes for the 8MP selfie snapper on the front. The face detection is awesome and even with the touch focus confirmation, the images were not sharp compared to other smartphones in the similar price range. Both cameras feature AI functionality which could assist in converting the photos into works of art despite the rather ordinary camera.

The Xbot Senior features a powerful 5000 mAh battery which, considering the chipset and features, should give you two days of usage on a single charge. The small drawback here is that XTouch has reworked the USB C-Type cable for the Xbot Senior, which means, you will have to carry the custom C-Type charging cable wherever you go.

Overall, it seems that  XTouch spent a lot of the R&D time making their Xbot Senior smartphone the most rugged smartphone on the planet. What they also should have done is to have given it a stronger heart and a better camera. The word flagship has a well-defined meaning in the market today, and underwhelming specifications only make the product that much more cliched. So, if you are in the market for a smartphone that can take a hit, give the Xbot Senior a chance. However, if you are looking for a flagship phone with no-nonsense performance, you should consider other devices in the market