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Flipkart debuts with Digiflip Pro XT 712 : Benchmark and hands on review

Posted In Reviews - By Nikhil Bhatia on Tuesday, July 1st, 2014 With 1 Comment

While it took several years for Amazon to venture into consumer electronics and marry its eCommerce engine with digital consumption, Indian flagship eCommerce giant Flipkart appears to be on a fast track mode. Last week, Flipkart made a bold entry with launch of full HD tablet Pro XT 712, from its private brand Digiflip.

Digiflip Pro XT 712 is powered under the hood by 1.3 Ghz quad core CPU and comes with 7″ IPS HD display.  The tablet is priced aggressively at INR 9,999 coupled with discounts and coupons up to INR 9,000 and includes the try and buy policy for 1 month.

XT 712 Pro

The hardware specs and the offer was too tempting too resist. Ordered for next day delivery option and Flipkart diligently delivered the tablet under 24 hours and here are the first benchmark scores.

Benchmark Index

  • Quadrant Standard – 5574
  • AnTuTu – 15348
  • Vellamo – Metal 668
  • Nenamark 2 – 42.4 fps
  • Multi touch – 5

As expected from a 1.3 GHz quad core CPU, the scores are pretty impressive for a tablet under INR 10k. High resolution pics are available here Pro XT 712 with higher resolution.  Read below for complete review.

 XT 712 box pack

The box pack contains standard accessories charger, headset and the user manual. Interestingly it also comes with an OTG XT 712 Un Boxingcable and headphones extension cable. With OTG cable one can plug in standard pen drive,  open file manager and choose the option External USB Drive. However there is no option to move the app to micro SD or external USB drive. Tablet also comes with screen guard enabled, that again saves you INR 3,00 and the headache for finding the right screen size protector for it.

Design

The tablet is sleek and looks are simple, elegant and neat. The edges are curvy and the back panel is matt finish and not removable however there is a thin strip of plastic on the top that you can take off. Below the strip is a microSD card slot that supports up to 32GB and two SIM card slots that supports 3G with voice calling facility. Build quality looks solid, however you may not like the big Digiflip Pro logo at the back. This is something which you can remove easily with a remover so that should not be an issue.

Display, CPU and GPU

The 7 inch IPS display supports a resolution of 1280 x 720 and comes with automatic brightness sensor. The screen is glossy and viewingXT 712 Back Panel angles looks fine when brightness is set to max. The CPU is MediaTek MT8382 1.3 quad core GHz ARMv7 Processor rev 3 (v71) coupled with Mali-400 MP GPU for graphic acceleration. Battery temperature during benchmarking was always less than 37 C and remained 29 C on waking up from sleep.

I installed a bunch of apps and changed the home screen with Go Launcher Ex, and out of 16GB only 2GB is left on the device. With antivirus and other services running in the background touch screen was still smooth and no drop in performance was seen while gaming. The wallpaper below was shot from XT 712 only under broad day light conditions and quality came out to be decent.

Memory, Storage and OS

Besides 16GB of internal storage, you have the option of Micro SD card which supports up to 32GB. This is the best thing since spending INR 5k more on just buying a higher version of the tablet that gives you 32 GB on internal storage is sheer wastage.

Wallpaper from shot imageSo total one can have 48 GB of storage and no worries about tablet crashing and data getting lost. As soon as you plug in the card it pops the option to change default storage to micro SD card. All the apps are stored in internal storage and there is no option to move apps to external storage until you plan to root the phone.

On connecting to the computer, it shows the following options USB storage, MTP, PTP and charge only. On many new devices these days you find that USB storage option has been removed. This is again a good step from Flipkart so one can use the internal 16GB just like a flash drive. I personally don’t prefer the MTP mode for data transfer since it is slow and does not shows thumbnails of pictures since windows do not recognizes MTP as flash drives and creates thumbnails database for it.

The phone runs stock Android 4.2.2 and does not come with apps that often eat up your space and cpu, and eventually, reduce the performance of the device. But it does comes pre-installed with a few Flipkart apps.

Performance

XT 712 Benchmark scoreThe scores are pretty impressive as expected from 1.3 quad core and Mali 400 GPU. These two are well known hardware powering all the low price devices these days. Since android supports both the manufactures getting the latest Android update shouldn’t be a problem in future since it is mostly stock android.

Antutu gave a score of 15348 which is good at this price tag and below is the comparison with Nexus 2013 whose base model sells for INR 18,450 on Flipkart.

Even after installing around 14GB of apps and Go Ex launcher and the device being fully loaded with antivirus running in the background, the touch response is smooth and lag free and I didn’t experience any issues with gaming.

5MP Auto Focus Camera

The handset can record and play full HD videos . The AF camera is another good spec under INR 10k price range and it supports full HD recording with AF. I tried shooting some pics in day light and results came out to be decent. The front camera is 2MP fixed focus which is good enough for taking selfies only in full light conditions. In low light camera doesn’t perform well. The response time is slow so you have to hold the tablet stable in your hand else you get shaky pics. Flash intensity is 1/3rd of what is present in Samsung galaxy note 2. I tested few low light pics and results were average. Check for HD recording auto focus feature in the above video.

Gaming

I am a casual gamer and mostly like to play racing games but not interested in spending INR 20k for a tablet. The XT 712 did not disappoint and is good enough for an average gamer and the battery temperature never crossed 37 Celsius. I did not expect smooth gaming performance of 60fps and above at this price range but all games were playable with decent fps. There were no hangs or crashes and neither it took long to launch games. Loading the game into RAM and running it doesn’t takes time as evident from benchmarking scores in comparison to Nexus 2013. If you are a hard core gamer and want to run all games at much better fps Nexus 2013 is a good option since its GPU is 60% more powerful. Below are the games I tested.

  • Asphalt 8
  • Dark Racer 3d
  • Racing Air
  • Speed Racing Ultimate
  • Real Speed
  • Need for Drift
  • Road Smash
  • CSR Racing
  • Real Racing 3
  • GT Racing 2
  • Beach Buggy Blitz
  • Fast Racing
  • Gravity
  • Raging Thunder 2

Battery

The battery was 99% charged out of the box and on running continuous benchmarking, gaming, movies and downloading apps, it lasted for around 7 hours. For an average user it should last around 1.5 day easily, but this is something that totally depends on your usage.

Sensors

The tablet supports the following sensors – Direction, G, Acceleration, Light, E-compass, Proximity, Gyro, Linear Acceleration, Rotation vector.

Conclusion

In pure economic sense, the tablet is a beautiful piece of hardware in addition to being neatly built. It is neither heavy in hands, nor on the pocket and is comfortable to carry along. Great buy if you are looking for a budget tablet that has everything. The specs are powerful enough to run for at least 2 more years and it comes from an established eCommerce player Flipkart, add 1 year of insurance and it is quite a deal. My experience with WS Retail has always been good. Flipkart digital is all set for brighter days with the launch of Pro XT 712 and it will become a huge success if Flipkart provides good after sales services and upgrades to Android 4.4.

About - Nikhil is a networking engineer by profession and an enthusiastic gadget nerd who gets his hands on latest piece of hardware.