Our Huawei D Quad XL review: Quad core on a budget

[howard]

When I tried the Huawei P1 a few months back, I thought it was good enough that companies like Samsung better take notice. Now here’s their follow up; the Huawei D Quad XL. Certainly, they’re giving Samsung a run at worst sounding name. D Quad XL is up there with Galaxy S II HD LTE.

Seriously though, what’s special about the XL is that it has a quad-core processor. While still quite rare, quad-cores have now been around for almost a year. Looking at Wind’s lineup, they have the Note II for $299, the LG Optimus 4X is at $199 while the XL is $99. For 99 bucks, they’ve also got the HTC One S and Motorola RAZR V.

So the Wind and Huawei have found a good place in their lineup for the XL. It’s cheaper than the more brand name-y Note II and the 4X while you get more hardware for your money than the One S and RAZR V.

So what do you get for $99? A quad-core processor from Huawei. That’s right, it’s not a Tegra 3, Exynos or a Snapdragon. The chip appears to have Cortex A9 cores (like the Tegra 3 and Exynos) but unlike them, the GPU is from Hisilicon. We’ll check out the GPU performance later in the review.

You also get a 4.5” 1280x720 display, a huge 2600mAh battery, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of built-in storage which is kind of skimpy, a microSD slot which makes my comment about the storage moot, penta-band HSPA and a 8MP camera. While playing with the XL, I noticed that 4 features are missing; LTE, NFC, a more up-to-date version of Android and support for dual-band WiFi.

LTE isn’t a big deal, Wind doesn’t support LTE and none of their phones do. Anyways, if you unlock the XL the penta-band HSPA gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of switching carriers.

NFC is a minor let-down. NFC does have some practical use right now. You can use NFC stickers to setup your phone to launch car mode when you drive. Some bluetooth headphones can auto pair with your phone if you have NFC. NFC can also be used for mobile payments though that’s still in its infancy here in Canada. NFC is a nice thing to have but it hasn’t reached critical mass yet. It’s one of those feature that most people who have it don’t use it (yet).

The dual-band WiFi is another nice thing to have. Depending on how congested the WiFi is at your place and if you have a dual-band router it may be a must have.

The XL ships with Android 4.0. While there are still a lot of 4.0 phones on the market, 4.2 just came out and more and more phones are coming with 4.1. Hopefully, Huawei will fix this.

One thing about top tier manufacturers like Apple, HTC and Nokia and to a lesser extent, Samsung have, is a distinctive and original design language. It’s like this with other industries as well, like Cars, clothes and even appliances. A really good design can tell you what company made it without you having to look at the logo.

While I wouldn’t say that XL is a blatant copy of anything, it’s a really generic looking phone. It manages to not look like anything, yet it’s not original looking either. However, the back is not bad. While its laid out in the generic ‘Galaxy S II’ layout, it has a fine texture to it plus it’s covered with rubberized paint. I guess one area where Huawei is trying to distinguish the XL is the red trim around the camera and on the earpiece. It’s sister, the P1 is a more elegant looking phone.


Behind the back cover is the full-sized SIM card slot and microSD. I don’t like how the XL has a removable back cover but no removable battery. Unless you’re Samsung, removable back covers are usually the enemy if you want a really solid feeling phone. Indeed, the cover on the XL makes it feel less solid and cheap. it’s an idiotic idea.

The XL has a 4.5” display. These days, quad-core phones like the HTC One X and Nexus 4 ships with 4.7” displays. It doesn’t sound like much of a difference but the difference between a 4.7” and 4.5” is bigger than you’d think.

Out of the box, the XL ships with everything turned down, the screen is extremely dim and the processors are clocked so far down that the XL felt like a single-core phone. It made a terrible first impression. There are actually 2 different screen brightness settings. First, you get the usual auto-brightness and brightness slider but you also get a Smart backlight feature. Turns out the screen looks really nice if you turn the brightness up and turn off Smart backlight.

It has excellent viewing angles and it pretty bright. Colour is nice. Next to the iPhone, it’s actually very similar in terms of brightness and viewing angle. Compared to the Nexus 4, I’d say the XL’s is brighter and has better viewing angles. It’s a very good display! Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a lot of sunlight lately so I can’t comment on how the XL’s display is in direct sunlight.

The only bad thing I have to say about the XL’s display is that the screen doesn’t have the greatest blacks. They’re actually slightly purple - it reminds me of the Blackberry Playbook’s display in this regard.

It’s funny because when I first got the XL, I thought the display sucked. Turns out, it’s a combination of the overly-conservative display settings and the fact that the XL ships with the stock Android launcher which frankly speaking, is ugly and unflattering.

I don’t normally comment on this much, but the XL’s touchscreen occasionally skips when it’s recognizing that I’m touching it. Since it’s an intermittent problem, it took me a long time to figure out what was going on. It was only when I was trying to enter my pattern unlock and this problem crept up that I finally figured it out. When I was entering my pattern, the line would break after the first 2 dots. I occasionally noticed this problem when I’m swiping.

Since it’s intermittent, it’s not a huge problem but it is something I noticed.


volume buttons


power button, headphone jack


microUSB


camera, dual LED flash, speaker

Camera:

The XL camera software has HDR mode, burst, smile shutter, panorama (only in one direction) and night mode. There are colour filters like Sepia, Antique, etc. You also get wacky morphing effects so you can make your subject’s nose big, shrink their head - that sort of thing.

There’s also White balance, ISO, Timer, Face detection, Red eye reduction, Exposure, Saturation, Contrast, Brightness settings. Feature-wise, the XL’s camera does not leave me wanting.

The problem is that I’d trade all these features if it would make the XL’s camera more-responsive. It’s not that it’s a slow camera. Its focus speeds are fine but I wish its shot-to-shot speeds were faster.

I also wish the XL’s camera had both shutter and record buttons on the same screen like on HTC’s and Samsung’s. While there is a burst mode, you have to turn it on, then, when it’s on it, it’s on. Pressing the shutter will take about 8 pictures in around 2 seconds. If you want to switch back to taking one picture at a time you have to change it manually. I’d prefer if you could just take bursts by press and holding the camera shutter button.

Image quality is a mixed bag. While I’d say it’s adequate, it’s definitely not class-leading. Pictures lack contrast, they’re all a little washed out looking. Then again, adding a little bit of saturation mostly fixes this. At higher ISO’s, there is very strong noise reduction which pretty much removes all fine detail.

Video quality is average. It’s a little soft. The microphone does a decent job. It sounds fine and doesn’t pick up too much handling noise.

Software:



Out of the box, the XL ships with stock Android. There actually is a Huawei 3D launcher but it’s turned off by default and for good reason. It looks cheap and isn’t very smooth at all.

There are a few extra programs: All Backup, AppInstaller, DLNA, File Manger, Flashlight, FM Radio and Music+

DLNA is always a useful extra as is a File manager.

The XL actually has decent video codec support. It’s able to playback 480p DivX avi’s and 720p mkv’s. That coupled with the built-in DLNA makes the XL a useful media players. Many phones have lousy codec support so even though they have DLNA it’s not useful for anything besides sharing your files to a TV. Since the XL has good codec support it’s actually able to play back a lot of the media stored on my DLNA server.

The inclusion of an FM radio is a nice extra. It’s a feature that’s beginning to disappear from phones.

As I mentioned before, there are different performance modes; Battery saver, Balanced and Performance. Battery saver increases battery life by reducing the frequency the XL uses background data (for email).

Performance:

So I mentioned the D Quad XL has a Huawei designed quad-core processor. I’m guessing it has 4 Arm Cortex A-9 cores. It also has a Hisilicon GPU. You’re probably wondering why Huawei decided to use their own chip and not a Tegra 3 or Snapdragon? Well, looking back at 2012, you’ll notice that most high-end Android phones came with Qualcomm’s S4 dual-core processor. First was the HTC One X followed by the wildly popular Galaxy S III. After that, it took around 6 months before Sony and Motorola released their S4 powered offerings.

I suspect that there was a chip shortage (Samsung buying up all the chips) so using their own chip will help ensure supply. Since the Huawei chip probably has Cortex A9 cores, I expect it to be competitive with other Cortex A9 based chips like Nvidia’s Tegra 3. Note that the current Qualcomm offerings are based on their own Krait core which are more advanced than the Cortex A9.

Peacekeeper is a cross-platform HTML 5 browser test.

Peacekeeper benchmark (higher is better):
Apple iPhone 5: 807
Samsung Galaxy Note II: 749
HTC One X+: 662
LG Optimus G: 505
Sony Xperia T: 502
Motorola RAZR HD LTE (chrome): 500
Samsung Galaxy S III: 476
Huawei D Quad XL: 433
Nexus 4: 407
HTC One X (Tegra 3): 264

Peacekeeper doesn’t make much use of more than 2 cores so it’s not surprising that the XL doesn’t score any higher than many dual-core phones.

Vellamo:

Vellamo is a suite of browser benchmarks. It’s only available on Android so we’re only able to compare the 4 with other Android phones here. Like other browser tests, Vellamo rarely uses more than 2 cores, so don’t expect much of an improvement over dual core phones.

HTML 5 (higher is better):
HTC One X+: 1852
Samsung Galaxy Note II: 1841
Sony Xperia T: 1786
LG Optimus G: 1713
Motorola RAZR HD LTE: 1632
Samsung Galaxy S III: 1630
HTC One X (Tegra 3): 1608
Huawei D Quad XL: 1447
Galaxy Nexus: 1324
Nexus 4: 1158

Again, while it’s not class-leading, the XL’s scores keep it in the game.

Metal (higher is better):
LG Optimus G: 643
Nexus 4: 636
Samsung Galaxy Note II: 628
Samsung Galaxy S III: 580
Sony Xperia T: 567
Motorola RAZR HD LTE: 553
HTC One X+: 526
HTC One X (Tegra 3): 492
Huawei D Quad XL: 398
Galaxy Nexus: 393

GL Benchmark 2.5 (on-screen, higher is better):
Google Nexus 4: 4380
LG Optimus G: 4221
Motorola RAZR HD LTE: 2504
Sony Xperia T: 2431
Huawei D Quad XL: 2347
Samsung Galaxy S III: 2335
HTC One X+: 2042
Samsung Galaxy Note II: 1960
HTC One X (Tegra 3): 1650

While the XL isn’t as fast as the Adreno 305 in the Nexus 4/Optimus G it’s competitive with the Adreno 225 in the Galaxy S III/Xperia T/RAZR HD LTE. It’s actually a bit faster than the Tegra 3 in the One X/X+. Not bad for a chip I’ve never heard of before.

Battery life:



GL Benchmark 2.5 battery life:
Google Nexus 4: 114
LG Optimus G: 117
Motorola RAZR HD LTE: 208
Huawei D Quad XL: 116
Samsung Galaxy S III: 165
HTC One X+: 124
Samsung Galaxy Note II: 277
HTC One X (Tegra 3): 115
Apple iPhone 5: 129

The XL does poorly in GL Benchmark’s battery benchmark which is a bit of a surprise because it has a huge 2600mAh battery.

However, that’s not the whole story. In everyday usage, I actually found that the XL has pretty good battery life. Even with heavy usage, it should be able to make it through the day on a single charge. Here’s an example: when I take the train into town, I usually watch some HD videos in a pop-up window while using a pair of Bluetooth headphones, use Foursquare, check emails, surf the web, text, etc. I normally blow through about 40% of my GS3’s battery (the T999v - the Wind/Mobilicity variant). With the XL, I only used about 25% of the battery.

I suspect that the XL’s GPU uses a bit more power. Since my typical usage doesn’t tax it too much I got decent battery life.

As a Phone:

Incoming sound quality is good. It’s natural and clean with only minimal background hiss.

My basement is a bit of a black hole on Rogers (Wind is awesome in my house so no point testing with it). I’m actually very surprised at how good the XL’s RF performance is. It’s able to hang onto HSPA just fine in my basement. I’m not getting huge speeds or anything but it’s not dropping to EDGE or GPRS like my iPhone 5 does.

Speaker volume was a disappointed. My iPhone 5 is much louder.

Conclusion:



One of the reasons why people choose a quad core is because they believe the extra cores will make their phone more future-proof. After all, no want wants a phone that isn’t able to run the latest software in a few years time.

The problem with this thinking is that most software doesn’t use more than 2 cores. If you look at the PC market, even though quad-core computers have been around for years, even now most programs don’t use more than 2 cores.

To me, right now, what really makes an Android device future-proof is 2GB of RAM. If you’ve used a NExus 4/Optimus G/GS3/Note II, 2GB of RAM completely transforms the device. 1GB of RAM is adequate but if you’re switching between a lot of programs, you’ll find it takes longer to switch between them.

1GB sounds like a lot but when you consider than most Android phones with 1GB of RAM only have less than 400GB of free memory the 2GB is more important that you’d think.

If you’re a heavy multi-tasked and have ever used an Android phone with 2GB of RAM, you’ll notice it immediately. When you switch between many tasks on a Galaxy S III, you’ll notice that you rarely have to wait for it to re-open any programs. With the XL, I can only get about 4 or 5 programs open before it has to pause before it can switch tasks because it has to launch them again. It happens more than you’d think.

I also think extra RAM will be the hedge against obsolescence. So in that sense, the D Quad XL is no better off than any other phone from the past year that has 1GB of RAM. Of course, this is assuming Huawei supports their phones for a while. Since they only released their first serious phone a few months ago so this is a big unknown.

One trend in Android I’ve noticed is the ability to multitask by being able to view more than one program at a time. I’m not talking about listening to music while surfing the web. The Note II allows you to watch videos and surf the web while you do pretty much anything else on your phone. The GS3 and LG Optimus G also allow you to watch video while using the rest of your phone. Sony’s Xperia T let’s you surf the web, using the calculator and a bunch of other stuff at the same time.

Usage like this is tailor made for multiple cores so I’m disappointed, that out of the box, Huawei doesn’t supply any software that takes advantage of this.

I guess I sound pretty down on the XL but really, you have to take into account the price.

A year ago, the thought of a budget quad-core phone would seem absurd. After all, quad-core phones represented the next big leap in phone computing power. So, good for Huawei to come up with a budget quad-core phone.



Don’t forget, while quad-cores are not as important as you’d think, they’re still a nice thing to have, especially if you’re not really paying anything extra for them.



vs HTC One S:

Since the XL is only 99 bucks on Wind’s Tab, I figured I’d compare it with the HTC One S.

On paper, the XL has a great advantage. More cores, bigger screen, bigger battery and memory card slot. Indeed, the lack of a memory card slot is a huge turnoff from the One S. You’ve heard of a killer feature? The One S’s lack of a memory card slot is the opposite of that. It’s like buying a fancy new car and finding out it has roll up windows. So based on that one difference I’d say skip the One S and get the XL.

vs Nexus 4:

Now the XL costs $499 if you buy it straight up. The 16GB Nexus 4 costs $140 less and comes with a more powerful quad-core processor, more RAM plus it should always receive the latest version of Android for at least the next year. It also has hidden LTE support though that’s not very useful on Wind.

Compared to the 4 the XL has, better battery life and a microSD slot. If you’re choosing between the 2 phones, are willing to dish out $359 or $499 on a phone and can live with around 13GB of storage space get the Nexus 4. Yeah, the 4 has the same problem as the One S but the 4 also has much more interesting hardware.

However, If you’re willing to go on a Tab then there’s only one choice. Get the XL.

In the end, you get a powerful phone with a lot of features for a reasonable price. The Huawei D Quad XL represents a good deal.



Pros:

• strong RF
• sound quality
• screen
• good video codec support
• inexpensive for what you get

Cons:

• ugly
• few ‘extras’ over a stock Android phone
• back cover makes it feel cheap
• no NFC
• quiet speaker phone
• Android 4.0 (4.1 and 4.2 are now available on some phones)

[InternPete]

Fantastic review, very in depth. Phone looks interesting, but the name is a mouthful.

[TC_Mits]

SD forever!

This is not a mature top tier handset quite yet. But it's not rinky-dink either. Huawei looks to be gradually evolving into a major player. It will be fun to watch.

[droidhacker]

Fairly reasonable perspective.
To add a few things, the Qualcomm Krait is the technical equivalent of Cortex A15. Its mainly licensing and marketing that led Qualcomm to pushing their own. Now regarding the relation between Krait/A15 to Scorpion/A9, you can generally expect about a factor of TWO performance difference between the same number of cores running at the same frequency (i.e., in properly multi-threaded functions). In other words, a dual-core Krait will generally perform EQUALLY to a quad-core A9. Implementation differences do make for some variations, however.

In addition to just the raw performance differences, the silicon is smaller on the Krait/A15 chips... 28 nm instead of 45. There is a SUBSTANTIAL power savings that can be attributed to the smaller silicon. Add to that the savings of doing the same amount of work on HALF the number of cores, and a dual core Krait/A15 will use less than 1/3 the power of a quad core Scorpion/A9.

The way I've described CPU work/performance to people is like this;
You can have a V8 made out of 8 weed whackers spinning 10krpm that burns fuel like a dragster (quad A9),
or a Toyota 1KD-FTV diesel 4-cyl putting down 170 hp at 3400 rpm and getting 45 mpg (dual A15).

Now much more directly then, to compare the Krait/A15 dual core to Scorpion/A9 quad core, ESPECIALLY when it comes to comparing non-parallel function performance, that A15 is going open a Crate (pun intended) of cans of whoopass on that poor little A9.

Now about GPU performance. Unfortunately, there is a lot more to GPU performance numbers than simply counting how many frames render in a given time period. The GPU drivers can actually be adapted so that they do more or less work per rendered frame. Think of it like a "quality" setting. A crappy GPU at a low quality rendering can pump out more images per second than a good GPU at a high quality rendering, but it doesn't make a valid comparison. I'm willing to bet that the china-chip in the huawei is leaving out a lot of things that the high end chips are doing. That is probably responsible for the unexpectedly high GPU performance.


Conclusion: When given the choice between a quad-A9 and a dual-A15.... the dual-A15 is the better chip by FAR. Much more "future proof". It has all the performance of the quad with a fraction of the power consumption. The unknown chinese processor also concerns me. Having experience with other chinese processors, they're not all that stable.


Also a complaint; your price comparison is wrong. Those are the contract prices, which really don't relate the phones at all, since they have only to do with suckering the customer into the contract.


Edit: Got to love that "dolby" logo on the back cover. hahahaha, wtf?

[jhonpeter03]

The images you put up is looking quite good. But I am more interested with features like XL camera software has HDR mode, White balance, ISO, Timer, Face detection, Red eye reduction, Exposure, Saturation, Contrast, Brightness settings.