QiKU Q Terra review – Snapdragon 808 powered

QiKU is a new brand that recently launched their first handset called the Q Terra in the Indian markets. Qi here stands for Chee and hence pronounced as Cheeku. The QiKU Q Terra is a hex core powered smartphone sporting a 6 inch screen and priced at ₹21,999.

Box Pack
The box packing is impressing that looks like a book, in fact the pickup guy who came to pickup the review unit indeed mistook it for a book. Inside the book shaped box you will find the Q Terra handset, travel charger (5V ~ 2A), micro USB cable (unique design with LED light – check video review), screen guards, plastic protective case, micro SIM adapter and SIM tray ejector pin.

Design
The handset is big and using a metal Magnesium + Aluminium uni-body. Build quality is really good and inspite of the big size the handset will fit perfectly in your palm, though it is not that easy to operate with single hand. Dimensions are 79.8 x over 154 x 8.50 (mm).

This handset also comes with the thinness t bezel. The review unit I got was silver coloured with shiny silver border on the top edge. Power button and volume rocker is placed on the right side. Audio jack is on the top, dual SIM tray on the left side and primary mic, micro USB port and speaker out vent is at the bottom. There are dual Microphones.

This is a dual SIM handset – SIM slot one is a micro SIM slot and SIM 2 is a hybrid slot you can either use a nano SIM or a micro SD card in that slot.

There is LED notification and good number of sensors – accelerometer, proximity, light, gyro, magnetic and hall.

Display
The QiKU Q Terra sports a 6 inch screen with 2.5D glass and is corning gorilla glass 3 protected. It supports 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution. Colour reproduction, viewing angles and touch response are very good, and impressive because of the size.

Handset comes with a thin Bezel you need to be extra careful while holding it so as you are not accidentally touching the screen on the edges.

Memory, Storage and OS
The Q Terra is packed with 3GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage space. On the first boot you will get around 1.8GB free RAM and about 11GB free storage. You can use a micro SD card and apps are getting installed on the external SD card. OTG is supported.

360 OS based on Android 5.1 runs out of the box. This OS comes with interesting features like freezer – that can be used to free unused apps, heat source tracer – that can trace apps that are heating up the system and permission to control app behavior.

Performance
This smartphone is using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 (MSM8992) hex core processor (64 Bit) clocked at 1.8GHz (2x 1.8GHz dual core + 4x 1.4GHz quad core) coupled with Adreno 418 GPU. Performance is very smooth, lag free, the 360 OS works impressively well. Handset does heat up but battery temperature is well under 45 degrees. The max temperature I encountered was 42 degrees. This handset is using aerospace heat dissipation system also using Liquid cooling technology that helps control heat-up.

Benchmark

• Quadrant – 23533
• Antutu (32 bit) – 1^st time 46141, 2^nd time 49916
• Nenamark 2 – 60.6fps
• Internal storage Speed – Read (180 MB/s), Write (26 MB/s)
• Multi Touch – 10 Point.

Gaming
I installed the Asphalt 8, that got installed on the external storage space. The game was playable in high visual quality mode, very smooth no lags. Handset can play high end games, it’s a powerful hardware and since apps are getting installed on external storage – storage space will never be an issue.

Camera
Q Terra comes with dual cameras of 13MP resolution each (13MP Colour + 13MP Mono) on the rear with dual tone LED flash. The colour output and mono output combined together gives true to life picture quality.

The camera is using IMX278 SONY sensor with f/1.8 aperture. Camera quality is above average, and in some cases can shoot excellent images.

There are many modes including pro mode that allows manual control and a new mode called SLR that gives SLR kind of capabilities. SLR mode works great for close up / mid range objects / subjects.

Front camera is 8MP resolution. Rear camera can shoot 4K videos. The handset can no doubt play 4K videos.

Do check the sample images and videos at the end of this review.

Others
Sound is very loud and clear, no issues found with in-call sound or the network. Handset supports 4G and 2300 band worked. WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth worked well.

There is touch ID based finger print scanner on the rear just below the camera. Finger print detection is fast and accurate. You can place the finger on the scanner, and wait for few seconds to unlock without having to press any other button.

Battery
This handset houses a 3700 mAh battery with quick charge support. Battery backup is very good you can expect about 4 to 6 hours of continuous moderate to heavy usage on a single charge. I got an easy 27 hours of mixed usage.

Battery Performance

• Ran Benchmark app for 17 minutes battery % dropped by 5 and battery temp was 40 degrees.
• Played Asphalt 8 for 18 minutes battery dropped by 8% and temp was 42 degrees.
• Watched 4K video with full brightness (WiFi on) for 25 minutes battery dropped by 7% and temp was 38 degrees.
• Handset charging (wall charge) 1 hours 38 minutes from 25% to 100%. From 0% to 100% estimated under 2 hours.
• A 5 minutes charger will give you approx 2 hours of usage time.

Verdict
The QiKU Q Terra is 64 bit hexa core powered smartphone running 64 bit 360 OS based on Android Lollipop. Performance is impressive, camera quality is above average and battery backup is also pretty good. Overall an impressive blend of hardware, software and design.

QiKU Q Terra is a very good buy for ₹21,999 (₹19,999 – Invite based).

Image Gallery

Rear Camera sample

Front Camera sample

Video Review