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Cubot X30 review: Good performance and amazing camera for a mid-ranger
Cubot X30 review: good all-round performance from a phone with an amazing camera
pros and cons
- Great range of front and rear cameras
- Large 4,200mAh battery
- Shutter lag
- Awkward fingerprint sensor positoning
The Cubot X30 is exactly the style of phone I like. Slim with a large 6.4-inch screen and a 90% screen to body ratio and 2310 x 1080p resolution its form factor. The design is lovely.
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At 157 x 76 x 8.5mm, it sits nicely in the hand and is not too heavy at 193g. Although delivered in a range of colors and positioned at a cost of under $200, it looks and feels more expensive than it is.
Inside the phone, there is a MediaTek Helio p60 octa-core processor and an ARM Mali-G72 MP3 graphics chip. Models come with either 6GB RAM and 128GB ROM or 8GB RAM and 256GB ROM.
It has a larger 4,200mAh battery, which supports fast charge and generally lasts me for more than a day. Like most of its kind, the X30 has a dual nano-SIM, which will also hold a TF card for extra storage or offline map and music access.
The camera array on the back of the phone is impressive. There are five lenses and an LED flash. The Samsung S5KGMI lens delivers 48MP images by default, and there is also a 16MP ultra-wide-angle lens and a 5MP macro lens too.
There is also photosensitive lens for low-light shots and a 2MP depth of field lens. Together these deliver the range of focuses you want.
Close up of the office cat, Barney, taken with the Cubot X30, showing the macro lens and depth of field lens quality.
The macro lens shows great detail (see the ultra-close up cat picture), and the rear camera images do not pixelate until zoomed right into the image.
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The one thing I don't like about the camera is the shutter lag. I deselected obvious settings such as HDR, but I still find the lag to be longer than I expect -- leading to a blurry image if I'm not steady when pressing the shutter.
Front-facing images are good with the 32MP front camera, although there are some tweaks you can make such a beauty and FaceCute mode. The front-facing camera also has a setting to guess the gender and age of the person in the viewer.
The X30 runs Android 10 and has added extras such as a fingerprint sensor and face detect, which is accurate with or without reading glasses, and, with the fill light, it works in low light settings, too.
The fingerprint unlock is good, although the position of the sensor on the side of the phone means that left-handed users will struggle to register anything other than their little finger for one-handed use.
This model also has NFC -- unlike the King Kong CS I reviewed in August -- so data transfer and Android pay are available for you.
All in all, for under $200, the Cubot X30 is a nice, mid-range phone that has an amazing array of camera lenses and range. There is little not to like, as long as you make sure you take your time when taking images and you will have superb results.