The Sunday Mail
Joining the bandwagon of 5.5-inch phablets on the market, GTel recently launched its XL7. This is a nicely built device, with metal accounting for 89 percent of the components and a nifty rose gold unibody. The styling is sparse, with just the company’s name emblazoned on the rear.The shiny edges are chamfered and the phone fits nicely in the hand, never feeling heavy despite the amount of metal it contains.
The 5,5-inch, 720p Super AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass 3 protection takes up almost the entire front of the phone, with a small section at the top featuring the front camera, earpiece and a sensor and another at the bottom with three capacitive buttons.
The only other controls are two tactile buttons on the right side to control volume and switch the phone on and off. The left side contains the tray that accepts two SIM cards and a micro SD card to expand the phone’s internal storage of 32GB to up to 128GB.
Getting the XL 7 up and running was no problem, especially if you have used other GTel smartphones.
The XL 7 ships with the ubiquitous data cable, charger and white in-ear headphones. A nice touch is the inclusion of a screen guard and a silicone case.
The XL 7 is based on the Android 5.1 Lollipop system with GTel’s Amigo 3.1 skin overlaid on it.
The XL 7 supports VoLTE, though no service provider in Zimbabwe has rolled this out as yet, it’s always good to be future proof. My service provider’s signal at my house, somewhere in Harare is a bit of a hit and miss, but the XL 7 locked on to the signal and internet browsing on 4G and making calls was a breeze.
Using the XL 7 was a delight , calls went through without any problems, the phone never heated up while playing games with intensive graphics, music playback was great and watching series and movies on DStv mobile was a treat because the punchy colours on the AMOLED screen and the terrific sound.
The 1,3GHz, octa-core Mediatek MT6753 chip and 3GB of RAM kept things buzzing along at a nice clip and I never experienced any lag even when multi-tasking.
Another useful feature was a button for making a “fake call”.
Press it, and the user gets a “call” after 15 seconds, the perfect way to make an escape from a boring bunch at a braai.
GTel care app
For your convenience GTel introduced the GTel Care App, designed to be used for many services such as locating GTel shops, tracking your phone’s progress in the workshop amongst a vast number of services available at your disposal.
You can download the GTel Care App from the Google Play store.
Warranty and backup service
GTel products are available on cash or credit terms and are covered by a 15-month warranty.
Furthermore full service and backup is available at any GTel outlet nationwide.
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