Lenovo
A6000 is the country's cheapest 4G LTE-capable device at this time. The
phone also packs in a lot of features, giving competition to the likes
of the Xiaomi Redmi 1S and Asus ZenFone 4. We used the phone for more
than a week to find out if it's a good buy...Build & design
Lenovo A6000 doesn't look very different from other Android smartphones available at this price. It essentially sports the same rectangular form factor combined with rounded corners and a plastic shell, which we've seen in phones such as the Redmi 1S.
If you want your phone to stand out from the rest of the crowd, you can swap the phone's black back panel and choose a red or white one. The back panels will be available separately. Other than that, the phone has a very utilitarian design.
The phone is pleasantly lightweight which makes it easy to lug around.
The front of the phone is dominated by a 5-inch HD screen.The three capacitive touch navigation buttons are placed right below the display and were pretty responsive. Unfortunately, the keys are not backlit.
A 2MP front-facing camera is placed right above the display next to the earpiece.
The right edge of the phone houses the volume rocker and power keys. Both of the keys offer good tactile feedback and were responsive. The left and bottom edges are barren while the top sports the 3.5mm headset jack as well as the micro-USB port.
The back cover wraps around the front panel and hides the 2300mAh battery (removable), two micro sim card slots and a microSD card slot. The back panel sports a matte finish and offers a good grip. The 8MP camera lens and LED flash are placed towards the upper portion of the back.
Kudos to Lenovo for not being stingy and including accessories such as earphones, charger and even a screen protector in the box.
Display
The phone features a 5-inch IPS HD (720x1920p) display which offers good viewing angles and vibrant colours. Sunlight legibility was also good but the only issue we faced was that the display is prone to smudging.
It doesn't feature Gorilla Glass protection so it's better to use a screen protector (included in the box). The touch was also reasonably responsive.
Software
The A6000 comes with a heavily customized version of Android 4.4 KitKat. Lenovo deploys its own UI skin to offer enhanced features and customization options.
Just like Xiaomi's MiUI and Huawei Honor 6, the phone's default UI is devoid of an app drawer and app icons and widgets are spread across the home screens. The unified home screen-app launcher style may come across as user-friendly to people who have not used an Android phone before. But it will take some time to get used to if you have already been using an Android smartphone. You can of course download and install an alternate launcher.
The phone also comes with two themes each of which comes with a different set of icons, wallpapers, font style, sounds, and lock screen styles. There's no way to download or install new themes but existing ones can be customized.
The software does not include any stock Android app and everything including the Gallery, Calculator, Calendar and Email apps are built by Lenovo's software team. The apps look beautiful and offer additional value added features.
Lenovo bundles a large number of apps with the A6000 including a Security app, its SyncIt, CloneIt and ShareIt apps, Guvera music streaming app, Route 66 navigation, WPS Office, UC Browser, Txtr eBooks app and a number of Gameloft games. Thankfully, the third party apps can be uninstalled to free up storage space.
Overall, we feel the software tries to maintain the balance between customization and functionality and has been optimized for the phone's hardware. However, stock Android fans may find it a little intimidating.
Camera
Lenovo A6000 sports an 8MP rear camera (with auto focus and LED flash) and a 2MP front facing camera.
The phone features Lenovo's own camera app that offers settings for all optical attributes, HDR (including auto-HDR), Panorama and Timer modes, among others.
Images captured by the camera in day light turned out well with decent level of detail, accurate colour reproduction and good contrast. Images shot in low-light were grainy but comparatively better than other phones available in the same segment.
The front camera is also good for clicking selfies and for video calls.
The phone is capable of shooting 720p video (in addition to 480p, WVGA, VGA, CIF, QVGA and QCIF) and the results were good for a phone that costs less than Rs 8,000. Overall, the A6000 comes with a capable camera which is only slightly inferior to that offered by the Xiaomi Redmi 1S.
Performance
Lenovo A6000 is powered by a 64-bit 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor and 1GB RAM, the phone comes with 8GB of storage space (about 5GB is available to the user) but you can also use microSD cards up to 32GB to expand storage. We were not able to use USB On-the-Go drives with the phone though.
The dual sim phone supports 4G LTE connectivity with support for both FDD 1800MHz (Band 3) and TDD 2300MHz (Band 40) in addition to other popular connectivity options including Bluetooth 4.0 and 3G.
While we were not able to test 4G capabilities of the device due to the absence of a 4G network in the city, we were satisfied with the responsiveness of the phone's user interface.
We did not experience any major lag while navigating through the home screen and menus although at times there was minor stutter while launching apps and switching between them. Scrolling was smooth and the phone was able to play full HD video files. We were able to play most popular video and audio file formats barring a few like .MKV.
In synthetic benchmarks, the phone scored in 20,334 in Antutu,11,504 in Quadrant and 53.9 in Nenamark 2 benchmark tests. The scores are slightly better (barring Nenmark 2) than the ones clocked by Xiaomi Redmi 1S. However, we do not recommend a phone based solely on benchmarks as real world performance is different at times.
Lenovo A6000 offers good call quality and signal reception and we did not encounter issues while making calls even in areas where cell signal is relatively weaker.
It's worth pointing out that the phone's second sim card slot does not support 3G or 4G data connectivity.
The phone was able to lock to GPS without any hiccups. It also offers FM radio.
The external Dolby twin speakers also have loud sound output that offers clarity even at higher levels. You can choose among four preset settings modes or customize the equalizer settings via the Dolby app. However, the speaker outlet is located at the back and unfortunately, the sound gets muffled when the phone lies at its back.
Lenovo A6000 packs a 2,300mAh battery (removable) and will last you a full working day (14-15 hours) if you put the screen brightness at the highest level and use 3G data all the time. You'll be able to make about 1-2 hours of phone calls, play some casual games and browse the web in this time period. It lasted more than 20 hours with light to medium usage.
Your mileage may vary with different usage patterns.
We feel that the phone performs pretty well keeping in consideration that it's a budget device.
Gaming
We were able to play games like Temple Run 2, and Looney Tunes Dash without encountering frame drops or freezes. We were also able to play Asphalt 8 (with visual settings set to 100%) encountering very minor lag. The phone did not get warm even when we played the game for longer durations.
Verdict
At Rs 6,999, the Lenovo A6000 offers an excellent features to price ratio. Although not as feature-rich as the Xiaomi Redmi 1S (which offers full-HD recording, better camera), the phone is the only device that features 4G connectivity in this price range. Also bear in mind that the Redmi 1S is no longer available.
Even if you don't have access to 4G networks (most parts of the country don't) or don't intend to use the high-speed data network, Lenovo A6000 is still a well rounded budget smartphone.
Just like the Redmi 1S, Lenovo A6000 is sold in limited numbers through weekly flash sales on Flipkart. So you'll need to register and play fastest fingers first on sale day if you want to get your hands on the phone. BUY ON FLIPKART:
2 comments:
The UI looks pretty good, but for the camera i think Zenfone or Redmi 1s has a better quality
Yes, the camera is better for zenfone and redmi 1s, but lenovo is pretty faster than both.
Post a Comment