The Lenovo Vibe Z
is one of the higher-end smartphones that the Chinese company has on
display at CES. And it is a respectable contender indeed – a
good-looking and powerful device sprinkled with some 150Mbps 4G LTE
goodness on top. But with a price tag of $550, how much of a following
will it manage to accumulate? Let's check it out in detail.
Design
The Lenovo Vibe Z is a phone that
feels... somehow different in the hand. Its back plate has been treated
to a fine texture that feels like fabric when touched even though it is
just "laser-etched polycarbonate", as Lenovo describes it. It attracts
no fingerprints and it should be more resistant to scratching than
ordinary plastic. All in all, the phone is rather large, yet
surprisingly slim. Also, the moment we grabbed it we noticed how light
it was for its size. Like it or not, the Lenovo Vibe Z has a sealed body
construction so its 3000mAh battery can't be accessed by the user.
Something we aren't too happy with is that the power button is on top
and slightly harder to reach than it should be. Unless you use your
other hand to press it, that is.
Display
So here are all the raw numbers: on
the front of the Lenovo Vibe Z we find a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display with a
resolution of 1080 by 1920 pixels. As one might expect, graphics
displayed on the panel look sharp and detailed thanks to this high pixel
count. And even though a figure of 400ppi isn't record-shattering, it
proves sufficient for a display of this size. At a glance, colors look
good too and the viewing angles are also more than acceptable. A layer
of Gorilla Glass 3 is protecting the display from scratches.
Interface
Lenovo is launching the Vibe Z
with Android 4.3 on board, although one might not recognize Android's OS
at first with all those UI modifications that the smartphone maker has
implemented. One of the first tweaks we noticed was that the app drawer
had been scrapped. Instead, all of the app icons are placed right there
on the user's home screen. Another interesting change is the added theme
center where one can personalize their Vibe Z from. You may apply
themes throughout the whole UI, or just choose which segment of the
interface to modify.
Processor and memory
As
we mentioned above, the Lenovo Vibe Z is a high-end device with
high-end hardware packed under its hood. A 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon
800 SoC is in use along with 2GB of RAM. Overall, the phone runs
smoothly, although it doesn't feel right to judge its performance
without testing it thoroughly. But at the same time, we doubt that it
will have troubles handling any task with ease.
There are 16GB of storage available on the Vibe Z – not bad,
although we wish we had the option for more. Sadly, there is no microSD
card slot available on the phone so there's no way of expanding its
storage.
Camera
Now here's something you don't see on a smartphone every day. The Lenovo Vibe Z has a 5-megapixel front-facing
camera with a wide field of view for selfies of higher quality.
Moreover, Lenovo has chosen to put a variety of filters and effects for
improving your shots with little effort. For more serious shooting
there's a 13MP auto-focus camera placed on the phone's back. It stands
out with a very wide aperture of f1.8, which would theoretically improve
low-light shots by letting more light hit the sensor. (Real-life
results may vary, of course.) A dual-LED flash is present to help out
when light is scarce.
Expectations
The Lenovo Vibe Z is shaping up
as a pretty decent phone. Seriously, it seems like an offering worthy
of attention even with its $550 price tag. As long as you're fine with
its lack of expandable storage, that is. Too bad that we won't be seeing
it in the United States anytime soon. The Lenovo Vibe Z is to arrive in
Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and
the Philippines in February, but an US launch is not in Lenovo's plans.
specifications:
- 2GB of RAM
- Qualcomm’s quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU clocked at 2.2GHz
- 13 Mega Pixel Camera
- 5 Mega Pixel Front Camera
- 16GB of storage
- 3000mAh battery
- 5.5-inch display
- 1920 x 1080 IPS touch panel
- Android 4.3.
- screen resolution with pixel density of 400 ppi
- 7.9mm thin titanium body
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