Lenovo K900 Hands on review

For some reasons I could not carry my usual photo gears and the poor lighting at the demo room did not help either for the images. We soon hope to get the review devices and I assure you great pictures then when I do the proper review. This post is only the first impression account of the device. Lenovo K900 with its industrial design and slim stainless steel and polycarbonate unibody was quiet an attraction on the first look. At 6.9 mm it’s seriously thin and if you wonder how thin, take this  iPhone 5 is 7.6 mm, Galaxy S4 is 7.9 mm and Galaxy Note 2 with whom it shares the display size is 9.4 mm and now figure out! With a 5.5 inch full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS display strengthened with Gorilla Glass 2, K900 has a healthy 401 ppi. Running on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, the handset is powered by Intel Clover Trail+ Atom dual core 2 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM and mated to a Intel GMA graphics with up to 533 Mhz graphics clock. Lenovo K900 also boasts to be the first device to  integrate Intel’s first dual-core and their latest Clover Trail+ platform. Sounds a good breed on specs. A slim bezel adds charm to the design.

The rear is made from stainless steel, different choice of metal over more common aluminum usually seen in iPhone and the recent HTC One. No doubt the phone is big, it is tad taller than the Note 2 but has a slightly smaller width in comparison. Still, it is manageable on palms.

While stainless steel is the predominant material, the top and bottom uses moulded polycarbonate. The rear top nests a 13 megapixel camera with a Sony Exmor BSI sensor, similar to the shooter in Sony Xperia Z. The lens is flanked by a dual-LED flash. An important point to be noted is the lens aperture is F/1.8 which should be good produce good images at low lights. On the front is a 2 MP camera with wide angle lens. Few random shots we clicked at low light at the event looked promising, though I will reserve my final comment once we get our review device.

 Though it’s a unibody and the battery pack is not removable, four exposed screws adorn the four corners for a more industrial look. On the bottom sits pretty a wide speaker grille.

 A super-slim profile is fantastic along with the sturdy metal body.

 There are three capacitive soft keys on the device on the bottom.

Lenovo has introduced its own bits of custom UI, but the interface needs a serious re-look. When compared to some of the leading phone maker’s UI for their devices, Lenovo’s look outdated and a bit clunky. It’s still early days for the company in Smartphone segment, so they still have a long road ahead in terms of  software refinement. The lock screen has a clover design launcher with shortcuts to home screen, message, dialer and camera app.

 

This is how the notification bar panel looks.

A custom design for the settings page and something unique to talk about in terms of design, especially to be pointed out is the About phone section.

Along with the unique, slim industrial design other important talking point about the K900 is it’s camera. While the camera specs in itself was impressive, there are bucket loads of options to fiddle  from effects to camera settings. The random shots we took at the low lights enforced our good first impression. More about it when we receive the review device and we test it extensively.

[gallery link="file" ids="3968,3964,3960,3961,3962,3963,3965,3966,3967"] On a final note, Lenovo K900 looks impressive and is promising with a solid build quality and seemingly very good camera, the UI is bit clunky but the display and touch sensitivity are good.  As we mentioned in the beginning, it’s a hands on review and we will come shortly with a complete shootout of the device. In India Lenovo K900 is priced at Rs. 32,999 (578 US$) and Lenovo’s mobile gambit looks positive.]]>