Lenovo Vibe X3

Lenovo Vibe X3 

Display and Design

         Vibe X3 has a 5.5- inch display with resolution  of 1920 by 1080 pixels and have a pixel density of about 400 PPI which is similar to k4 note but the display quality screen is better when compared to K4 note. It is bright in display with 1500:1 contrast ratio and offers vibrant color output. It has 100% color gamut reproduction with 178-degree wide viewing angle. The sunlight legiblity is good and it dosen't attract fingerprints easily. It has Corning Glass 3 protection to prevent from scratches. It has screen-to-body ratio of 70.8% which is almost similar to K4 note.It has 8MP front camera with f/2.2 aperture, which is very good for taking selfies and video chats . Colors are vibrant and images are very sharp .

      It has a earpiece which is present under the speaker grill. Set of proximity and ambient light sensors are present above the display. It also has a tiny notification LED on right corner of the phone and it glows only in white color . The phone has a gyroscope and magnetometer.The capacitive touch buttons are present below the display which are not backlit but they offer haptic feedback when they are pressed. The second speaker is present below the touch buttons. It has stereo speakers, DAC chip, amplifier and Dolby Atmos. Audio quality is very brilliant. 

         The smartphone has a brushed metal finish on the sides and is 9.3mm thick. The volume and power buttons are present on right side of the phone which also have a metal finish. It has a hybrid slot which is present on left side and 3.5mm audio jack is present on the top of the phone. It has a infrared sensor for remote feature and micro USB slot which is located at the bottom .

            We have to bundle SIM ejector tool for removing the SIM tray. This hybrid SIM slot helps us to use two nani SIM cards or a nano SIM and a micro SD card. It also has tiny secondary microphone and fingerprint sensor is present below the camera. Phone is 154mm tall and 76.5 mm wide. It is comfortable to hold, but it is not comfortable for one handed usage.

             The weight of the phone is 173grams and it is  slightly heavier than K4 note mainly due to metal body. The metal back attracts dust easily and it dosen't attracts fingerprints. The phone is  slippery to hold because back is very smooth. the quality of the back cover is better than the one that comes with k4 note.

Camera

It has 21-megapixel rear camera with f/2.0 apperture , dual-tone LED flash, PDAF, Sony IMX230 sensor and 4K ideo recording and it lacks OIS. The camera user interface is simple and has toggles for flash. It dosen't have HDR option, instead it automatically detects image capturing conditions and set mode accordingly. It has menu options to select several options such as Promode. The shutter speed is 1/3200 to 2/3. It has focus and white balance. Other options are Panorama, Art Nightscape, Artistic HDR, Blur background, Panorama selfie, Slow-motion and Fat-motion video capture.

                                                                   

Camera quality

       The daylight shots are decent but some images seem dull if the condition is not bright and colours are not vibrant . Macro shots are good and focus is quick . Low-light shots have noise but images are not too bad. Enabling Smart mode offers ultra-low light mode during low conditions by tweaking ISO and exposure time to offer brighter images. Overall the phone has good camera but it could have been better for a phone with 21MP camera sensor.Video is pretty good with lot of details. Audio is crisp since it has secondary microphone. It has slow motion recording at 720 HD resolution.

Software

       It runs on Android 5.1 lollipop with its own lenovo Vibe UI . It has Secure Zone, Flashlight, Cast Screen, Wide touch, super power, Dolby and turbo Hi-Fi. It includes a brightness adjustment slider. we can edit notification bar icons. we can launch dialer or camera directly from lockscreen. It has wide touch option which allows to create floating bar for accessing utility apps like camera, music, calculator and more. It has a smart scene which create scenes for different time period or places. It contains NFC feature so that we can use NFC tags to activate a screen. We can enable 'knock to light' option from settings to enable double tap to wake the screen up when it is locked. It has built-in-split screen mode which lets us to view the whole UI using VR glasses. After enabling this option from the Feature you can press and hold power button to turn on this mode.

                                  

                       

                                          

Storage

      Out of 3GB RAM, 2.84 GB of RAM is usable , out of which 1.9GB of RAM is free when phone is idle with just system apps running in the background. Out of 32gb internal storage we can get 23GB of usable storage.

Fingerprint Sensor

      It contains fingerprint sensor on backside of the phone and below the camera and it is perfect where your index fingers rests when you hold the phone. It is quick to unlock the phone  when you place your finger on the sensor immediately. When it dosen't recognize your finger it gives only haptic feedback and lets you to quickly unlock the scree. It dosen't recognize the finger if the finger is in wet condition. You can only add 2 fingerprints. 

Apps

      It has a pre installed apps including games. Facebook, Gamestore, Guvera music, MCAfee Security, peel smart remote for tv controlling, Skype, Step counter, Truecaller, Twitter, Wechat, UC browser, WPS office and Frog HD game are apps provided defaultly. 

Music player

     It have no seperate music play so we have to use google play Music. It can play range of audii formats. It have no FM radio. The audio experience is brilliant . Loudspeaker output is clear even in full volume and audio output through headphone is brilliant as well. It has custom equalizer as new option along with Turbo Hi-Fi option which offers enhanced audio experience through headset.

Dual SIM connectivity

      It supports 4G with 4G LTE bands. Both SIM's support 4G and we can enable 4G only in one SIM at a time. you can set default SIM for voice call, messaging or data connection. It has Inter SIM call forwarding option and forwards incoming calls automatically from one SIM to another SIM when it is busy on other call. It has dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and bluetooth 4.0 with GPS and NFC. It has USB OTG support .

Hardware and performance

      It has Hexa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8o8 (MSM8992)  64 bit processor. It contains two bigger ARM Cortex A57 ores clocked at 1.88 GHz per core and four smaller ARM Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.44 GHz per core. It has a smooth performance without any lags and no heating issues. It gets a bit warm when we use 4G in hot outdoor conditions.  

Battery life

      The capacity of the battery is 3500mAh which is built in and it is impressive battery life. On full charge it lasts for whole day even on heavy usage with 4G enabled . It has power saver mode which reduces the power consumption and also has ultimate power saver mode that enables only calling and messaging for several days of standby. It supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 for quick phone charging. It achieved One charge rating of 10 hours and 43 minutes which is better than k4 rating of 9 

hours and 1 minute.

Conclusion

      Overall the phone is good  with brilliant audio experience and performance . It has solid build quality and good battery life. 

Pros

• Good display
• Good performance
• 4K video recording
• Solid build quality
• Brilliant audio output
• Good battery life

Cons

• Hybrid dual SIM might not be useful for everyone
• Slippery back
• slightly heavy

COST:Rs 19,999

USER RATING: 8/10