Lenovo Vibe X2 Review: A Tasty Confection with a Few Lumps
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By Jamshed Avari | Updated: 13 November 2014 09:32 IST
Lenovo is getting pretty aggressive, with all its most recent
products having distinctive personalities. The Vibe X2 is fun and fresh,
but it isn't just about superficial appearances. This device packs some
impressive hardware under the hood and has a very attractive price too.
We're really interesting in seeing what Lenovo has managed to pull off
here.
Lenovo might not command the same respect for its phones
that it does for desktop and laptop PCs, and is not usually at the top
of anyone's mind when it comes to shortlisting an Android device to buy.
The company knows this, and has a lot to prove - it badly needs a
product that will be a mainstream hit and make people seriously consider
buying a Lenovo phone rather than a Samsung or Sony. That's a huge
task, and we're curious to see whether the Vibe X2 can be that phone.
Look and feel First of all, there are the stripes. The Vibe X2 looks like something
that came out of a bakery or chocolatier, not a smartphone factory.
Lenovo has clearly tried hard to ensure that its latest launch looks
nothing like the black rectangles we usually see everywhere. It's a bold
move, and quite a lot of people will buy this phone based on its looks
alone while others will take one look at it and wonder if the whole
world has gone crazy.
Lenovo calls it gold, but it's actually only
the rear layer that's a pale champagne colour, while the middle layers
are peach and fiery orange. The frontmost layer is black and is just a
little smaller than the rest, which means the black screen has an orange
border when viewed head on, and really stands out. The look is
certainly unique, and we like that Lenovo has really gone wild in an
effort to make the Vibe X2 feel new and different.
Only the
gold model is currently available through Lenovo's exclusive retail
partner, Flipkart. Lenovo's website also has a more sober version in
black, white and grey, as well as another in black, red and maroon if
that's more to your taste. Sources indicate these will be launched in
India at a later date.
The Vibe X2 is a bit awkward to hold, and
its corners and edges dug into our palms a little. It's definitely
light, which only somewhat makes up for that. Lenovo includes a
protective screen film and a clear plastic case in the box, which itself
also has the same colour scheme and a pretty neat design with stacked
compartments.
A recessed tray on the upper left holds two SIM
cards - one Micro and one Nano. The buttons are on the right, and
there's no microSD slot. The battery is built in and not accessible.
Three dots on the lower rear act as contacts for optional clip-on
accessories - an extended battery and a speaker - which aren't available
yet.
The front face is very plain and free of branding - you'll
only see the capacitive buttons when they light up. The Vibe X2 feels
smaller than other phones with 5-inch screens - and it is in fact quite
narrow, with next to no space at all on the sides of the screen.
Specifications and software Octa-core
phones burst onto the scene at the beginning of this year, all based on
MediaTek's MT6592 SoC which has been strong enough at most tasks to
give market leader Qualcomm some serious competition. Lenovo's Vibe X2
is the first phone to be based on one of that chip's successors, the
MT6595M.
The MT6592 used eight identical ARM Cortex A7 cores,
which allowed MediaTek to boast that its "true octa-core" design was
superior to that of companies such as Samsung which were mixing and
matching cores of different designs and capabilities. However, the
company seems to have switched tracks and is now using four high-speed
Cortex A17 cores along with four low-power Cortex A7 cores. The former
can run at up to 2GHz while the latter can go up to 1.5GHz. The cores
are not paired or clustered - instead, they can be addressed
independently so that tasks can be assigned to whichever core or cores
are most suitable, depending on performance and power saving priorities.
The
new MT6595 series is still 32-bit only, which isn't a huge limitation
since Android support for 64-bit processors is still at a nascent stage.
It also incorporates a PowerVR 6200 GPU from Imagination which is a
change from ARM's own Mali series used by MediaTek's previous models.
Finally, the MT6595M integrates a variety of cellular radios to support
voice, 3G, and LTE data as well as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.
Lenovo
has paired this matched this new SoC with 2GB of RAM. There's no
microSD slot, so the fixed 32GB of storage is all the space you'll get.
We
aren't major fans of Lenovo's custom Android skin. Despite a major
update, it's still a bit too clunky. Icons and widgets are all mixed on
the homescreens, which never works well once you start filling your
phone with apps. The icon style and quite a few other touches are
heavily inspired by iOS 7 and most of the themes are garish and there's
no option that looks anything at all stock Android. We really liked the
fact that the Lenovo Vibe Z2 Pro (Review | Photos) let us switch to stock Android -
launcher and all - but that feature seems to be missing here.
You
can mix and match elements from different themes, so for instance if
you like the icon style of one but the lock screen or boot animation of
another, you can choose those specific elements and use them. We would
have liked to be able to download more themes, especially since several
of the theme element categories have only one option.
The Vibe UI
still has some rough edges, such as the app switcher which is rendered
half off screen in landscape mode and lots of poorly translated English
text throughout. On the positive side, the Vibe UI's notifications shade
is well laid out with lots of shortcuts to often-used fuctions, and you
can jump to common apps right from the lockscreen. There are also quite
a few handy tricks that can be turned on from within the Settings app,
including one that lets you double-tap the blank screen to wake the
phone from sleep, one that lets you take photos even with the screen
locked, and one that prevents accidental pocket dialling. We tried most
of these and have to say that they worked fairly well.
Many
Android phones now use on-screen buttons, but not this one. Lenovo has
not only gone with a capacitive strip below the screen, but has also put
an unnecessary Menu button there instead of the now-standard Recents
button. A long-press brings up the app switcher.
Performance and camera We
had a generally pleasant time with the Vibe X2, apart from the software
quirks we encountered. Performance was snappy and we liked all the
little shortcuts Lenovo has thought of. These little things made using
the phone a pleasant experience. Heavy HD videos played flawlessly, but
sound from the phone's speaker was quite awful. It got pretty loud, but
terribly distorted and compressed at high volumes. The bundled headset
was a lot better, but still not as good as a decent pair of headphones
from any well-known brand.
The scores of 47,199 in AnTuTu and
24,227 overall in Quadrant are absolutely staggering - the Vibe X2 edges
out victories against even the recently launched heavyweights such as
the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and Sony Xperia Z3, both of which cost twice
or thrice as much as it does. However, Lenovo's brave new mid-range
phone loses out in SunSpider and Browsermark, which are more focused on
CPU performance alone. Raw benchmark numbers aren't everything, but
these results certainly point to the fact that the MediaTek MT6595
series is easily at par with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 series in many
scenarios.
Things aren't quite as exciting on the graphics front,
though. The Lenovo Vibe X2 struggled a bit in GFXbench's T-Rex run and
3DMark's Ice Storm Extreme run, with relatively weak scores of 17fps and
7,950 points respectively. The Vibe X2 might not handle heavy 3D games
with as much grace as it does heavy number-crunching apps, which is a
bit of a shame. We also noticed the phone heated up quite a bit when
running heavy tests.
(Click to see full size)
The Vibe X2's battery life was pretty
disappointing. It lasted only 5 hours, 38 minutes in our video loop test
which doesn't bode well for regular use. You'd be lucky to get a full
working day out of it before having to reach for a charger. Call quality
is good enough though we noticed that cellular network reception seemed
consistently less certain than on other phones placed right next to it.
The
camera app lacks the Pro mode we saw on the Vibe Z2 Pro, but is
otherwise similar. There are a few filters and effects, and most
settings are easy to access. We found that it sometimes took a little
too long for the camera app to launch, and focusing was also not always
quick or accurate enough. Results indoors under artificial lighting were
quite poor - images came out blurry and with very little detail unless
both the camera and subjects were perfectly still. Things were a lot
better in daylight but we were still not very pleased with the amount of
compression we saw. Most images taken with the 13-megapixel primary
camera looked rather artificial. Only extreme close-ups came out good in
any kind of lighting situation.
(Click to see full size)
Photos taken with the front
camera weren't too bad - there's a "beauty mode" that kicks in
automatically to smoothen out faces and presumably make shots look
better, which is best used in moderation. There are also a few options
for triggering the camera from a distance, such as flashing a V sign or
just blinking hard.
Videos are recorded at 1080p by default. We
found that recordings made indoors in low light were pretty much
useless, but we weren't really happy with samples taken in daylight
either. Colours seemed to be off, exposure adjustment was too slow, and
the overall quality was just lacking.
Verdict There will
inevitably be a whole flood of devices based on the MT6595 series
hitting the market in the near future, but for now the Lenovo Vibe X2
offers seriously impressive performance for Rs. 20,000 and there really
isn't anything else that can match it in all regards - save for perhaps
Xiaomi's missing-in-action Mi 3 (Review | Photos) and Mi 4, or the recently launched
HuaweiHonor 6.
Still, this device is far from perfect. The
software is especially clunky (though third-party launchers help to some
extent) and the camera is disappointing to say the least. You'll also
probably want to look into the optional snap-on battery pack if you
spend a lot of your day outdoors.
If you really like the
colourful layered look, you don't need any other reason to be convinced
to buy the Vibe X2. If, on the other hand you wouldn't be caught dead
being seen with this phone, you'll have to wait for something else to
launch that offers equivalent performance at this price.
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