The price Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus, the first entry-level phone in India to come with a full-HD display, is Rs 8,499 in India.
It will be available only on Flipkart, and there will be no flash sales. “It will be available on open sale from Wednesday at 12 pm,” Lenovo said.
The phone is the successor of the A6000 Plus and will have a model number A6020.
PRICE
The price of Rs 8,499 is lower by Rs 500 compared to what the market was expecting, and much lower than the $150 that the company had indicated a month ago.
The aggressive pricing and the decision to do away with flash sales suggests that Lenovo is throwing everything it has to recapture the 4G market from new rivals such as LeTV.
The company said users had indicated that they were not interested in flash sales, and therefore Lenovo has decided to go for open sale.
This makes Xiaomi the only brand to still resort to flash sales. LeTV moved away from flash sales after four weeks of launching the Le 1s.
PHONE FEATURES
India is the first country where the K5 Plus is being introduced, Lenovo said.
Some of the features of the phone are:
- The K5 Plus has a metal body, but no visible antenna band to ensure better looks.
- Will be available in silver, gold and graphite colors.
- The K5 has been designed as a multimedia ‘powerhouse’
- The device has two Dolby Atmos speakers at back which are ‘very loud’
- Brings TheaterMax virtual reality to the entry-level segment
- Sold 100,000 TheaterMax VR glasses in India so far
The device uses a OV13850 sensor on its 13 MP camera, and has an aperture (camera hole) size of f2.2, which places it in the middle range. Typical smartphone camera aperture size ranges from 2.7 to 1.6.
Both SIMs support 4G LTE, and the device comes with a separate 128 GB MicroSD card slot.
The model also has a replaceable 2.7 Ah battery.
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USER FEEDBACK AND 2015 LESSONS
43% of its consumers indicated a preference for 5-inch displays, the company said. Over 50% of the time of users was spent on video and audio, the company said.
The A6000 series sold over 2 mln units, possibly a record.
Lenovo had a 27% share in the online market, making it the top brand in the segment.
40% of the smartphones last year were sold online, according to Lenovo. Including all sales, Lenovo is No. 4 smartphone brand in the country.
A total of 107 mln smartphones were sold last year and 140 mln will be sold this year, it said.
While the company’s recent launch K4 Note was supposed to be a massive seller, in actual fact, the numbers turned out to be not as great a success as its predecessor the K3.
The reason? The entry of two new models — the LeTV Le 1s and Xiaomi Redmi Note 3.
While the Note 3 is not much of a competition because it will take at least one month for decent stock availability, the LeTV Le 1s is very much available to anyone who wants to buy a phone right now.
And what’s more – both the 1s and Redmi Note 3 are clearly superior models compared to the Lenovo K4 Note, starting from the powerful processor to flaunting premium features like quick charging.
CAN K5 PLUS SAVE LENOVO?
Lenovo badly needs a win in the Indian market to remain in contention in the face of competition, especially the onslaught from LeTV Le 1s.
As we noted above, the other competiitor — Redmi Note 3 — is not as big a headache as it remains a rival largely in name. Actual stocks of Redmi Note 3 is not present to sufficiently impact the market, nor has Xiaomi revealed when it can increase the stock availability in India.
That said, the K5 Note cannot really compete with LeTV Le 1s in terms of specifications and competence for various reasons. The Vibe K5 is an entry-level phone with a full-HD display, while Le 1s is a mid-range phone with nearly high-end specifications.
This is apparent when one looks at the chipsets of the two devices. The K5 is built on the rather weak MSM8939 processor from Snapdragon 616 chipset. The performance of this chipset is around the halfway mark when you compare it to the Helio X10 inside the LeTV model.
While the X10 scores about 5,800 on Geekbench 3 benchmark tests, the MSM8939 scores only about 3,200. Even the Redmi Note 3 scores 3,500 points.
In other words, in terms of processor, the K5 is at the same level as the K4 Note, except for the fact that K4 Note has 3 GB of RAM vs 2 GB for the new model.
The second factor is the display. While the LeTV and Redmi models have 5.5-inch displays, the K5 has a smaller, 5-inch screen. This is not, by itself, bad, as many people prefer a smaller phone compared to a 5.5-incher.
However, the smaller screen doesn’t really aid in gripping the phone that much better. The width of the Le 1s is 7.4 cm, while the K5 is 7.1 cm in width.
Similarly, 4G support in the new model is at Cat 4, same as Le 1s. However, one advantage that the K5 Plus has is support for VoLTE or 4G voice.
Most of the other specifications are as expected — 13 MP plus 5 MP camera, Dolby Audio, dedicated memory card slot and so on.