Lenovo Vibe S1 — the most advanced selfie camera in the world — is now available with select distributors in India.
The phone has not been launched anywhere in the world yet, and it looks like India is the first to get it.
UPDATE – The lenovo S1 Selfie has been priced at Rs 15,999 in India and officially launched yesterday. The phone is available on Amazon India and is being sold by Cloudtail, one of India’s biggest retailers.
The phone has a five-inch, full-HD display and is quite similar to the Vibe Shot, launched last month and available at Rs 24,000 in India.
However, while the Vibe Shot is for those who like to photograph the world, the Lenovo Vibe S1 is for those who like to photograph themselves.
The back camera is a 13 MP unit, but that’s not the key selling point. It is the front camera.. or the cameras in this case, that is the main selling point of this phone.
The main front unit is an 8 MP camera. However, it is supplemented by another camera — a 2 MP unit — whose sole function is to help the device capture depth, and if required, alter the focus of a picture already taken.
Typically, you can alter the camera’s focus only at the time of taking the picture, and once the photo has been taken, it’s impossible to change the focus under normal circumstances.
However, the dual-camera set up on the Vibe S1 lets you do just that.
But that’s not all that it does. Technically, it takes 3D photos. Since there are two cameras side by side (like we have two eyes on the front), the device is able to sense ‘depth’ and figure out different objects in the picture. The device, in other words, is able to figure out which object is standing in the front and which one is the background etc..
With this information, the Vibe S1 also has the ability to isolate and remove objects from the photograph. The only other phone camera that could do this earlier was the back cameras of some HTC units launched last year. However, those were really expensive units.
The rest of the specifications are what you’d typically expect in a mid-high range phone.
The chipset is the mid-range MT6752 from MediaTek, though the supply of RAM is quite generous at 3 GB.
Built in storage is decent at 32 GB and 4G support is included. Android version is 5.0.
The Vibe Shot was supposed to have been a phone that was offered in tie-up with Reliance Jio, but was launched last month without Jio branding.
The S1 was unveiled at the IFA, Europe’s biggest tech show, in Berlin in September. Lenovo also unveiled a few other models, including the Vibe P1, which is currently selling on Flipkart at Rs 16,000. The phone has a humongous 4.9 Ah battery and a 5.5 inch full-HD display.
The Vibe P1 also has a fingerprint reader and is based on the Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor.