Lenovo has just announced its next entry-level phone – the Lemon 3, with mouthwatering specifications at a ‘killer’ price of Rs 7,200 in China.
Though the phone will take at least a month to launch in India, the Lemon 3 looks like the ideal candidate to replace its ageing A6000 series.
The Lenovo A6000 is arguably the largest selling 4G phone of 2015, and changed the dynamics of the market when it was introduced exactly a year ago.
Its popularity can be gauged from the fact that nearly a year on, the phone continues to be one of the biggest selling 4G devices in the country. Of course, in between it underwent a slight facelift that doubled its RAM and internal storage memory.
Still, in terms of sales performance, the A6000 will remain the phone to beat for the next few years. Still, the Lemon 3 is a worthy successor to the A6000 Plus.
First of all, it comes with Snapdragon 616, which is in between a mid-range and a premium processor in terms of power. Secondly, it offers a full-HD display — twice the resolution of the A6000 Plus.
The latter is a key differentiating factor because of the phone’s competition with Xiaomi’s Redmi 3. In almost all other ways, both phones are identical.
Disappointingly, Xiaomi chose to retain a 720p (1 MP) display for Redmi 3, though it has improved the battery.
Lenovo took the more expected route of upgrading the display to full-HD instead of boosting battery power.
REDMI TOMORROW?
In fact, Mi India has said that it is all set to make an “exciting announcement” in India tomorrow, which could turn out to be the launch of the Redmi 3 or the Snapdragon version of the Redmi Note 3.
While the latter is eagerly awaited, the former may not create as much excitement because of its HD display.
Many buyers in India see “HD ready” displays as “very 2015”.
In addition, Xiaomi has earned the ire of smartphone fans because of its recent attempt to hype the launch of an upgraded version of its original Redmi Note 1 in India.
Meanwhile, Lenovo has continued to excite buyers by launching the K4 Note, though it too disappointed with its average processor.
In fact, the SD 616 processor has about 20% more power compared to the MT6753 processor inside the Lenovo K4 Note, which is sure to give heartburns to many who have bought, or are contemplating buying the Note.
While the MT6753 scores about 625 and 2900 in single and multi core Geekbench tests respectively, the SD616 scores about 750 and 3100 on single and multimode respectively.
That is just as well as the year 2016 is already seeing top-end phones come with chip sets that score 2300 in single core and 7000 in multi-core mode.
As a result, the SD 616 scores certainly fit well for “premium” entry-level phones in the new year.
The Lenovo unit also comes with dual speakers and Dolby audio technology.
One area where the Redmi 3 really stands out is in the battery department. It comes with a 4.1 Ah battery while the Lenovo Lemon 3 has a 2.75 Ah unit.
Other than this, almost everything else about the two phones are similar. RAM is 2 GB, built-in memory is 16 GB and display size is 5 inches. Even the China prices are the same.
We expect both phones to carry a price of Rs 7,999 when launched in India.
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