LeEco is at it again. After seizing market share from the likes of Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei with its cut-throat pricing, the smartphone and content company sold its latest Le Max Pro model for just Rs 21,000 in China.
What makes the model, and the price, so special is that it is the first phone in the world to come to market with the new Snapdragon 820 chipset.
The Snapdragon 820 is the high-end chipset from Qualcomm for the year 2016, and is about twice as powerful as the Snapdragon 810 found in the flagship models of 2015. The heating issues that plagued the 810 — due primarily to its large core count and its 28 nm manufacturing process — is also a thing of the past with new 14 nm manufacturing process and a reduction in the number of cores to 4 from 8.
As a result, it is almost certain that the phones that ship with SD 820 will be priced no less than Rs 33,000 in India.
Even LeTV, which sold the Max Pro model at 1,999 yuan (Rs 21,000) in a special sale, called the units ‘engineering models’ rather than production models.
The Le Max Pro is the upgraded version of the Le Max that is selling in India.
The Pro has a 6.33 inch QHD display, 4 GB of DDR4 RAM, a 3.4 Ah battery and ultrasonic fingerprint scanner.
An ultrasonic fingerprint sensor uses sound, and not light to detect the groves on the finger. This is much more secure that the typical fingerprint technologies found in smartphones today and virtually the only way to open the phone without its owner’s knowledge will be to steal his finger.
It should be emphasized that the 1,999 yuan may not be the final price of the phone.
LeTV, now renamed LeEco, is having a good run in India where it has introduced its Le 1s model at a extremely low price of Rs 10,990.
The phone has already risen to be the largest selling 4G phone of 2016 after just three flash sales. The phone will be available on open sale on Thursday, Feb 25.