There was a time when Samsung and LG would always have the most powerful smartphones in India, but the launch of the Lenovo Vibe X2 at a price of Rs 19,999 is set to change all that.
The phone, the first in the world to come with the MT6595, has already been listed on the Lenovo India website and will be available in stores by this weekend.
The Lenovo X2 will be officially launched at an event in Delhi on Thursday, Nov 6. The company sent out invites to media today, though it did not specify the name of the device.
The press invite for the Thursday event only said “Save the date. A formal invitation will follow.” However the attachment was name Lenovo X2, which gave away the intent of the press conference.
There are two reasons why the Lenovo Vibe X2 is a remarkable device – power and price.
First a brief look at the specifications. The Vibe X2 is the little brother of the Vibe Z2, which is available exclusively on Flipkart at price of Rs 33,000. The Z2 has a 5.5-inch quad-HD display with 3.6 mln pixels on its display.
The Lenovo Vibe X2, however, is a 5-inch phone with a full HD (2 mln pixel) display and a 13-megapixel camera.
“Full HD doesn’t compromise on performance — higher resolutions such as Quad HD often use more processing power,” says Lenovo.
MEGA POWER
However, what makes the phone stand out is that it is the first phone ever to launch with the new, ultra-powerful Mediatek MT6595 processor.
To put the processor in perspective, look at Antutu benchmark scores. In a demonstration in July, Mediatek demonstrated a prototype device running the MT6595 scoring an astonishing score of 47,000 on Antutu. In comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S5 scores just 36,000 on the same benchmark.
Of course, the new Samsung Note 4 is as powerful as the Lenovo Vibe X2, as it too scores around 47,000. In addition, it must be kept in mind that a production phone is likely to score below a prototype. So a realistic estimate for the Lenovo Vibe X2’s Antutu score would be around the 40,000 mark.
But still, that is blazing fast. For example, the recently launched LG G3 notches up a score of only around 36,000, and most octa-core phones available in India score about 22,000.
So, how does it achieve this high score? The reason is that the MT6595 is Mediatek’s first octa-core processor that incorporates the next-generation ARM Cortex A17 cores.
While most octa-core phones in the market have eight low-power Cortex A7 cores, the MT6595 comes with a big.LITTLE technology that combines four A7 cores with four A17 cores. A17 cores are estimated to be 60% more powerful than the A15 cores that were unveiled four years ago as the high-end of ARM cores.
The A17, in other words, are the most powerful ARM cores for the 32 bit design, and the only other design that surpasses the A17 is the 64-bit Cortex A57.
Since the MT6595 is made by Mediatek, it also costs less than competing platforms, helping Lenovo keep the price of the Vibe X2 in a manageable 20,000 range.
DESIGN
The Vibe X2 carries over most of the formalistic, metallic design ethic of the Z2. The phone has sharp angles and shiny, metallic edges and comes with rather chunky top and bottom bezels.
The Indian version will be dual-SIM, while those outside the country will get a single-SIM model. It will also have 4G LTE, this time built into the chipset from Mediatek.
It will compete with MT6595-equipped models from HTC (still rumored) and from Xiaomi. For example, the next version of the RedMi Note is supposed to come with this processor.
However, by the time the rivals are launched, Lenovo will have to bring down the X2 price a little to see off competition from the Xiaomi range.
For now, however, the Lenovo Vibe X2 is the right phone at the right price for those looking for a five-inch phone with top-end specifications.
We would have recommended it over the Moto X2, but the Moto has a more vivid display due to its AMOLED screen, while the Vibe X2 comes with a normal LCD display.