There is strong buzz in the market that Lenovo will launch the cheapest LTE phone in India next week at a price of Rs 6,000-6,500, eclipsing the Xiaomi RedMi 1S, Nokia Lumia 638 and Huawei Holly Honor in value for money.
UPDATE: The Company has officially launched the A6000, priced at Rs 6,999, and to be exclusively on Flipkart.com. The Lenovo A6000 will support both types of LTE networks being launched in India, band 3 and band 40.
It comes with Android 4.4, a 2300 mAh battery, 1GB of RAM, and a 64-bit 1.2 GHz Snapdragon processor.
“They’re planning a handset to take on the RedMi 1S and Honor Holly, and it looks like it will be bundled with 4G LTE as well,” said an industry source.
The phone will easily take the crown as the cheapest 4G phone in India as currently the distinction is held by the Nokia Lumia 638, which is priced at Rs 8,300.
In terms of specifications too, the phone will better than Lumia 638, and comparable to the Holly and the RedMi 1S.
That almost certainly means that the new Lenovo phone, despite being the lowest priced LTE handset in India, will come with a decent, HD screen.
The cheapest LTE phone from Lenovo available in India at present is the A768T, but it is priced at Rs 11,000.
Like the RedMi 1S and Nokia Lumia 638, the Lenovo model is also built on the Snapdragon 400 series and display size will at least 5 inches in size, according to the source, but possibly also 5.5 inches.
Another key feature of Lenovo’s LTE phone will be a killer battery, and the model will have better battery backup than any of its peers in the Rs 6,000-7,000 bracket, the source said.
All in all, it looks like the luck of Xiaomi and Honor Holly is about to run out in the Indian market, and that of the consumers about to rise.
The prices of 4G LTE handsets have dropped by over half in three months in India. Starting with the LG F60, which was priced at Rs 15,000 and launched in October in India, India has seen a slew of cheap LTE phones being launched. The LG F60 is now available at around Rs 9,000.
The next blow was struck by the RedMi Note 4G, priced at just Rs 9,999. It was then eclipsed, in terms of being the cheapest, by the Nokia Lumia 638, which was launched in December at a price of just 8,300.
Lumia’s launch was followed by that of the Yu Yureka, which, priced at just Rs 8,999, offered far superior specifications to the Lumia 838.
The new Lenovo phone, in many ways, offers a better deal than the Yu Yureka, though the Yureka still holds a slight edge as it is built on the Snapdragon 615 platform while the Lenovo 4G phone is built on the Snapdragon 400 platform.
Still, in terms of nearly every other specification, the Lenovo phone will come very close to the Yu Yureka, according to our source.
The launches are good for consumers as they will be able to make use of upcoming 4G network launches to the full extent. It is expected that all phones priced above Rs 9,000 will have 4G LTE by the middle of this year.
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