The tech giant Lenovo is back again in news to dominate the grounds. The company has been producing some great in specs and low in price kilos back to back every year and now since its collaboration with ZUK has given it additional wings to fly. The Lenovo ZUK Z1 being the first, and now the race has become ferocious again with the new Lenovo Z2 Plus, the rebranded ZUK Z2. Though our final review about the phone is not out yet, but should you even consider it in the first place? Is it really worth it? Let’s find out.
The phone is on sale exclusively on amazon since 25th September midnight with two variants, the first being 3GB RAM/ 32GB ROM at a price tag of 17,999 and the other being 4GB RAM/64GB ROM at a price tag of 19,999. It is available in two colour variants also - Black and White (images below). Link Here
To begin with let’s see the specification highlights of this new member of the family.
Quite impressive, isn’t it?
The Snapdragon 820 2.15Ghz processor, being one of the greatest processors in the overall range of Snapdragon processors, and that too within a price bracket of 20k, deserves to be the greatest highlight of the phone. Throw any work at it and it will process it like butter. So a kind of pre-Diwali treat for power users. The best part is it uses even lesser energy when compared to others, thereby offering a better battery life.
Though the phone is a bit thick (Little above 8mm) but still it provides you a good hold. Also, it is assembled on a Rollcage design, which offers lesser impact to internal parts if it falls down on the ground accidently. The volume rockers and the sim tray(nano+nano) is given on the right side of the phone, and the speaker, the 3.5mm audio jack and the charging port is given at the bottom.
The phone flaunts a screen size of 5 inches with LTPS LCD having 441ppi pixel density and a Full HD display resolution. The screen size could be a sad news for some, but might not be a deal breaker since its more compact and handy offering a better grip to user. The Full HD resolution is actually adequate considering the screen size, until you are not a serious VR user. The phone has a 2.5D curved glass, both in the front and the back. The bad part is that it is just a strengthened glass and not the Gorilla Glass. So you will might need to take a bit more care while handling it. Also, both the glasses are expected to attract fingerprints a lot.
There are no capacitive buttons on the phone except the bottom middle home screen button, which the company is bragging a lot about, and it actually worth it, the U-Touch – “One button to rule them all”. It’s basically a multifunctional navigation button cum fingerprint sensor. It offers you a lot of other functionalities apart from just fingerprint scanning, like, switching to another app with just a swipe, or double tap to open Camera app, etc. The good news here is that these functions too are actually customizable, so go what you feel suitable to you.
Moving on to the camera, the phone support a 13MP (f/2.2 aperture lens) Single LED flash, Hybrid autofocus rear shooter and an 8MP (f/2.0 aperture) no LED flash front facing camera which is quite impressive. Though there is another face of coin here, which is really disappointing. Lenovo is not really known for their phone’s camera quality. The phone doesn’t have an OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) but a Qualcomm Spectra EIS (Electrical Image Stabilization) which means image stability will be done on software level, and it also means that you may not expect a good quality picture in low lights too. The story becomes even worse, when the rear facing camera is supported with just a single LED flash, so the picture quality is definitely going to be an issue over here. There is no front LED flash.
Moving on to the software part, the OS. The phone comes with Android v6.0.1 Marshmallow and ZUI 2.0 on the top of it. The OS is quite smooth and responsive. ZUI is quite similar to a stock android, with little tweaks and customizability like swipe upwards to get the quick toggle menu, which greatly helps in single hand operations. The phone also doesn’t come with a lot of bloatware and most of them can be uninstalled too. OTG is supported.
The company has also loaded the phone with a sufficient number of sensors including some fitness sensors to offer you hassle free health monitoring on the go through the U-Health app, also provided with the phone.
The 3500mAh battery, with Quick Charging support, makes it even more awesome. Play as many games, watch lots of movies. And still, the phone can be expected to survive the whole day without any trouble, thanks to the processor and GPU. But that’s not all, the phone also comes with an intelligent charge cut-off feature, which will auto cut-off the charging once it reaches 100% and will make it work directly on AC power. This feature not just incredible it will definitely save the overall battery life, by reducing the charge cycles.
The only thing I would complain here is that the phone is not really provided with a fast charger with the packaging, but just a simple 2.1Amp charger is given. So, if you need this feature to work, you might need to pay a few more bucks.
A tip, over here. The 3GB RAM/32GB ROM variant can be considered if you are not really a rough user, however if you are one, you can put the 4GB RAM/64GB ROM variant in your cart to take care of that, just by paying 2k more. The phone doesn’t have an external SD card slot which might be a deal-breaker for some, but not really a concern for many, since even 50GBs of space is enough to carry your personal data alongside a whole season of Game of Thrones.
To conclude, I can definitely say that this gadget has potential. If the camera is not an issue for you, then it definitely stands a chance to drop in your cart. However, I would recommend you to wait for the final review to go online, to give my final opinion about the phone and the camera too.
So, what do you think? Is it really worth it? Do let us know. We'll be eagerly waiting.
The phone is on sale exclusively on amazon since 25th September midnight with two variants, the first being 3GB RAM/ 32GB ROM at a price tag of 17,999 and the other being 4GB RAM/64GB ROM at a price tag of 19,999. It is available in two colour variants also - Black and White (images below). Link Here
To begin with let’s see the specification highlights of this new member of the family.
| Specification Highlights |
|---|
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, 4 custom Kryo cores, 2.15Ghz, 14nm FinFET process |
| 3GB/4GB DDR4 RAM, 32GB/64GB SmartSLC internal memory(No MicroSD Card Slot) |
| Dual SIM (nano+nano), VoLTE & 4G+ |
| Android v6.0.1 with Google Now launcher(ZUI 2.0 on top of it) |
| 3500mAh high-density Li-Ion Battery with Intelligent Charge Cut-off |
| 13MP large pixel (1.34µm) primary camera with Hybrid autofocus (PDAF&CAF), 4K video recording, slow-motion capture (120fps), Time-lapse, Live Filters, Auto HDR. 8MP Front-facing Camera with large pixel (1.4µm) |
| 12.7 centimetres (5-inch) LTPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution and 441 PPI pixel density |
Quite impressive, isn’t it?
The Snapdragon 820 2.15Ghz processor, being one of the greatest processors in the overall range of Snapdragon processors, and that too within a price bracket of 20k, deserves to be the greatest highlight of the phone. Throw any work at it and it will process it like butter. So a kind of pre-Diwali treat for power users. The best part is it uses even lesser energy when compared to others, thereby offering a better battery life.
Though the phone is a bit thick (Little above 8mm) but still it provides you a good hold. Also, it is assembled on a Rollcage design, which offers lesser impact to internal parts if it falls down on the ground accidently. The volume rockers and the sim tray(nano+nano) is given on the right side of the phone, and the speaker, the 3.5mm audio jack and the charging port is given at the bottom.
The phone flaunts a screen size of 5 inches with LTPS LCD having 441ppi pixel density and a Full HD display resolution. The screen size could be a sad news for some, but might not be a deal breaker since its more compact and handy offering a better grip to user. The Full HD resolution is actually adequate considering the screen size, until you are not a serious VR user. The phone has a 2.5D curved glass, both in the front and the back. The bad part is that it is just a strengthened glass and not the Gorilla Glass. So you will might need to take a bit more care while handling it. Also, both the glasses are expected to attract fingerprints a lot.
There are no capacitive buttons on the phone except the bottom middle home screen button, which the company is bragging a lot about, and it actually worth it, the U-Touch – “One button to rule them all”. It’s basically a multifunctional navigation button cum fingerprint sensor. It offers you a lot of other functionalities apart from just fingerprint scanning, like, switching to another app with just a swipe, or double tap to open Camera app, etc. The good news here is that these functions too are actually customizable, so go what you feel suitable to you.
Moving on to the camera, the phone support a 13MP (f/2.2 aperture lens) Single LED flash, Hybrid autofocus rear shooter and an 8MP (f/2.0 aperture) no LED flash front facing camera which is quite impressive. Though there is another face of coin here, which is really disappointing. Lenovo is not really known for their phone’s camera quality. The phone doesn’t have an OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) but a Qualcomm Spectra EIS (Electrical Image Stabilization) which means image stability will be done on software level, and it also means that you may not expect a good quality picture in low lights too. The story becomes even worse, when the rear facing camera is supported with just a single LED flash, so the picture quality is definitely going to be an issue over here. There is no front LED flash.
Moving on to the software part, the OS. The phone comes with Android v6.0.1 Marshmallow and ZUI 2.0 on the top of it. The OS is quite smooth and responsive. ZUI is quite similar to a stock android, with little tweaks and customizability like swipe upwards to get the quick toggle menu, which greatly helps in single hand operations. The phone also doesn’t come with a lot of bloatware and most of them can be uninstalled too. OTG is supported.
The company has also loaded the phone with a sufficient number of sensors including some fitness sensors to offer you hassle free health monitoring on the go through the U-Health app, also provided with the phone.
The 3500mAh battery, with Quick Charging support, makes it even more awesome. Play as many games, watch lots of movies. And still, the phone can be expected to survive the whole day without any trouble, thanks to the processor and GPU. But that’s not all, the phone also comes with an intelligent charge cut-off feature, which will auto cut-off the charging once it reaches 100% and will make it work directly on AC power. This feature not just incredible it will definitely save the overall battery life, by reducing the charge cycles.
The only thing I would complain here is that the phone is not really provided with a fast charger with the packaging, but just a simple 2.1Amp charger is given. So, if you need this feature to work, you might need to pay a few more bucks.
A tip, over here. The 3GB RAM/32GB ROM variant can be considered if you are not really a rough user, however if you are one, you can put the 4GB RAM/64GB ROM variant in your cart to take care of that, just by paying 2k more. The phone doesn’t have an external SD card slot which might be a deal-breaker for some, but not really a concern for many, since even 50GBs of space is enough to carry your personal data alongside a whole season of Game of Thrones.
To conclude, I can definitely say that this gadget has potential. If the camera is not an issue for you, then it definitely stands a chance to drop in your cart. However, I would recommend you to wait for the final review to go online, to give my final opinion about the phone and the camera too.
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Front Profile View -
Back Profile View -
Right Profile View -
Color Variants
So, what do you think? Is it really worth it? Do let us know. We'll be eagerly waiting.
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