Budget smartphone category is seemingly increasing day-by-day with almost every manufacturer stepping into the game and releasing their smartphone. And, the interesting part is, every smartphone is getting a big response from the audience. This year, the budget segment was dominated mostly by Xiaomi. Other brands such Coolpad, Lenovo tried to dominate but failed to do so.
A little over four months ago, Xiaomi released their budget phone, the Xiaomi Redmi 3s (review) in India. The audience well received the smartphone. Xiaomi’s primary competitor, Lenovo showcased their K6 series of smartphones at IFA 2016 back in September. The company released their Lenovo K6 Power in India for Rs. 9,999 last month. We got the review unit of the smartphone and here’s what we think of it after using it for more than one week.
Review- Lenovo K6 Power Design: Looks a lot Like Xiaomi Redmi 3s
The Lenovo K6 Power comes with a candy bar design along with the general metal body. The metal construction adds more premium and rigidity to the device. At first glance from the rear, we thought the smartphone as a dark gray variant of the Xiaomi Redmi 3s. So, that’s how it looks. There are no major takeaways from the phone’s design.
Speaking about the button placement, the Lenovo K6 Power comes with hardware capacitive buttons, same as the Redmi 3s, but they are much more visible than the latter. On the right side of the phone, the volume rockers and power button are placed. On the top, the micro USB port is awkwardly placed along with the 3.5mm headphone jack. The hybrid SIM card slot is located on the left side of the phone.
The frontal of the phone is dominated by the 5-inch screen and on the rear side, we have the two Dolby ATMOS speakers, and the antenna bands are clearly visible. In our review unit which is of gray color, the antenna lines are very shiny, which is kind of irregular for a smartphone. There is a fingerprint sensor located below the 13MP rear camera and the LED flashlight.
All said and done; the Lenovo K6 Power has a decent design, but it does feel chunky in hands, which is mainly due to the 4000mAh battery. Having said that, Lenovo needs to take at the Xiaomi’s engineering technology as the Apple of East managed to pack a 4100mAh battery, and the device is sleek in hands.
Lenovo K6 Power Display: 1080p Resolution is an Added Advantage
The Lenovo K6 Power features the same display size of Xiaomi Redmi 3s of 5-inch. However, the screen resolution is different. It comes with a 1080p resolution, whereas the Redmi 3s is limited to an only 720p screen. The display is vivid and sharp with excellent viewing angles. This 1080p panel is profoundly reflective and at times, viewing angles will be affected. On the whole, the display on the Lenovo K6 Power is far better than that of its rival.
Lenovo K6 Power Hardware and Software: Pure UI Has a Long Way to Go
The Lenovo comes with entry-level hardware, which is entirely understandable. Under-the-hood, we have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC, which is an octa-core chip with all the eight cores clocked at 1.4GHz. There is Adreno 505 GPU clocked at 450MHz to handle the graphics performance. Unlike the Xiaomi Redmi 3s, the Lenovo K6 Power comes in only variant0 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage.
Regarding day-to-day usage, the K6 Power blew out all the task thrown at it with ease and huge games such as Asphalt 8; Nova 3 ran well as well. But the rear panel of the smartphone started heating up after continuous 15 minutes of gaming. Call quality was more than good and we used the phone entirely with Reliance Jio 4G SIM card installed and yeah, the K6 Power has support for VoLTE as well, unlike other Lenovo phones such as K5 Note.
Speaking about the biggest letdown of the phone: Pure UI, Lenovo rebranded their Vibe UI as Pure UI with the K6 Power in India. But, it has several issues, especially, the notification center. Dragging the notification center down is a daunting task for me because it shutters a lot. That said, there will be a two-second lag if you swipe out a received notification from the notification center.
The multi-tasking menu was buggy as well with the phone constantly lags while opening the apps via multitasking screen, which a huge down. That being said, the phone’s primary competitor- Redmi 3s is way better regarding software. Clearly, the Lenovo K6 Power is a step backward when it comes to software department.
Lenovo K6 Power Camera: Not the Best Budget Smartphone Camera
The Lenovo K6 Power comes with a 13MP primary camera with support for LED flashlight and PDAF technology. Speaking about the image quality, the phone doesn’t inspire confidence even in daylight conditions. Each image we shot under bright light were over exposed to sunlight on the corners, and the low light images were on the colder side.
The phone comes with an 8MP front-facing camera for managing the selfies and video calls. Images captured with this front-facing camera were acceptable and can be easily used to put them on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. Overall, the phone’s camera was decent enough, and we can’t ask much better camera for the asking price.
Lenovo K6 Power Battery: USP Done Right
The Lenovo K6 Power’s primary aim was to compete with the Xiaomi Redmi 3s with its massive 4000mAh battery. The phone constantly hit over seven hours of screen-on time even with heavy usage. With moderate usage, the phone can easily last for two complete days. Do make a note that 4G was always turned on in our entire period. Having said that, the battery drastically decreases while playing games, which the Xiaomi Redmi 3s usually doesn’t do.
If you’re a moderate user, then the phone will easily last for two days and for users like me, it lasted for a day with 30 percent juice left all the time. So, clearly, we got a Xiaomi Redmi 3s competitor.
Lenovo K6 Power Verdict: A Great Smartphone!
The primary aim of Lenovo to launch the Lenovo K6 Power is to take on the entry-level and budget smartphone king- Xiaomi Redmi 3s. They are successful to some extent. The below average camera along with the buggy software is the huge letdown of the phone, but all the software issues can be fixed with a software update. So, the underwhelming camera makes a difference between the both. For the asking price, the Lenovo K6 Power is a complete package, but the Xiaomi Redmi 3s serves you the best and it is available for little less than 1000 bucks as well, but you will surely miss the Full HD on Redmi 3s.
