Lenovo's K3 Note not only impresses, but is going to make competing brands in the price segment sweat a decent bit.
With the exclusive Flipkart sale being the sore point, for a price of Rs 9,999, the K3 Note has serious potential to make non-phablet users swing to its side as it provides a budget solution with all the right ingredients. How the competition now heats up, will be interesting to 'Note', says Himanshu Juneja.
In the recent past, Lenovo has made no attempts to conceal the fact that it was betting big on the Indian market. It's latest array of mobile phones have proved to be an attractive solution in the budget category, and seems like they only intend to continue the trend.
This certainly seems to be the message with the latest member in their family of devices.
The K3 Note, as it is called, is a dual SIM phablet with 4G goodness. Not only has it been priced Rs 1000 cheaper than its predecessor, it has better innards too. To achieve both these in the budget category is a significant achievement.
Let's get down to some analysis of this new offering from Lenovo.
Design
The Lenovo K3 Note bears stark resemblance with it predecessor, the Lenovo A7000. Both have the exact same dimensions of 6.01 x 3.00 x 0.31 inches and hence one can be forgiven to confuse one for the other.
Lenovo decided upon rendering the phone in matte finish polycarbonate body which feels sturdy when held. Even though it's not a unibody design, the solid feel is unmistakable. The phone has been provided with a notification light at the top which is good to see. The presence of ample bezels on the top and bottom part of the phone cannot be ignored, nor the fact that the screen is not flush with the edges with this phone.
The three navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen are not back lit, which is expected for a budget category phone. The speaker location at the back could have been better though.
At the top of the phone, one finds the micro USB and the 3.5 mm audio jack, whereas the right side of the phone carries the volume rocker as well as the power key. In order to gain access to the micro SIM and micro SD card slots, one has to remove the back panel and the battery.
Display
The phablet surely will delight owners and prospective buyers alike with its display.
Given the price range, a 5.5-inch full HD IPS panel with 1080 x 1920p resolution calls for attention. The screen has a very impressive pixel density of 404 ppi.
The screen consists of good viewing angles and impressive brightness level. The text looks sharp and reading experience was very pleasing. However, the screen has its blemishes as well, with its reflective nature being a prominent one. The sunlight visibility takes a hit due to this.
Absence of any protective coating like Corning's causes some concerns as well.
Lenovo has duly bundled a screen protector along, but a tempered screen protector would have been more apt here. The screen otherwise is impressive, and shouldn't leave too much room for criticism.
Hardware
K3 Note is powered by a 1.7 Ghz Cortex A-53 Octa Core processor from Mediatek. To handle the graphics, there is the Mali T760MP2 GPU, and 2 GB worth of RAM completes the impressive configuration.
The phone carries 16 GB of onboard memory, out of which about 10 GB is available to the user. The provision of increasing the storage memory by another 32 GB via microSD card is there as well.
Connectivity
The K3 Note is a dual SIM device and accepts dual micro SIMs. A huge plus being the 4G compatibility. However, only one of the card can be running the 4G network, while the other SIM will have to make do with 2G network connectivity.
Apart from that, the phablet is equipped with regular set of connectivity features like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1 (with A2DP). The presence of FM radio is sure to make people smile.
The support for USB OTG has been provided as well. All these makes for a very impressive set of options here.
Software
K3 Note runs its user interface 'Vibe' which is slapped on Android's Lollipop (Ver 5.0).
Not getting the base OS as Android Lollipop (5.1.1) was a bit disappointing, as that would have really propelled the image of Lenovo and confidence in K3 Note to a different level.
The phone screen can be activated via the traditional way of power key, or by double tapping the screen, or using the option of swiping at the bottom part of the screen in either left or right direction after tinkering with the settings a bit.
Staying consistent with the ways of chinese manufacturers, the OS is devoid of an app drawer. The now popular theming option is present along with hoards of option to choose from.
We found some pre-installed apps like Anti Virus, SHAREit, CLONEit, and Spam cleaner. All these are not a whole lot to begin with, and secondly, these apps are massively useful. So credit to Lenovo for bringing some useful apps to may be first time users.
Moving forward, if the lockscreen was good with its share of useful shortcuts like Dialer, messenger, camera, current day, date, time etc, the notification centre inside gets all the notifications at one location for the user.
Another useful feature is the Smart scene. This allows user to set pre-defined actions that can correspond to specific time stamps as the day goes by. This particularly comes in handy as the user can have the phone automatically switch to various modes and execute actions depending upon locations visited.
Overall, the smaller clutter, bare minimum yet useful apps, and rich OS experience seems to be Lenovo's attempt. They have done pretty good.
Performance
In day to day usage, the K3 Note impresses. There were no hints of lags or stutters while navigating, launching or exiting the apps. CPU intensive tasks like running HD content went without any hiccups too. Some of the latest games may prove tough at max settings, but run just fine on medium and this doesn't hampers the experience.
Coming to the speaker, the presence of Dolby Atmos comes in effect to render an overall impressive experience. While the speaker has decent loudness, the quality isnt too bad either. The same is felt while listening to audio content over a pair of good headphones.
In fact, the audio fidelity is quite palpable when routed via headphones or good external speakers.
The only complaint is that the speaker placement could have been better, since the chances of sound getting muffled when the phone is placed against a flat surface is pretty high.
Camera
K3 Note comes with a 13 MP rear camera unit, accompanied with a dual LED flash. As for the front camera, it is equipped with a 5 MP variant.
The app doesn't take too long to launch and is intuitive and easy to use. To click the pictures, the users get to choose from Normal, Panorama, and Effects mode. The HDR mode is available as well.
Apart from these straight forward options, pro-users can try their hands at options like contrast, saturation, exposure, sharpness etc. The rear camera allows users to take the pics in three different aspect ratios: 1:1, 4:3, and 16:9.
The overall picture quality was fairly good, with results showing good colour concentration and good details captured. The presence of noise isn't deniable, but not to the level of spoiling the final captures. Absence of optical image stabilisation (OIS) means one has to be steady with the hands. The photographs taken during lower light conditions had noise creeping in all over, and expectedly so. One can expect a budget performer to have this sort of shortcoming.
Even videos captured at 1080p resolution, the results are about passable. The colours and details captured are not as impressive as during still photography, and absence of OIS is reminded here again.
Front facing camera captures good images with ample details to make the snaps shareable on social media website. There is no front facing LED, but the option 'Fill Light' makes the area around the view finder to illuminate and in turn throw more light at user's face. This is really a nifty feature.
There is also the 'Beauty' option which removes blemishes. User can tinker around and tweak blemish removing intensity up to 7 levels.
Bundled accessories
Apart from the device along with its battery pack, the box contains a screen protector, the wall charger, a micro USB cable, and user manuals. The presence of the micro USB is good news, since few manufacturers have been skimping on this essential article of late.
The phone is available in three colour choices, namely Laser Yellow, Pearl White and Onyx Black.
Battery
The K3 Note comes with a 3000 mAh battery of Li-Ion type. Lenovo's decision to provide a user replaceable battery pack is surely good news, especially for users who have a heavy usage pattern for their devices. The need to carry a charger, or a power bank gets reduced significantly.
The performance of the battery was satisfactory, with the charge lasting through the day with a normal to heavy usage pattern. The power saving mode will come in handy, should the users go overboard with their usage.
Verdict
Lenovo has brought forward a product which not only impresses, but a device which is surely going to make other competing brands in the price segment sweat a decent bit.
The phone has a bit of everything starting from an impressive large screen, 4G compatibility, dual SIM set up, capable camera, and micro SD card support as well.
Removable battery places the cherry on top but the battery back up could have been a bit better given its 3000 mAh capacity.
For a price of Rs 9,999, the K3 Note has serious potential to make non-phablet users swing to its side as it provides a budget solution with all the right ingredients. How the competition now heats up, will be interesting to 'note'.
