Le 1s – The stylish new entrant – Review

LeEco is the latest Chinese mobile manufacturer to enter India. Formerly known as LeTv, the company changed its brand identity only for markets outside China. In China, LeTv is one of the most popular brands when it comes to mobiles. The Indian mobile market, though it apears to be over flowing with mobile brands, still has got room for growth and expansion. LeEco made it self heard with its burgeoning online and offline marketing campaigns. With its full-page newspaper ads, digital hoardings and online advertisements, LeEco has managed to make its self familiar with us Indians. LeEco, pronounced as “La eeko”, has launched the Le 1s and Le Max in India.

The Le 1s, is a hugely popular mobile in China. It has a powerful hardware, appealing design and attractive price tag. It is priced at Rs 10999 in India and will be available exclusively through Flipkart.

Design

Le 1s features a full metal unibody design. The corners are rounded, but the edges are sharp. It is a slim device at just 7.5mm. The 3000 mAh battery is sealed within its metal body. Though is it made of metal, it is not slippery. The back has a matte finish. Le 1s has a 5.5 inch display and the bezels on the sides are almost non-existent. The menu keys have back light, but there is not indication on where the buttons are placed, when the lights are off. You have to touch it once to light up the keys. That was a bit inconvenient, but its a matter of getting used to.

At the base you can see the speaker grills with a mono speaker and mic concealed underneath it. It also has a USB type-c port. It is one of the first mobile to come out with USB Type C ports, globally. The power and volume keys are the left, while the dual sim slot is seen on the right. Le 1s can take in one micro SIM and one Nano SIM card. It is a 4G device and supports 4G on both the SIMs. The top houses a 3.5 mm audio jack and an IR blaster. The rear camera is supported by a single LED flash and it has a mic for noise cancellation. One of the highlights of the Le 1s is the Finger print scanner. It is placed below the camera and is comfortable to reach with the index finger. The scanner is shiny metal and is provides a distinct design signature for the device. However its performance is disappointing. It is slow to detect the finger print and often I had to press my fingers twice to unlock the mobile.

Overall, the design of the Le 1s is outstanding. It offers good grip and is comfortable to hold in the hand. Though it has a 5.5 inch display, it feels really small, thanks to its thin bezels. The flat and flush design with no protruding parts adds to the ergonomics and style factor. The construction is solid and it screams premium build quality all over.

Display

Le 1s has a 5.5 inch full HD screen. It excels in providing the best viewing angles and brightness, amongst all the devices in this price range. Direct sunlight readability is satisfactory. The saturation levels are a bit on the higher side and the contrast levels are above average. The ambient light sensor works fast enough to adjust the screen brightness based on the ambient light. The text displayed is crisp and the images are sharp and show good amount of details.

Software

Mobile manufactures are yet to adopt Android Marshmallow and this slow rate of adoption is big worry. The Le 1s runs on Android 5.0 with EUI skin on top. The EUI has a unique design language. The icons are all flat and minimalist to match the design of the mobile. EUI offers app permission management, scheduled power management, and a bunch of useful gesture controlled actions. What irks me is the notification and task screens. We are used to have quick toggles along with the notification tray and that is the reason it is called “quick”. In the EUI, the quick toggles are placed along with the multi task screen. Maybe they tried to mimic the iOS here, but it is very inconvenient. The EUI comes with minimal pre-installed apps. The remote control app can be used as a universal remote to control a whole array of appliances in your living room. My LeTV app connects to cloud for back up and in India, Le 1s has partnered with Eros and Yupp Tv for streaming media content.

Camera

The mobile has a 13 MP primary camera and a 5 MP front shooter. The primary camera has a single LED flash and it focuses by Phase detection auto focus mechanism. It can shoot 4K and slow motion videos. The UI is a replica of iOS. It has HDR, night mode, scenes and filter. But the access to these features are hidden and not easily found. Images out of the camera are bright, brilliant and share under ample day light. Under low light conditions, the images have grains and often ends up in shaky images. PDAF is very fast to lock the focus, but you can also manually change the subject in focus by touching anywhere on the screen. Focusing is fast even under low light conditions. The HDR photos are not over dramatic and it manages to stay natural. The front facing camera produces some decent selfies, but the skin smoothing algorithm is applied even when disabled.

Check the Camera Samples below

Hardware and Performance

When it comes to hardware, the Le 1s is powered by a badass 2.2 GHz Octa-Core Mediatek Helio X10 Processor coupled with 3GB of RAM. It has 32 GB of internal memory and the memory cannot be expanded. With the powerful Helio X10 processor, the benchmark test score are over the roof. The mobile can tackles most of your regular apps and games with ease. The 700 Mhz powerVR G6200 graphics processor is a let down when it comes to intensive gaming. The graphics rendering is not pleasing and there are isolated frame drops during prolonged gaming. The Le 1s would take you through your average daily tasks without any hiccups, but it may not please a gamer.

The mobile does not over heat. The loud-speaker is crisp and loud on speakerphone calls. During gaming and media play, the speaker quality was tinny and appear not to be tuned for quality audio experience. It does not have FM radio support as well. Call quality and general telephony was not an issue.

Battery

The Le 1s is powered by a 3000mAh battery and it has USB Type C charging port. The USB C port and the 2 A fast charger, charges the mobile in under 1:30 hours. But Battery life is a point of worry in Le 1s. My normal usage would include about 30 min of calls, regularly checking the screens for whatsapp and Facebook notifications, clicking a few shots with the camera and a few hours spent on watching YouTube and video clips. With this usage, the mobile ran out of juice in less than 17 hours.

Verdict

So here is what you get for spending Rs 10990 on the Le 1s. You get a beastly hardware, fingerprint scanner, sturdy and stylish design, decent camera and a sensible UI. What you wont get is; reliable battery life, expandable storage and quality gaming experience. If you are not a serious gamer and if you have access to charging your device regularly, the Le 1s will be a great device in your hand. At this price point, CoolPad Note 3 is a good competitor for Le 1s, but Le 1s has got better design. Other phones like the Moto G3, Lenovo K4 note, Zenfone Max have their own edge over the Le 1s, but again none of them can come close the elegant design of the Le 1s.

Buy it here