Lenovo A7000 Review

After its success stories with Lenovo A6000 and A6000 plus, Lenovo decided to bring a bigger and better device to Indian market, The Lenovo A7000. It is the first smartphone to come with Dolby Atmos sound technology. With a 5.5 inch display, the Lenovo A7000 is definitely a bigger device, but is it really a better device? Let us dive in and check out.

What I liked in the A7000

• Simple no-fuss design
• Price – Rs 8999
• 2GB RAM
• Dolby Atmos
• Loads of useful features out of the box

What I didn’t like

• Plastic material used in the construction
• 8GB of internal memory
• Glare on the display
• Mediatek octocore processor in the device is not a great performer
• Average camera performance

Design

The design is very similar to the other Lenovo devices in the A series. To me they appear to be inspired by the Nexus 5’s flat and minimalist design. It’s flat and flush design gives it a comfortable feel. It is available in white and black, but only the black is being sold in India. The material used in the device is completely plastic. The back panel feels very flimsy when removed. But when fit back, it fits pretty snugly with the device. On the front you have the 5.5 inch IPS display with a HD resolution screen and a pixel density of ~267 ppi. The earpiece at the top has a 5 MP camera on its side. There is also a LED notification light. Below the display is the off screen which is not back lit. Non back lit keys are always a problem. If putting a backlit would increase the cost, the Lenovo must have gone with on screen keys and could have saved a bit on the bezels as well. To your right you have the volume and power buttons with a hint of metal finish. The buttons have a good tactile feedback and are easily reachable with your thumb. To your left you find nothing and the bottom has a mic for telephony. The top has the 3.5 mm audio jack and USB socket. The back has the 8MP camera which is capable of 1080p videos. The camera is assisted by a dual LED flash. The back also has a mono speaker and a active noise cancelling mic. Under the back panel is the 2900 mAh battery, microSD card slot and dual micro SIM card slots. Only SIM 1 can take in 4G, 3G and 2G cards, while the SIM 2 can take only 2G sim card. The design does not scream premium but at the same time, it is design which you can call perfect for the price you pay.

OS and UI

The Lenovo A7000 runs on Android 5.0 out of the box. Lenovo has not committed to any roadmap on upgrading the mobile to Android 5.1 or 5.1.1. It has the Vibe UI 2.0 running on top of it. The UI has a striking resemblance with the other A series phones which are still running Adnroid KitKat. There is no app drawer and like most of the Chinese phones, it has the app laid out on the app desk. The Lenovo A7000 has better customization options. Apart of the customization settings in the homescreen, there is a theme store that now has 6 themes to play around. Lenovo is working with some legal issues to bring the fully featured theme center to India. If you can’t wait, you always have custom homescreen apps from the play store. The notification bar is another reminder that this mobile runs on Android 5.0. When the bar is pulled down, there is a button to open the notification log. This is a very useful feature and I have not seen it earlier in other android devices. In the system settings, under features, there are a bunch of tricks that the Lenovo A7000 can do. When enabled, the device can wake up on double tap. Also the volume button can be set to click a picture instantly when clicked twice when the screen is locked. The smart scene lets you change the system profile at preset time. The feature called “Wide Touch pane” put a ring on the screen. The screen opens a bunch of frequently used app and a some recently opened apps. On double tapping the ring, every app can be pushed to the background. The mobile comes preinstalled with a few apps and games and these programs can be uninstalled if needed. Yet, Lenovo A7000 has a few sensible features hidden under its cloak. The secure zone defines a secure login with your secret apps. The power consumption is separated in the UI by software and hardware consumption and this is really a neat feature. But the king of all the features is the permission control center. It gives you full control of the apps permissions and you can dictate which apps gets which feature and all that without having to root your mobile. Overall the UI is very snappy, responsive and functional.

Lenovo A7000’s unique selling point is the Dolby Atmos sound system integrated into its chipset. Dolby Atmos is the next level of Dolby digital entertainment. Dolby Atmos directs the sound from speaker channels located all around you, giving you a truly surround experience. Though there are not a lot of Dolby Atmos encoded content, Lenovo A7000 upscales your local content to give you a better experience. But to enjoy the best Dolby Atmos, you need to have a good sound system. On the move, you need a decent pair of headsets. After unboxing the device, better trash the OEM headset. It does not do proper justice to this device.

Display and Camera

Lenovo A7000 has a 5.5 inch HD display. It is not protected by any scratch resistant glass like gorilla glass. The screen is bright and vivid. The colors are accurate. The touch response is fast except while playing intense games. Ill come to it later. The screen is a finger print magnet and it attracts a lot of glare. That very irritating especially while playing games that need me to tilt the phone. The viewing angles are decent but still the glare part keeps interfering with the experience.

The Lenovo Camera UI is a new native app completely overhauled for the A7000. It is very simple and yet functional. The front camera is 8MP and results in photos of average quality. The noise reduction and sharpening algorithm messes with the output and smoothens the edges and removes the details out of the image. The color reproductions is also a bit washed out. The flat design in the back also collects dust on the lens. You will have to keep cleaning it often, and take care about not scratching the lens. The image results are not so great under low light also. The flash (when on) messes with the auto focus at times and results in out of focus images. The results with the front facing 5MP camera is not so different. HDR is not so pleasant and generally results in shaky images. Now please don’t complain about the absence of image stabilization on a mobile for which you pay less than Rs 10000. Both the camera are capable of shooting videos at 1080p but the footage is shaky and with washed out colors. In total, its an average camera, but considering the price you are paying, it’s a good deal.

Click here for more camera samples

The Lenovo A7000 is powered by a Mediatek chipset with an octa core processor clocked at 1.5 GHz. It has a Mali T760 GPU and a 2GB of RAM. It has an internal memory of 8GB, but for a device of this capability 8GB isn’t sufficient. Only 4 GB is available to the user. Ofcourse it has expandable memory. But there are many apps which wont run on SD cards and you really can’t be switching between the memory for applications. A minimum of 16 GB would have made this device a great buy. Also the processor is not a great performer. Though the benchmark scores are high, in real life this mobile has a bit of performance issue. While playing graphic intensive games, there were frame drops and lag in touch responsiveness. But the good news is that, the Lenovo A7000 doesn’t heat up even after prolonged gaming. It sure does get warm upto 40 degrees, but that is within the acceptable levels.

Battery

The battery is user replaceable. On a looping video test the 2900 mAh batter lasted for 8 hours. On my day to day usage, it lasted a litter over a day (28 hours). My day to day usage would be a 10-15 min of calls, 15 min of browsing, on and off checking the mobile for twitter, facebook and whatsapp, about 30 minutes of gaming, 3-4 hours of music play and occasionally watching video clips from youtube or other social media. I am connected to WiFi for most of the day except while am driving. If a mobile lasts for a day with this kind of usage, I would give a solid thumbs up for the battery and Lenvo A7000 gets it.

Verdict

We are looking at a device that cost you less than Rs 10000. To be exacts it will cost you just Rs 8999 ($140). It is not a beast of a performer, but definitely it’s a work horse. It has an average camera and good lot of useful features under the kitty. Most of the features in this mobile will be of utility value and not an eye candy like in most other devices. It is a device with some unique capabilities and placed at a price band that is very affordable. It can get you through the day with ease. At a price of Rs 8999 all of the cons is forgiven, except the internal storage part. If you are not a power user and need a good smart phone with a sensible list of features and which does not burn your pockets, then go for the Lenovo A7000.