Chinese smartphone maker Lenovo has successfully bridged several device niches in its portfolio. So, under the specified brand, phones related to both the budget and premium segments are released. What is most interesting, both of them are in great demand, which the company managed to achieve in a relatively short period of time.

In this article, we will talk about one of the premium smartphones that Lenovo releases. It was introduced quite recently - in July 2015. Since it was initially positioned as a flagship device, it is not surprising that the world community watched its entry into the market with particular interest.

Today, the device is freely sold, and in these few months it has gained new loyal customers. We are talking about Lenovo Vibe Shot. Reviews about the device are different, we will try to choose those that will be the most truthful and correspond to the real state of affairs, and describe them.

What is interesting about the phone, what disadvantages and advantages it hides - read in this material.

Equipment

While doing a review of the “Lenovo Vibe Shot”, we first of all came across the packaging of the smartphone. It is made of thick cardboard, has a compact size and at the same time has a minimum amount of information on its surface. Once the cover is removed, the neatly packaged phone is revealed in one section, and the additions to it occupying the other part of the free space.

It should be noted that the “Lenovo Vibe Shot” equipment is generally quite modest. The list of accessories for it, provided by the developer, includes a charger, an adapter for European-style sockets, and a flat USB cable for connecting to a computer. In addition, the manufacturer completed the box with instructions for the smartphone and a needle for opening slots with a SIM card and microSD. If the user wants a case for the Lenovo Vibe Shot, it will have to be purchased separately.

Design

Logically, to begin with the characteristics of the device itself, it is necessary to start with the main and most obvious - its appearance. Already in this matter, “Lenovo Vibe Shot” (reviews confirm this) has something to show.

Let's start with the fact that plastic, metal and glass are connected in the phone case. Due to this, the device not only has an attractive appearance, but also well protected in practice, say, from falls, bumps and other third-party influences. Perhaps, with this in mind, a cover for the Lenovo Vibe Shot is not required - the phone is already quite durable.

Three color modifications of the device are offered for sale - black, gray and red. The difference in their design lies in the color scheme for the metal frame around the perimeter of the case. In all other respects, the model remains unchanged - only in gray the back cover of the smartphone is painted white, and not black (as in all the others).

Appearance Features

It is not for nothing that the phone has the prefix shot at the end of the name. From English, this word means “snapshot”, which shows the intention of manufacturers to present the device as an analogue of a camera. The same is true in design.

In particular, this is expressed in the back cover of the device. It is divided (visually) into two sections through the use of different materials. As noted by the reviews dedicated to Lenovo Vibe Shot, from a distance, due to such separation and the presence of a camera eye in one of the marked parts, the phone really looks like a stylish camera.

This is not the only highlight presented by the developers of the model. Another interesting solution is the use of a glass coating on both sides of the smartphone. Since the device has a rectangular shape of a kind of "brick", the glass cover of the back cover really looks impressive. True, as the reviews report on “Lenovo Vibe Shot”, such a move is not the most practical due to the dirtiness of the back cover, the visibility of fingerprints on it.

There is another usability issue that is not so obvious at first glance. This is the location of the camera eye. From a decorative point of view, the solution is very successful - to place it on the very edge of the back cover. True, the developers do not take into account that at first the user often closes the peephole with his finger, with which he holds the corner of the smartphone. It turns out to be somewhat inconvenient due to the fact that in the future you need to take the phone more carefully so as not to close the review.

Device navigation elements

Despite the originality shown in the design, the location of the phone's batteries has remained classic - we can find the same set on other smartphones. So, under the screen, first of all, we see the physical buttons “Home”, “Options” and “Back”, which are equipped with white backlighting. Due to this, they look attractive against a dark display.

The rest of the keys are located on the right panel. Here there is a classic set of a display lock button and a volume control. We also added a button for switching the shooting mode and a button for quickly calling the “Camera” application. No wonder the new “Lenovo Vibe Shot” is positioned as a camera phone.

The left side of the device looks empty - slots for installing an additional memory card, as well as a SIM, were placed here. A system of special mines is used, which can be seen on the iPhone. Indeed, convenient and practical.

Screen

The entire front surface is painted under the color of the display, which makes it seem that the screen takes up more space than it really is. Although it is also impossible to say that the phone is equipped with a small display - the characteristics describing the “Lenovo Vibe Shot” indicate that its size is 5 inches. It operates on the basis of IPS technology, which allows you to transmit a colorful picture of high accuracy. The image density is huge - due to the resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, it is about 440 dpi. In simple terms, we can say that the screen of the model transmits a very accurate, sharp picture, and this is a definite plus.

The developers did not forget about the protection of the screen, covering it with a special third-generation glass resistant to mechanical stress.

Judging by the reviews, the Lenovo Vibe Shot phone has both the ability to increase the screen brightness for more convenient work in bright weather and in direct sunlight, and vice versa - to reduce it for comfortable viewing of the picture from the display at night and in the absence of lighting . This option is clearly to the liking of ordinary users.

CPU

The Lenovo Vibe Shot is powered by an octa-core processor developed by Qualcomm. This Snapdragon 615 has four cores clocked at 1GHz and four more at 1.7GHz. This allows us to assert high performance device, its ability to work even with the most “bulky” (in terms of physics and graphics) applications, top games without any delays and slowdowns.

Antutu testing also gives excellent results - at the level of other flagships from Samsung, Meizu, LG. A nice feature of the phone is also the ability to play videos in FullHD format. Image quality is excellent, frames load smoothly and without stuttering.

Also, the fact that the processor of the device is properly optimized for work under different loads is evidenced by the fact that the model does not heat up even after a long load. Again, the result of this is more economical battery consumption.

Camera

We have already said that you can judge the emphasis placed on the camera function by the manufacturer by the name of the phone that we are describing. This is confirmed by the characteristics describing the “Lenovo Vibe Shot”. So, there are two cameras here - frontal and main. The latter has a strong matrix, the resolution of which is 16 megapixels. This is indicated on the back of the phone, directly opposite the device logo. Beyond the strong hardware manufacturers have also tried on the software basis of interaction with the camera. In particular, the creation of high-quality images is facilitated by the presence of such options as auto focus (using laser technology), a three-tone flash, as well as two modes with a set of their own filters - Auto and Pro.

As the recommendations show, the new Lenovo Vibe Shot automatically offers the user a minimum of settings, choosing the conditions for creating the best photo on their own. As for the Pro mode, here the photographer can choose in what conditions the picture is taken, and how the composition should look in the future.

According to the technical descriptions of the model, it has a resolution of 8 megapixels. It is convenient to take high-quality “selfie” pictures with it. The only caveat is that since there is no autofocus here, you need to take care to put your Lenovo Vibe Shot a short distance away. The camera only in this case can create a good photo of you and what is located behind you.

Memory

If we talk about operational, then the device has 3 GB of memory. In this regard, Lenovo Vibe Shot can be compared with ZTE Nubia, LG G2, OnePlus One and others. What is characteristic, with such an “unpaired” volume random access memory Most of the products on the market are made in China.

Concerning physical memory to accommodate multimedia data, then 32 GB is built into the device for these purposes. In addition, the Lenovo Vibe Shot smartphone supports additional microSD cards, with which the disk space on the device can be increased by another 64 GB. Thus, the developers have provided the user with the opportunity to expand the memory of the device and even work with it as a portable data storage or multimedia player. This is already determined by the preferences of the owner of the phone.

autonomy

The phone is equipped with a powerful non-removable battery, which has a capacity of 3000 mAh. This is enough for such a functional device to work for 20-23 hours in moderate operation mode. To save charge and, as a result, to increase the level of autonomy, a special option of smart consumption allows. It means optimizing all the processes taking place in the device in such a way as to prevent useless loading of the processor. Practice shows that the technique works quite successfully.

Under heavy load, the battery life is reduced to 7 hours. This indicator can be called average for devices of this class.

Operating system

When the “Lenovo Vibe Shot”, the review of which is dedicated, was released in the middle of summer 2015, the current version of the Android OS was 5.1. Now the most recent modification is Android 6.0. Therefore, most likely, Vibe Shot will receive its update and will work under this version.

It should be said that the manufacturer did not install the “naked” interface offered by the developer software- Google - “out of the box”. Lenovo showed originality and released its own design for the model. This is Vibe UI. Outwardly, it uses the same tricks that are visible on Android L - gradients, similar sets of fonts and colors.

Connection

As already noted, the device supports two SIM cards. Both are capable of catching data in the GSM network format and work with wireless mobile internet in 3G/LTE networks. In addition, the phone, of course, has a Wi-Fi module (standard speed) and Bluetooth (used to receive and transfer files, as well as connect with wireless accessories). There is also a satellite signal receiver necessary for navigating in space. The latter supports GPS (world standard), GLONASS (Russia) and BeiDou (China) systems. There is also an FM radio that works through a headset (used as an antenna).

MWC 2015 could be remembered for the announcements of new flagships samsung galaxy S6 and HTC One M9, or, conversely, simpler devices. One of them was Lenovo Vibe Shot - a mid-range smartphone with advanced photo capabilities. He got to the editorial office literally for a day, which, of course, is not enough to prepare a full-fledged review, but enough to appreciate the main "chip" of the smartphone - the main sixteen-megapixel camera with triple LED flash and optical stabilization. In this article, we will get acquainted with the modes of its operation and compare photos with other smartphones.

Lenovo Vibe Shot was dedicated, you can brush up on that stuff. We'll talk about the ergonomic features in a full review, but for now, let's just say that the device looks quite high quality (the main body materials are metal and glass) and well assembled.

The smartphone focuses on photographic capabilities, the design takes this fact into account - the back is covered with a sheet of plastic or glass, under it there is material of different colors - this design echoes compact cameras with built-in lenses that do not protrude beyond the body.

A necessary attribute of a photo-oriented smartphone is a dedicated capture key, which can be used to launch the camera from standby mode. Vibe Shot has such a key located at the bottom of the right side. Above it there was a place for a button that switches shooting modes - Auto or Pro.

Iron

The characteristics of the cameras look like this: as the main module, a 16 megapixel matrix and an optical stabilization system are used. The lens is assembled from six elements. The flash is assembled from three diodes of different colors. According to the manufacturer, it should adapt to the available lighting conditions. There is also infrared sensor(similar to laser autofocus in LG G3/G3S, G4). Its task is to provide fast and accurate focusing. Lenovo claims that the camera will be able to focus up to two times faster compared to conventional systems autofocus. The front camera has a resolution of 8 megapixels.

The remaining components are selected taking into account the capabilities of the camera. The main one is the average performance Qualcomm Snapdragon 615, 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of internal memory plus a slot for memory cards. The screen is 5 inches IPS with Full HD resolution. The battery, at least on paper, did not let us down either - 2900 mAh. It is curious that our test (not final) sample worked on Android 5.1, so the model will most likely enter the market with the current version of the operating system.

Soft

Consider a camera application. By default, in automatic shooting mode, the user is presented with a minimalistic interface. There are only a couple of keys: taking photos, videos, turning on the flash, switching to the front camera and settings. The third virtual button in the upper left corner is responsible for turning on or off the smart (Smart) shooting mode.

Smart mode analyzes the scene and sets the most appropriate shooting settings in its opinion, choosing the right mode. In backlight, the HDR mode is usually turned on, when photographing bright small objects, the automation often switches to Food mode. In addition to them, during testing, we managed to notice the Twilight, Ultra-low lighting, Landscape modes. In most cases, they correspond to what was actually photographed (except for the Food mode, which fell under anything). Smart mode can be disabled, then the software will not analyze the scene, but will simply set the basic settings automatically.

The settings hide the usual set of items: aspect ratio, resolution, quality, white balance, ISO, exposure metering mode, grid level, volume key functions and others.

By changing the position of the switch on the right side of the case from Auto to Pro, you can get into the advanced shooting mode. The number of tabs and items of "hidden" settings in this mode is reduced, some of them are moved to the viewfinder screen.

Professional shooting mode allows you to adjust the exposure, ISO, shutter speed, focal length and white balance in a couple of clicks. It is curious that despite the name of the mode, the settings are not too flexible or wide. For example, the exposure varies from "-2" to "+2", which any smartphone can boast of. Available ISO values: 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600. Shutter speed covers only large values: from 1/15 to 1 second, you cannot set a shorter or longer one. The choice of focal length is advisory for automation, because when shooting, autofocus still works, it just tries to focus within the specified limits.

In Pro-mode, scene-based shooting programs are also available. There are six of them: this is the Pro-mode itself, Panorama, Art-night, Artistic HDR, blurred background and panoramic self-portrait. Half of these modes contain their own sub-modes. For example, in Art-night you can clarify what exactly you are shooting: a city, people in motion, a scene, or just taking pictures in poor lighting. Artistic HDR also contains sub-items: Auto mode, Portrait, Still Life, City.

The available story programs cover real shooting scenarios, but it’s hard to call an exhaustive set. For example, there is no Macro or Sport mode, perhaps this is due to the fact that our sample has not yet received the final software.

The front camera features are standard. When creating self-portraits, you can use the Beauty function, which eliminates skin imperfections. If and shooting panoramic selfies. You can release the shutter by pressing a key, timer, using gestures or voice. To improve the quality of photographs taken in low light, the screen may turn pink or yellow at the time of shooting.

Beauty function example

Shot examples and comparison

Let's take a look at the photos taken by Lenovo Vibe Shot. Let's start with some outdoor shots:

Example photos in natural light

In favorable shooting conditions, the smartphone shows itself worthy - shots with good detail, although from time to time the camera may miss the white balance determination.

If you enter the room, a slight loss in detail becomes noticeable:

Pictures taken indoors

Despite the lack of Macro mode, similar shots can also turn out:

Macro photos

The minimum focusing distance is approximately 5-7 centimeters. When shooting objects at close range, autofocus often fails. If you simply point the viewfinder at the desired object, the camera will focus on it automatically, but if you specify the focus point by tapping the screen, you will not be able to get a sharp picture in most cases.

In difficult lighting conditions, at dusk or in general in the dark, automation begins to increase ISO values. This leads to an increase in the amount of noise, a noticeable loss in detail.

Photos in low light, twilight and at night

The built-in flash "beats" a maximum of 2-3 meters. The Vibe Shot may not be right with the focus distance, but it generally succeeds in shooting close subjects with flash.

Photo with flash

The maximum resolution of the recorded video is 1080p. So far, things are not going well with shooting video - there are problems with focusing speed, dynamic range.

In HDR mode, you can sometimes get strange shots - interesting in terms of colors, but completely unacceptable in terms of detail.

Intermittent loss of detail in HDR mode

At the moment, you can scold and focus speed. In this parameter, the camera is similar to most competitors from the medium-high price segment, and Apple iPhone 6 or Samsung Galaxy S6 focus noticeably faster.

We took several identical shots on Lenovo Vibe Shot, Apple iPhone 6, Meizu M1 Note and Samsung NX30 mirrorless camera (with 18-55mm 3.5-5.6 OIS kit lens), in that order the pictures are presented in the galleries.

Comparison - shots taken in the studio

Comparison - macro

Preliminary results

Lenovo Vibe Shot cannot be called the best camera phone, but the smartphone has potential. It is unlikely that it will be enough to defeat the current flagships, but in the middle price segment, the model may turn out to be one of the best in terms of photography. Now it is clear that the company still needs to work on the software part, first of all on the speed and accuracy of autofocus, and secondly on manual shooting mode, video recording and other little things. We hope that next time the smartphone will arrive at the editorial office in the form of a sales sample with the final software - then we will draw final conclusions both about the quality of the shooting and about the model as a whole.

	Lenovo Vibe Shot Z90-7 (Red) Notify when available
Type	Smartphone
SIM card type	Nano SIM
Standard	GSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100, LTE
High speed data transfer	GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA+, LTE Cat.4 DL (up to 150 Mb/s)/UL (up to 50 Mb/s)
Number of SIM cards	2
Operating system	Android 5.0 (Lollipop)
RAM, GB	3
Built-in memory, GB	32
Expansion slot	microSD/SDHC/SDXC (up to 128 GB)
Dimensions, mm	142x70x7.3
Weight, g	145
Protection against dust and moisture	—
Accumulator battery	2900 mAh (non-removable)
Operating time (manufacturer's data)	there is no data
Diagonal, inches	5
Permission	1920x1080
Matrix type	IPS
PPI	441
Brightness sensor	+
Touch screen (type)	touch (capacitive)
Other	16 million colors, Corning Gorilla Glass 3
CPU	Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615 + GPU Adreno 405
Kernel type	Cortex-A53
Number of Cores	4+4
Frequency, GHz	1+1,7
Main camera, MP	16
autofocus	+
Video filming	1920x1080 pixels, 30 fps
Flash	triple LED
Front camera, MP	8
Other	digital zoom
WiFi	802.11a/b/g/n, WiFi hotspot
Bluetooth	4.1 (LE, A2DP)
GPS	+
IrDA	—
NFC	—
interface connector	USB 2.0 (micro USB)
Audio jack	3.5mm
MP3 player	+
FM radio	+
Type of shell	monoblock (non-separable)
Housing material	plastic, metal
Keyboard type	screen input
More	proximity and light sensors, accelerometer, vibrating alert

Lenovo Vibe Shot is a compact phone that fits easily in your pocket, which is not the case with a typical camera. In terms of dimensions, the device is similar to the Lenovo P70, only it is a little narrower and noticeably thinner: 142 × 70 × 7.8 mm. The weight is rather average for its diagonal - 142 grams.

The smartphone tries to look stylish and unusual - the combination of black and red colors is perfect, for example, for girls under red nail polish. Thanks to the coloring of the back and the location of the lens, Lenovo Vibe Shot looks like a camera. The smartphone is similar to Lenovo Vibe X2: in size, shape and black display frame, slightly protruding from the body. The side frames are quite narrow, but due to the wide margins at the top and bottom, the ratio of the screen area to the body surface is not the largest - 69.3%. Two additional buttons on the case can be called unusual - the shutter release and the shooting mode switch (from "Auto" to "Professional"). In the corner of the case, you can find a throwback from the past decade - a strap hole, a kind of hint of kinship with cameras, for which this is more relevant.

But the build quality turned out to be not so practical, despite the use of metal and glass. First, the paint on one of the corners of the Lenovo Vibe Shot began to peel off in spots during our two-week test. Secondly, the camera lens is very close to the edge of the body, risking periodically removing the wearer's fingers. Thirdly, when taking a smartphone out of your pocket, it is difficult to determine its front side by touch - it, like the back, is covered with glass.

Lenovo Vibe Shot can be bought in two colors: red and gray.

Screen - 5.0

The display of the smartphone can be called high-quality - it is clear, bright and protected by Gorilla Glass 3, but at the same time slightly fibs with colors. Screen diagonal - 5 inches, resolution - 1920 × 1080 pixels (Full HD). Their density is 441 per inch, which is more than enough for a clear image.

The maximum measured brightness (in high brightness mode) is about 530 cd/m2. It is more than enough for outdoor reading in sunny weather. At the same time, the minimum brightness was also good - about 6 cd / m 2, which is quite comfortable for reading in the dark. Lenovo Vibe Shot is equipped with a light sensor and auto-brightness mode. It responds quickly to changes in lighting, but has no manual settings.

In the settings, you can find several image modes. Viewing angles are rather average for an IPS matrix. There is a mode of operation with gloves, with it the screen begins to feel even leather gloves. Color rendition became a fly in the ointment. The colors look clearly oversaturated, unnatural, which is not very good for viewing captured photos.

Camera

Lenovo Vibe Shot is positioned as a camera phone and, therefore, is equipped with top-end cameras (16 and 8 MP). In our opinion, they are still inferior to those of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and LG G4, but they definitely correspond to a high level.

The physical size of the sensor is 1/2.3", it is the same as the flagship Google Nexus 6P and larger than the LG G4 (1/2.6"). The maximum image resolution is 16 megapixels. The camera is equipped with an optical stabilization system, a six-component lens, a triple flash (each in its own color), laser autofocus and a BSI sensor (with backlight). In general, the list of "chips" is impressive.

As for the triple flash, in our opinion, it has no advantages other than increased power. Direct light falling on the subject does not always lead to a good shot. As for the focusing system, it is fast, but slower than the laser one on the LG G4 or LG G3. In general, the cameras correspond to the top, flagship level, the pictures are quite clear, but slightly inferior to the Samsung Galaxy S6 and LG G4. What we really liked was shooting at night, at dusk and in cloudy weather. In the latter case, it is not even clear that the photo was taken on a rainy day. The camera has a high light sensitivity, and although the pictures at night are not ideal, they are much better than the competition. The Lenovo Vibe Shot camera "sees" well in the dark, although the light sources in the photos "leave" in yellow and orange shades.

The smartphone is equipped with several shooting modes, for example, with a slow shutter speed (for night shooting) or merging from different frames. The camera can recognize faces and smiles, as well as shoot panoramas. HDR mode available this case the effect of its use is clearly visible - the detail of the dark areas becomes higher. In any case, the difference is noticeable to the eye. As a rule, a smartphone shoots in the “Smart” auto mode, independently selecting the main shooting parameters or even turning on HDR. But note that you can always switch to "Professional" mode. In it, you can independently configure all the main parameters:

• white balance
• shutter speed (from 1/15 to 1 second)
• ISO (100 to 1600)
• autofocus range
• Exposure adjustment (-2 to +2).

The ranges and number of settings are not very impressive, especially after the "Professional" mode on the LG G4.

The 8MP front camera takes great selfies. It also allows you to turn on the panoramic shooting mode or “Decoration”, it works like on the Huawei P8 Lite - it retouches the skin, but often to an unnatural degree.

When it comes to shooting video, there is nothing out of the ordinary like 4K resolution support. Recording available as usual Full HD video(1920×1080 pixels) at 30 fps on both cameras.

Photo from camera Lenovo Vibe Shot - 2.9

Photo from the front camera Lenovo Vibe Shot - 2.9

Working with text - 3.0

The Lenovo Vibe Shot comes with a standard Google keyboard, with numbers on the top row of keys and Swype support. There is practically nothing more to say about her, everything is typical. There is no markup of additional characters (except for numbers), switching between languages ​​is carried out by a separate key. If you wish, you can install any familiar keyboard of your choice from the Google Market.

Internet - 3.0

As usual, Lenovo didn't get smart with browsers, and only Google's Chrome is preinstalled on the phone. Its features are typical: text scaling to a pre-selected size and synchronization with desktop Chrome. It does not have any special reading modes or special "chips".

Communications - 3.8

The set of wireless communications can be called typical for its price.

Only dual-band Wi-Fi and LTE (Cat. 4) can be distinguished. Everything else is as usual: A-GPS, Bluetooth 4.1 and regular Micro-USB 2.0 without OTG, HOST or MHL/Display Port.

In addition, we note support for two Micro SIM-cards. Moreover, in this case there is no combination with a memory slot, as is often the case these days, when you have to choose between memory and communication.

Multimedia - 3.0

Lenovo Vibe Shot failed to please us with support for a large number of audio and video codecs. He has never produced 4K and 2K videos, TS, FLV or MOV videos, or FLAC music.

Pre-installed video and audio players do not please with an abundance of features. For music, this is the standard Google Play Music app with a typical set of settings. And the video player has practically no features, except for blocking video viewing.

Battery - 3.2

The battery life of the Lenovo Vibe Shot is good, comparable to that of the flagship HTC One M9. We managed to hide a 2900 mAh battery in the thin body of the smartphone (almost like the Huawei Honor 6).

It was able to play video at maximum brightness for 7 hours (almost like the Lenovo Vibe X2), a slightly better than average result. And in the mode music player Vibe Shot lasted about 75 hours (about the same as Samsung Galaxy S6). An hour of work of the GeekBench 3 benchmark “ate” 24% of the charge. In games, the smartphone is discharged in an average of 3-4 hours. From native charger(5 V, 1.5 A) the smartphone was charged in about 2 hours, which is quite typical.

During the tests, we had enough smartphone for a day and a half in an average load mode.

Performance - 2.7

The Lenovo Vibe Shot (Z90-7) is equipped with a slightly above average chipset, but it is enough for all tasks, including demanding games. But the smartphone was given RAM as a flagship - 3 GB.

Lenovo Vibe Shot is equipped with a Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615 processor (4 cores at 1.7 GHz plus 4 cores at 1 GHz). It easily handles typical smartphone tasks and even heavy games. For example, Asphalt 8 or Mortal Combat run smoothly on it and go quite smoothly, only occasionally slowing down.

As for synthetic tests, the phone received the following results:

• GeekBench 3 - 2705 points (got 2836)
• in AnTuTu 5.7 - 39,828 (noticeably lower than Asus Zenfone 2)
• in 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited - 8079 (slightly higher than the average Huawei P8 Lite with its 5556 points).

We also checked if the smartphone heats up in games - it turned out that it does not. After half an hour of playing Mortal Combat, the temperature of the Lenovo Vibe Shot rose to 41 degrees, which is an acceptable figure.

Memory - 4.5

The Lenovo Vibe Shot has 32 GB of permanent memory, of which about 29 GB is available to the user. The volume is solid, but if you use the device as a camera, then it will quickly fill up with photos. For those who like to shoot a lot of photos and videos, there is a slot for a memory card up to 128 GB. At the same time, some applications can be transferred to it from the device's memory. Recently, additional memory is often combined with a second SIM card. But in this case, the slot is located in a separate tray and will not put you in front of a choice between communication or additional gigabytes.

Peculiarities

Lenovo Vibe Shot is running Android 5.0 Lollipop. True, visually it has been redesigned with its own Vibe UI interface, and so much so that the difference with previous version Android is almost invisible. The smartphone settings are a little confusing, for example, the maximum brightness mode is not in the “Brightness” or “Screen” item, but is hidden in the item called ... “Color balance”, where you do not expect to see it at all. Features include the design of the model with the use of glass and separate buttons on the body (shutter release and switching between shooting modes) and, of course, a high-level camera.

The well-known Chinese company Lenovo has always been very careful in the design and positioning of its devices. Sometimes the spirit of experimentation could take designers and developers so far that truly original and noteworthy gadgets appeared on the market. In 2015, at the MWC exhibition held in Barcelona, ​​the world was presented new smartphone company under the loud name Lenovo Vibe Shot.

In fact, the Vibe Shot is a mid-budget smartphone, but with a clear focus on photo capabilities, as its name says quite directly. The smartphone turned out to be very unusual from a design point of view and immediately attracted a lot of attention. However, we all perfectly understand that beautiful and bright does not mean convenient and practical. In this article, we bring you our Lenovo Vibe Shot review. Let's try to understand all the advantages and disadvantages this device, as well as tell you about its capabilities as a camera phone. Get comfortable and we'll get started.

Let's first look at specifications smartphone, so that later it would be much easier for us to navigate its capabilities:

• Operating system: Android 5.1 plus Lenovo Vibe proprietary shell;
• Single chip system: octa-core, 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor with a frequency formula of "4 cores ARM Cortex-A53 1.7 GHz plus 4 cores ARM Cortex-A53 1.0 GHz"; graphics core - Adreno 405 with a clock frequency of 550 MHz;
• RAM: 3 GB single channel LPDDR3 @ 800 MHz;
• Persistent flash memory: 32 GB plus card slot microSD memory up to 128 GB;
• Display: capacitive, IPS-matrix, diagonal 5 inches, resolution 1920 × 1080 pixels, pixel density per inch 441 ppi, protective glass Corning Gorilla Glass 3;
• cameras: main - 16 MP, 6-lens optics, f / 2.2 aperture, optical stabilization, infrared autofocus, triple tri-color LED flash, 1080p video recording at 30 frames per second; front - 8 MP, fixed focus, no flash;
• Interfaces: Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n (2.4 GHz), Bluetooth 4.1, microUSB, 3.5 mm headphone jack;
• networks: 2G, 3G (HSPA+, up to 42 Mbps), 4G Cat.4 (up to 150 Mbps) LTE-FDD: b1, b3, b7, b8, b20; LTE-TDD: b40;
• Navigation: GPS, GLONASS, A-GPS;
• Sensors: accelerometer, light and proximity sensors, digital compass;
• Battery: non-removable, lithium polymer, 2900 mAh;
• Dimensions: 143×70×7.6 mm, weight - 143 grams.

As you can see, the smartphone is fully consistent with its mid-budget category and only in terms of the main camera is much better than its competitors from the same price segment. However, do not forget that because of the camera, this phone also costs a little more. Whether the photo capabilities will be a weighty argument in favor of the Vibe Shot or whether the smartphone will be able to surprise us with something else, we will find out very soon.

Equipment

To be honest, the bundle of Lenovo Vibe Shot z90a40 was able to impress us, of course, in a pleasant sense of the word. The bundles of other Lenovo phones also cannot be called poor, but this time they seem to have outdone themselves. The smartphone comes in a flat, long, two-tone box made of hard, high-quality cardboard. As soon as you take it in your hands, you immediately begin to get pleasant emotions and understand that there is a really good thing in front of you, or rather, inside the package. Inside the box, all the elements of the delivery are located in the same plane, so the box itself has an unusual shape: it is rather long, but very small in thickness.

In addition to the smartphone itself and the standard complete documentation in the box, we also found:

1. 1.5 amp charger;
2. microUSB cable for charging and synchronization;
3. Wired headset in-ear type with a flat tangle-free wire;
4. A paperclip to remove the card trays;
5. Protective film on the screen;
6. Hard translucent plastic bumper on the back cover.

Agree: this equipment is very worthy of a flagship. However, now it is rare to find such a rich package even in expensive phones. Therefore, when you open a box of Vibe Shot, you get a good mood and a feeling that you, as a client, are really important for the manufacturing company. Having familiarized ourselves with the complete filling and appreciating its very high quality, we immediately proceeded to study the features of the smartphone itself.

Design

Yes, it takes quite a bit to twist the Lenovo Vibe Shot in your hands to understand what a stylish gadget it is. The phone is an all-metal candy bar, front and back covered with protective tempered glass. The smartphone comes in three colors: pure white, black and red-black. In our case, it was the last and, in our opinion, the most attractive red version that got into the review. On the reverse side, Lenovo Vibe Shot resembles a real camera, or, as the people say, a “soap box”. Such a design is very original and we have never met before, after all, in this regard, Lenovo designers tried and did not fail. This effect is achieved thanks to the two-tone design of the back cover (gray and black in our case) and the location of the camera in the upper corner. Also on a thin gray frame we have the inscription "Lenovo Vibe", a three-color LED flash and a laser focus module.

The entire front side of the device in the off state seems completely black and noble matte, while the perimeter of the smartphone is surrounded by an all-metal frame. In our case, the frame is red, it also has a matte finish, and thanks to it, the smartphone is confidently held in the hand and does not slip at all. The phone really feels like all-metal in the hands, it is monolithic, does not creak, does not play, and does not sag. In terms of assembly, it is very difficult to find fault with the Vibe Shot, and, as they say, there is no particular reason for this.

But what is worth scolding Lenovo Vibe for is that back panel it's very branded. It is almost glossy, and in this case, a quality oleophobic coating should have been applied. However, unfortunately, in this Lenovo device, the fat-repellent coating does not shine with high quality. Fingerprints on the cover are collected very quickly, and when you try to remove them in one motion, ugly stains form. The owners of the phone will have to constantly wipe it, which creates some discomfort during its operation.

But, one way or another, Vibe still has much more advantages, for example, I would like to highlight the rather compact dimensions of the smartphone, which are only 143 × 70 × 7.6 mm. Lenovo may not have the most compact five-inch device in its class, but in terms of ergonomics, everything is in order with the phone. The phone easily fits in the pocket of even tight jeans and, despite the rather sharp corners, does not cause any discomfort when walking. Also, due to its small size, this smartphone is very easy to use with one hand. You can reach almost anywhere on the screen with your thumb, and the functional elements are conveniently located and easy to find.

Well, at the end of the design block, let's talk a little about the same functional elements and connectors that are located on the smartphone case. Usually this is one of the most boring parts of the review, but in the case of Lenovo Vibe Shot, there is really something to talk about here. Everything is standard on the front panel: on top there is a speaker and a front camera, and on the bottom there are three navigation touch buttons. The buttons are invisible when the phone is idle and give it a more formal look. When the screen is on, they are backlit, however, the backlight is not too bright and is hardly visible in the sun. At the top of the phone is a 3.5mm headphone jack and an active noise-canceling microphone. At the bottom there is a microUSB port for charging and synchronization, as well as speaker grills, one of which is purely decorative. Also in the lower left corner is a special loop for a hand strap. It is rare to see such an element in smartphones, but since the designers decided to focus on the similarity with the camera, then it will obviously not be superfluous here.

Now we pass to the most interesting. Firstly, on the left side there are two hidden trays, one for two micro SIM cards, the second for a microSD memory card. Yes, you got it right. The Vibe Shot is one of those few unibody phones where you don't have to compromise between a memory card and a second SIM, which is great. It is also worth mentioning that the left side is very flat, the phone stands quite stable on it, so you don't really need to buy a tripod. It will be enough for you to simply put the smartphone on a flat surface, and you will already be able to conduct remote shooting. Secondly, we also have a lot of very original elements on the right side. In addition to the already familiar lock key and volume rocker, Vibe Shot also has a dedicated physical switch between automatic and professional shooting modes, as well as the actual camera shutter button. Pressing the shutter button lightly focuses the camera on the subject, pressing it fully takes a picture. The capabilities of the device as a camera phone are really well emphasized, and most importantly, all these elements are quite easy to use, which is very, very pleasing.

Display

A review of the Lenovo Vibe Shot smartphone, of course, would be completely incomplete if we didn’t tell you about the display of this device. Before us is a five-inch screen equipped with an IPS-matrix with a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels and a pixel density of 441 ppi. The display is closed with a special protective glass Corning Gorilla Glass 3, which protects it very well from minor scratches and scuffs. Also, the Lenovo screen has a high-quality oleophobic coating. Prints are practically not collected and, if desired, are very easily removed with a napkin.

The IPS-matrix of the smartphone is very pleasing. White balance and purity are at a high level, black saturation is quite good, but the black uniformity at the edges of the screen suffers a little. At an acute angle, the picture practically does not fade or invert, however, the contrast still drops slightly relative to the perpendicular view, as well as, in fact, the overall brightness, so the result is not ideal. By default, the colors in Lenovo are quite oversaturated and unnatural, however, there is an option in the settings "True color", which turns colors into near-perfect colors, making the color range as close to RGB as possible.

The maximum brightness of the Vibe Shot screen is not the highest and is 425 cd / m². However, thanks to the high-quality anti-reflective coating and the absence of an air gap between the matrix and the glass, the display remains well readable even in bright daylight. Also included in the device "High brightness mode", which is able to raise the screen brightness even more than it can be done manually, namely up to 435 cd / m². As they say, a trifle, but nice. In addition to this, there is also "Auto Tuning Mode" brightness depending on the lighting. It works quite well and practically does not irritate, the brightness is selected to be very optimal for the current conditions, and the switching takes place quickly, without much braking.

In general, the Lenovo Vibe Shot screen turned out to be of high quality, without any serious flaws. Yes, the IPS-matrix here, although of high quality, is not the best possible. But otherwise, the display boasts very impressive characteristics and good performance. The screen does not ripple, does not flicker, the sensor sensitivity is good, the phone responds well to gestures and supports up to ten simultaneous touches. In a word - not bad.

Sound

Although the Vibe Shot is not positioned as a music phone at all, if you compare it with other mid-budget models, it sounds very good. Of the external speakers, the sound traditionally tends to the high-frequency range, but the middle ones are quite enough, which is quite unexpected for this class of smartphones. The sound of Lenovo is clear, juicy and quite interesting, listening to music on it is very pleasant and completely shameless.

But when you connect headphones, the device changes and surprises even more. The sound becomes even clearer and brighter, the smartphone begins to cover the entire possible sound range. In addition to the usual highs and mids, music tracks also acquire very distinct lows, the sound becomes much deeper. The volume of the phone, although not excessive, is more than enough, we think that lovers of listening to music louder will be satisfied.

The phone uses the standard Google Play Music player to play music, the radio is also present, but it works only when headphones are connected. As for the conversational dynamics, the interlocutor is heard very well, his voice is quite recognizable.

cameras

Now let's see how Lenovo Vibe Shot lives up to its proud title of a camera phone. And indeed, if you look at the characteristics of the main camera, you understand that the developers really tried to match the chosen direction. Before us is a 16-megapixel camera, equipped with a lens with a six-element lens. Other specs include an f/2.2 aperture, tri-color LED flash, fast laser autofocus, and optical image stabilization. It would seem, what else does an amateur photographer need to be happy? But characteristics are characteristics, and you need to look at the final result, which we will do right now.

You can launch the camera either from the screen or by pressing the shutter button on the right side. In this case, if you press the shutter twice in the locked screen mode, the camera will immediately take a quick picture. The camera application starts very quickly, literally within a second. By default, the shooting mode is selected on the phone "Auto". In this mode, the camera interface is not overloaded with unnecessary elements, and the smartphone selects the main settings on its own, however, the adjustment does not occur within very wide limits.

When the slider is set to Pro all camera settings are available to the user in manual mode. In Pro mode, the owner can adjust: shutter speed, exposure compensation, white balance, focal length and ISO. The adjustment range is quite wide, but not too detailed, in our opinion. This mode also provides access to various ready-made shooting scenarios, including: "Panorama", "Blurred Background", "Art Knight", "Artistic HDR" and "Panoramic self-portrait". In general, with regard to manual adjustment, we were satisfied, although the “camera phone” could be expected to have more options for customization.

The quality of the pictures is very pleasing. Clarity is good, detail is also on top, but with the rendering of shaded areas, everything is somewhat worse and noise is clearly noticeable. The camera copes very well with distant plans and macro photography, when looking “at infinity” the detailing of distant objects is good, and when shooting very close objects, a very beautiful background blur effect is added. The focus of the smartphone works very quickly and clearly, and optical stabilization allows you to shoot confidently while driving, in this regard, Lenovo is all right. The flash is not very bright, but at the same time it works well on objects and does not overexpose the frame, that is, it works quite softly. When shooting at night, digital noise is not observed, but the noise reduction robot is clearly visible, which in some pictures can blur some small details. But what I definitely didn’t like was the operation of the regime HDR. In fact, it copes with its task, however, all colors become too bright and unnatural, which greatly discourages the desire to ever turn on this mode at all.

As for the front camera, it is quite good, but there is nothing unusual about it. This is an eight-megapixel module with an aperture of F / 2.2 and a fixed focal length. The camera does not have its own flash, but there is a function "Filling the picture with light". Various beautifications are also available, such as the ability to fine-tune the skin smoothing parameter. The pictures are very detailed and clear, in general, this camera is quite good for selfies.

Summing up the results, I would like to say that the camera turned out to be very, very worthy. In fact, when you buy a mid-range device, you get a higher-class camera as a reward, and this is very nice. However, if you call Lenovo Vibe Shot a camera phone, then a very large number of questions arise from the category “Why not, and why not that way?”. Still, Lenovo didn’t get to the level of real giants of shooting, and this mainly concerns, of course, the software part, but it’s a worthy attempt anyway.

Memory and memory card

Lenovo Vibe Shot z90 is equipped with 32 gigabytes of main flash memory and 3 gigabytes of LPDDR3 class RAM. In this regard, the smartphone from Lenovo is a real average. To date, this combination of RAM and main memory is the most optimal in terms of relevance and cost. So, in general, the smartphone is quite happy with its parameters.

Lenovo also supports microSD memory cards up to 128 GB. As we said earlier, Vibe Shot has a separate memory card tray, so the owner does not have to sacrifice one of their SIM cards to expand the phone's memory. Very few all-metal phones offer this option today, so it is necessary to write down this feature smartphone Lenovo as a clear plus.

Connection

In terms of communication, Lenovo Vibe is also doing well. The phone supports almost all currently relevant networks, including: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100 MHz, LTE Cat4 (FDD Band 1/3/7/8/20, LTE TDD Band 40).

Among the wireless interfaces, the smartphone also has: Wi-Fi 802.11b / g / n 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth 4.1 LE, there is OTG, but, unfortunately, there is no NFC module that is popular today. Navigation in the phone is present, supported popular systems GPS, A-GPS, GLONAS and BDS. The first satellites are searched fairly quickly - within about ten to fifteen seconds. When restarted, it only takes a few seconds to find the same number of satellites.

Battery life and performance

Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 is installed as a single-chip system in Lenovo's camera phone. This is an eight-core 64-bit processor with a frequency formula of "4 ARM Cortex-A53 1.7 GHz cores plus 4 ARM Cortex-A53 1.0 GHz cores" and a dedicated Adreno graphics core 405 clocked at 550 MHz.

This chipset was once one of the leaders in the mid-budget category of single-chip systems, but with the release of the newer Qualcomm Snapdragon 625, it is already considered obsolete and is actively leaving the market. To date, the 615th still quite cope with the daily tasks assigned to it, such as watching high-quality video or Internet surfing, but there is no question of a reserve for the future. In the AnTuTu benchmark, this processor scores about 39 thousand points and quite confidently competes with the Mediatek MT6752, however, see for yourself:

Benchmark	Lenovo Vibe Shot (Qualcomm Snapdragon 615)	Oppo R7t (Mediatek MT6752)	Xiaomi Mi 4i (Qualcomm Snapdragon 615)	Nubia Z9 mini (Qualcomm Snapdragon 615)	Huawei P8 (Hisilicon Kirin 930)
AnTuTu 5.7.1	39 081	41 510	38 578	37 689	45 909
GeekBench 3	727/2590	810/4021	672/2651	564/2047	896/3804

As for gaming applications, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 can hardly be called a gaming processor. However, with simple and undemanding games, he copes quite easily, and even some serious projects are too tough for him. In particular, Asphalt 8, Minion Rush and Angry Birds 2 launched and ran at maximum settings, while having a high frame rate. The popular online project WoT Blitz managed to comfortably play at medium settings with a frame rate of 30-40 frames per second in intense scenes.

Lenovo Vibe Shot is equipped with a non-removable lithium-polymer battery with a capacity of 2900 milliamp-hours. With a moderate usage scenario, this battery is enough for a whole day with a margin. With more active use, the device may ask for charging before nightfall, but this is quite a normal situation for devices in this category. The smartphone charges very quickly: a little more than two hours was enough for us to fully charge from zero to a hundred. As for testing with the main power-saving features disabled, you can count on the following results: 13 hours of reading, 8 hours of video playback, 3 hours and 30 minutes of heavy gaming.

Software

Lenovo Vibe Shot is equipped with operating system Android version 5.1 and proprietary shell Lenovo Vibe. Like any other proprietary shell, Vibe UI also has its own distinctive features. Among the first features, the user is struck by a very bright, colorful design and very original background images paired with backs. Also in Lenovo there is a proprietary "smart" button and a set of standard regular utilities of the company called Lenovo DoIt. Unfortunately, not without a fly in the ointment, which for Vibe UI is a very large number of unnecessary pre-installed programs.

Outcome

Lenovo Vibe Shot z90 review is coming to an end. I would like to say that the phone turned out just fine, but it will not be entirely true. And, perhaps, the main claim to the smartphone is ... no, not the camera. Yes, Lenovo is a little short of the quality of "true" camera phones, but do not forget that this is still a medium-budget phone, and not a flagship at all. From this point of view, the camera and photo capabilities of the phone are super, and in general, the smartphone turned out to be very balanced and of high quality. The main question for Vibe Shot is its price. The phone costs much more than its main competitors, which are not positioned as camera phones, but nevertheless have very good cameras. This is a disservice to Lenovo, as many users opt for cheaper devices, even if they are less original.

But still, be that as it may, Lenovo Vibe Shot turned out to be a very worthy and original smartphone, which will definitely be remembered by many people for its original design and good workmanship. If you manage to find this phone at a discount or the price is not as important to you as image and originality, then we can safely recommend this smartphone to purchase.

Lenovo VIBE Shot video review

We also invite you to watch a video review of the Lenovo Vibe Shot smartphone.

The frames remained wide enough, the screen occupies 69% of the surface of the front panel. The widest stripes are left above and below the display. But as for me, it’s even more convenient to hold the smartphone in a horizontal orientation. The risk of accidentally touching the screen is minimal. The pixel density is relatively low - 441 ppi, but even with this value it is impossible to see the pixels with the naked eye.

Color rendition may seem unnatural, as if someone had “lifted up” the saturation parameter. Because of this, photos look a little better on the Vibe Shot screen than on a laptop or tablet screen. Previously, a similar trick was used by manufacturers of compact cameras. But, by the way, in the settings you can set the default image profile, which slightly reduces saturation and makes the colors on the screen more realistic.

Integrated camera

The main module uses a 16-megapixel BSI-CMOS sensor. A matrix with the same resolution is used in some flagship smartphones - Samsung Galaxy S6, LG G4. It is possible that we are talking about the same sensor at all. However, the optics are different, and the very nature of the image is different. However, the resolution is not the only thing that allows you to position the Vibe Shot as a camera phone. There is also a rear panel stylized as a compact camera, there is separate button for shooting, there's even a hardware auto/professional switch. At first glance, the idea is quite sensible, but upon closer examination, it turns out that Lenovo has gone too far with this.