With a 5.5″ Full HD touchscreen and an Intel Dual Core 2 GHz processor inside, Lenovo’s flagship smartphone the K900 is a bold bid from the Chinese tech giant to bite into the smartphone category, specially with its competitive prize of 2000 AED/SAR. The phone is scheduled to be available in both Saudi Arabia and the UAE by end of July 2013, here is a look at the phone:
Design wise the K900 looks really nice, slim and neat, quite big though, the phone spreads over 157mm x 78mm, this is expected because of the large screen, however the K900 is very slim and light, it’s just 6.9mm thick and weighs 162g, which makes it one of the thinnest and lightest smartphones available now, if not the lightest and slimmest. Below is a comparison between the K900 and the 5″ Samsung Galaxy S4.
The phone contains no physical keys on the front side, which makes it really smooth, on the sides you have the power key and the volume controls, and since the battery is not removable, the Micro-SIM card chamber is on the side, and you will need this small key to open it.
The K900 runs on Android Jelly Bean, I like the menu effect, check the video and you will notice how the main menu twirls when move through it, I didn’t like the icons though, I think having them stand alone looks better than uniting them with that white circle. You can join a number of shortcuts in 2 groups on the main desktop screen, one for your favorite apps while the other group is for tools like the Radio, the Flashlight, the Audio Recorder and so on. The radio might not see like an important thing to have, but personally I like to have a radio on my device, sometime you just want to tune in to listen to one of your favorite radio stations, without the need to listen via the internet, and with this device you can even record what’s being broadcasted on the radio.
The Super Gallery looks really cool, I like how photos and videos are sorted in a nice way, the files are divided by the days, weeks and months, depending on when you accessed them. You will notice that some photos start to scroll automatically to reveal more details of the photo itself.
The Lenovo Power feature helps you figure out the expected time before you run out of battery, this feature enables you to figure out power consumption of each app/service and calculates the expected running time of the battery whenever you turn apps/services on and off. This feature is very helpful specially when you are out and about and you can’t charger your phone, you can extend the life of the battery by switching off some apps and/or services, this can be very helpful in some cases.
The K900 is equipped with a 13MP camera that can shoot 4128 x 3096 pixels stills and 1080p full HD videos at a rate of 30fps. The camera enjoy auto focus, face detect, geo tagging, and a range of pre-defined shooting sittings and effects, these effects include the Micro, Kaleidoscope, Comic, Thermo, Pencil, Star Burst, just to name a few.
These effects can be a lot of fun, but it can slow down the camera, I noticed this few times. Anyway, you can create some awesome photos, my personal favorite is the Kaleidoscope, which helps you create Arabesque style shots. These effects are also available in the photo editor as well, it’s always better to shoot then edit, this helps you keep the original shot should you felt like using a different filter later.
The K900 is a really cool smartphone (phablet), it’s so slim and light, a bit large, but it can still fit in my hand. The size shouldn’t be an issue if you’re looking for a smartphone with a large screen, personally I moved from using a 3.3″ Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray to the 5″ Samsung Galaxy S4, and now to the 5.5″ Lenovo K900, when I got the S4 I felt it’s really big, but now after using the K900, I feel that the S4 is normal.
I didn’t face issues while using the K900 so far, I noticed that it heats up a little bit while using the camera for a long time, but it wasn’t an issue. One other issue I faced when I tried to shoot a video of the Dubai Fountain, the audio turned out to be bad.
The K900 is scheduled to be available in UAE and Saudi Arabia end of this July, at an initial price of 2000 AED/SAR.
Here are some photos I shot using the Lenovo K900:
