Lenovo A7000 Review


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Lenovo launched the A7000 smartphone in India last month for Rs. 8,999. The A7000 is the successor of A6000 that was released earlier this year.The A7000 has 4G support and it is also the first smartphone to come with Dolby Atmos audio support. This competes with the Honor 4X, Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G and YU YUREKA. Is the smartphone worth the price? Let us find out in the complete review.

Unboxing

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We unboxed the A7000 recently, check out the video below.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8IXQXFTQS4

Box Contents

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  • Lenovo A7000 smartphone in Black
  • Headset with microphone
  • 2900mAh battery
  • 2 Pin wall charger
  • Micro USB Cable
  • Scratch Guard
  • Quick Start Guide and Warranty information

Display, Hardware and Design

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The 5.5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD display at a pixel density of about 267 PPI is good, even though the pixel density is low. It is bright with vibrant color output, offers good sunlight legibility and the viewing angles are good too. The company doesn’t say if this has a Corning Gorilla Glass or other toughened glass for protection.

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It has a 5-megapixel camera on the front that is capable or recording videos at 720p HD resolution. The camera is good for video calls and selfies. It has the usual set of proximity and ambient light sensors next to the earpiece. There is a small LED notification light next to the camera, which the A6000 lacks. This glows in red and green colors.

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It has the usual set of capacitive touch buttons for menu, home and back, below the display. These are not backlit, but offer haptic feedback when pressed.

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The smartphone is 7.99mm thick. The power button and the volume rockers on the right side have chrome finish. The back cover extends to the sides of the smartphone making it a bit slippery to hold. The primary microphone is present on the bottom. The 3.5mm audio jack and the micro USB slot are present on the top.

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It has a 8-megapixel camera on the back with dual LED flash. There is a secondary microphone and a loudspeaker grill on the back. The plastic back cover has matte finish and the smartphone has solid build quality. It weighs juts 140 grams, which is light compared to most other smartphones with a 5.5-inch screen. The smartphone is easy hold since the width is 76.2mm, but one-handed usage might be hard if you have small hands since it is 152.6mm tall.

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The smartphone has a 2900mAh removable battery.

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Opening the back cover reveals two micro SIM slots and a microSD card slot. You need to remove the battery to insert or remove the SIM cards.

Camera

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Coming to the camera, the 8-megapixel rear camera with dual LED flash and f/2.2 aperture takes decent shots. It has HDR, Panorama, Live effects (Mono, Sepia, Negative, Aqua, Posterize, Fresh, Movie, Calm, Memory, Gorgeous, Elegant and Cool), and scene modes (Auto, Night, Portrait, Landscape, Sunset, Party, Motion, Beach, Firework and Candle light). You have options to adjust Contrast, Sautration, Sharpness and Exposure manually.

Some images are too sharp and some shots seem dull even in daylight. It takes a lot of time to focus an objects for macro shots. HDR shots are good. Low-light images have a lot of noise and lacked details obviously. It takes a lot of time to focus and capture an image when using flash, which mostly ends up blurry.

Check out some camera samples (Click the images to view full resolution sample).

Lenovo A7000-Sample-2_Daylight

Lenovo A7000-Sample-5_Macro.

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HDR OFF
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HDR ON

Lenovo A7000-Sample-10_Low-Light

Lenovo A7000-Sample-12_Flash

Check out the complete set of A7000 camera samples here. It can record videos at 1080p resolution at 30 fps. The video quality is decent, but it’s not the best. Check out the sample below.

httpv://youtu.be/Ljdl0fUiIG4

Software

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The smartphone runs on Android 5.0 (Lollipop) with Lenovo’s own Vibe UI on top. Even though the Vibe UI is somewhat similar to the A6000, Android Lollipop brings several new features, including Material design, Multi user support, battery saver, better security including Android Smart Lock and more.

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Quick settings has several features including Flashlight, Secure Zone lets you runs specific apps in a secure screen and Wide Touch lets you create a floating bar for accessing utility apps like camera, music, calculator and more. It also supports different themes.

Lenovo A7000 move to SD

Out of 2GB of RAM, 1901MB of RAM is usable, out of which 1.1GB of RAM is free when the phone is idle with just the default apps running in the background. Out of 8GB of internal storage you just get 3.60GB of usable storage, which is very less, with OS alone occupies 3.1GB of space. You can move apps to the SD card if you set it as the default write disk, but 3.6GB gets filled app quickly. Wish it had 16GB of internal storage like the A6000 Plus.

Apps

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Apart from the usual set of Google apps and utility apps, the smartphone comes pre-loaded with a range of apps such as Facebook, Skype Twitter, Evernote, Truecaller, Guvera Music and some trail games.

Music Player and FM Radio

It can play a range of audio formats and it has FM Radio with RDS and recording. The loudspeaker output is good and clear even in full volume, but audio output through headphones is just average, even though the smartphone has Dolby Atmos equalizer adjustment.

Dual SIM and Connectivity

It has 4G support with support of 4G LTE bands (TDD B40 2300MHz and FDD B3 1800MHz) for India. Only the first slot supports 4G, while the other slot has 2G support. It has the usual set of connectivity features including, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS. It also has USB on-the-go (OTG) support, which the A6000 lacks.

Performance and Benchmarks

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Coming to the performance, the smartphone is powered by an Octa-Core MediaTek MT6752M processor with eight ARM Cortex A53 CPUs clocked at 1.5GHz. The performance is smooth without any lags, thanks to the 64-bit processor and Android Lollipop. Since it has 2GB RAM, multitasking is smooth too. Check out some synthetic benchmark scores.

AnTuTu Benchmark 5

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It scored 43114 points in the AnTuTu Benchmark 5.

Vellamo 2.0 HTML5

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It tops the Vellamo 2 HTML5 browser benchmark by scoring 2424 points, better than other octa-core smartphones.

Vellamo 2.0 Metal

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It scored 781 points in the Vellamo 2 Metal CPU subsystem performance test.

Geekbench 3 Multi-Core

Lenovo A7000 Geekbench 3 Multi-Core

Basemark OS II

Lenovo A7000 Basemark OS II

It scored 957 points and tops the Basemark OS II benchmark. Check out the complete set of Lenovo A7000 Benchmarks here.

It has 700 MHz Mali-T760 MP2 GPU. Gaming is decent with occasional lags in some high-end games, and the smartphone scored 3.5/5 stars in the gaming review. It gets a bit warm when playing intensive games for a long period of time, but it doesn’t get too hot. It doesn’t support USB controllers, even though it has USB OTG support. Check out the gaming review below.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCK_a_qMRnE

Battery life

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Coming to the battery life, the 2900mAh battery offers good battery life. The removable battery is also an added advantage. It got One Charge Rating rating of 13 hours and 57 minutes, which is good compared to other smartphones in the range. It lasts for the whole day even with heavy use and for more a day with average use. Battery doesn’t drain much in standby. It has Super Power mode that lets you extend the battery life by enabling just call, text and other minimal features.

Conclusion

At the price tag of Rs. 8,999, the Lenovo A7000 is a decent smartphone and better than the A6000 in several aspects. It runs on Android 5.0 (Lollipop) out of the box and offers good battery life. We recently compared the A7000 with the Yu Yureka that is available at the same price and found that the Yu Yureka to be better in some aspects such as camera.

The smartphone is only available through flash sales on Flipkart, which is common these days. If you are looking for a 4G smartphone with good display and solid battery life under Rs. 10,000, the Lenovo A7000 is a good option. To summarize, here are the pros and cons of the smartphone.

Pros

  • Good display
  • Good battery life
  • Slim profile and light weight

Cons

  • Average camera
  • 8GB of internal storage with 4GB of usable storage

Author: Srivatsan Sridhar

Srivatsan Sridhar is a Mobile Technology Enthusiast who is passionate about Mobile phones and Mobile apps. He uses the phones he reviews as his main phone. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram