Lenovo released the P770, the company’s latest Android phone with a massive 3500 mAh battery recently. We brought you the unboxing of the device last week. Here we have the complete review of the device. Lenovo showcased the phone at the MWC 2013 earlier this year. It has a 4.5-inch (960 x 540 pixels) qHD IPS screen, powered by a 1.2 GHz dual-core MediaTek MT6577 processor and comes with Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) with Lenovo’s own UI on top. Let’s dive into the review.
Unboxing
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjZ0St-pX38
Box Contents
The box contents include,
- Lenovo Ascend P770 handset
- micro USB cable
- USB OTG cable
- 2-pin Charger
- User guide
- Warranty Information
- 3500 mAh Battery
Hardware
The phone has a large 4.5-inch IPS screen at a resolution of 960 by 540 pixelsand 245 PPI pixel density, but the bezel on the top and the bottom is huge. The height of the phone is 132 mm, larger than the Lumia 920 which is 130.3 mm tall. The display is decent with great viewing angles.
There is a earpiece on the top with Lenovo branding. There is a 0.3-megapixels (VGA) front-facing camera, proximity and ambient light sensors next to it. There is a LED notification light right next to the camera which is a great addition.
There are the usual capacitive touch buttons for menu, home and back below the display.
The power button, micro USB slot and the 3.5mm audio jack are crammed next to each other on the top. Since the power button on the top of the phone, it would be hard to access for some. There is a secondary microphone just above the metal rim.
On the right side there is a volume rocker.
There is nothing on the left side. The phone is 11.7mm thick and is quite heavy at 162 grams. There is a thin metal strip all around.
The plastic back is glossy, hence it is a fingerprint magnet.
There is a 5-megapixel auto focus camera with LED flash. There is a Lenovo brand logo below that.
There is a loudspeaker grill on the bottom.
When you open the plastic back cover, you get to see the large 3500 mAh battery.
Just above the battery there are full-sized SIM card slot and a micro SD card slot. You can expand the memory up to 32GB.
Camera
The 5-megapixel auto focus camera takes decent shots. There is an LED flash, but the flash doesn’t fire at the exact time, which spoils the image and making it look washed out. On the left side there is a toggle for flash and option to switch to either cameras. There are different capture modes such as Panorama Mode, Mav Mode, Smile Shot, EV bracket shot, Auto scene detect and HDR. There are different scene modes (Auto, Night, Portrait and Landscape), Effect Regulation that lets you control saturation, contrast and Exposure, Option to adjust AE Meter (Average, Center and Spot), change the white balance and set Anti-flicker frequency (Auto, 50 Hz or 60 Hz). You can reduce the image size and enable self timer).
Here are some camera samples
The phone can record videos at 720p HD video resolution. The video quality is decent and is stored in .3gp format. You can set the focus mode to continuous that adjusts the focus based on the object and the infinity mode that focuses eveything on the frame. Since there is a secondary microphone, audio is better.
Here is a 720p HD video sample.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgCK-YsRbR0
Software
The phone runs on Android 4.1 with Lenovo’s custom UI on top of it. Lenovo is calling the homescreen as IdeaDesktop. The home screen has a large widget called Lotus that has shortcuts for 5 applications. You can add up to 9 homescreens.
You can press and hold on the screen to add Applications, Widgets, Shortcuts and Folders to the homescreen. You can also change the wallpaper with this method. The drop-down notification bar has quick toggles for WiFi, Bluetooth, Data and more.
You can press and hold the menu button to view the multitasking menu, press and hold the Home button to launch the Google Now.
You can change the theme, add effects and add home screens from the menu options. Other options include, option to chance Desktop page-turning animation, change the theme with just a shake, change the icon decoration and lots more. The desktop cleanup settings lets you remove unused shortcuts from the homescreen automatically.
Out of 1 GB of RAM you get about 980 MB of usable RAM. Out of 4GB, you get just 1.58GB of usable storage space.
Apps
The phone comes with several pre-installed apps. The utility apps include, Calculator, Clock, Gallery, Installation Manager, File Manager, News & Weather and Sound Recorder. The Google apps include, Chrome, Google+, Google Search, Google Maps, Google Talk, Voice Search and YouTube.
The Novice Tutorial lets you learn about the features of the device. Other than these you also get pre-installed apps such as AccuWeather, Hand light (lets you use the phone’s LED flash as torch-light), LeCalendar, CamCard Business Card Reader, CamScanner Phone PDF Scanner, Kinngsoft Office document viewer, Skype, SugarSync and UC Browser.
Music Player and FM Radio
There is no separate music player, you can use the Google Play Music app to play music. The sound effects equalizer settings has different equalizer presets. You can also enable Bass boost and 3D effect features once you connect your earphones. There is FM Radio with Wireless FM Playback and FM recording, but it lacks RDS. Wireless FM reception might get affected in closed spaces, so better used the headset in such cases. Audio output through the speakers is good, but audio through the earphones is average. You also get a normal set of earphones, and not an in-ear ones.
There is a separate video player. It can play 720p videos up to 30 fps, but it can’t handle 1080p full HD videos.
Dual SIM
It dual SIM support with dual standby. You get a SIM management option to configure both the SIM cards similar to most of the dual SIM smartphones that also lets you choose different colors to the SIM cards. You can set a default SIM for several operations including voice call, video call, Messaging and Data connection. You can also choose Always ask option for voice calls and Messaging that gives you option to complete the operation after you choose either SIM cards.
Calls and Messaging
You can call or text using either SIM cards. You get an option in the drop-down bar and a notification when you place a call, if you choose always ask option. It’s the same even with text messages. You get the SIM card name or the number both in the call logs and the message Inbox. It has a TouchPal keyboard by default, but you can switch to the default Android keyboard from the settings.
Performance and Benchmarks
Performance of the phone is average. It has occasional lags due to the custom UI and themes. The phone is powered by a dual-core MediaTek MT6577 processor clocked at 1.2 GHz with PowerVR SGX 531 GPU. Here are some benchmarks of the device.
Quadrant Benchmark
The Lenovo P770 tops the Quadrant Benchmark with 2961 points.
AnTuTu Benchmark 3.3
It couldn’t beat the Micromax A116 powered by a quad-core chip, but tops the other devices running on a dual-core processor.
NenaMark 2
It managed to clock 24.5 fps in the NenaMark GPU Benchmark. Check out the complete list of Lenovo P770 Benchmarks here.
Connectivity
The connectivity features include, 3G (HSDPA: 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA: 5.76Mbps), Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth v 3.0 with A2DP, GPS, USB OTG support. There is a portable hotspot shortcut in the Apps section. The phone doesn’t have WiFi Direct or DLNA support.
Battery Life
The main USP of the phone is the 3500 mAh Lithium-Ion battery. Lenovo promises 12.5 days of standby and 30 hours of talk time. We couldn’t test the phone for continuous video playback or music playback, but the phone lasted about 2 days with both the SIM cards on use on 3G, few hours of audio and video playback. It takes about 4 hours to charge the phone completely.
There is a Lenovo Power app that shows the phone’s status based on your usage. You can also choose a pattern that triggers when the battery life of the phone is down to a certain limit. The Long Standby pattern disables all the wireless connectivity, Common Pattern disable all the connectivity expect data. The Alarm Pattern triggers the Airplane mode. You can also set you own pattern manually. This would improve the battery life of the device if the battery is low.
The main highlight of the phone is the bundled USB on-the-go (OTG) cable that lets you charge another phone easily. You can also transfer content from other devices or a USB drive using the OTG cable.
Conclusion
We reviewed the Xolo B700 with a 3450 mAh Lithium Polymer battery recently. This one has a 3500 mAh Lithium Ion battery. Both these phones have an exceptional battery life of around 2 days. Lenovo P770 is a huge phone, but it doesn’t feel bulky. It has USB OTG support with charging option, runs on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) and has LED notification light, but it is an average performer. At a price tag of around Rs. 14,000 , if you are looking for a large Android phone running Jelly Bean OS with marathon battery, go for it.
Pros
- Great battery life
- USB OTG with charging support
- Runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box
- LED Notification light
Cons
- Average performance
- Phone might be huge for some
- Pictures wash out when using the LED Flash