Smartphones

Lenovo Announces The VIBE K5 and K5 Plus
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Lenovo Announces The VIBE K5 and K5 Plus

Along with their tablet and PC announcements today at MWC, Lenovo also announced two new smartphones under their VIBE branding. The new phones are the Lenovo VIBE K5 and VIBE K5 Plus, with each device targeting a slightly different price, along with packing different specs. The details of both of their specs can be found in the table below.

  Lenovo VIBE K5 Lenovo VIBE K5 Plus
SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon 415
8 x 1.4GHz Cortex A53		 Qualcomm Snapdragon 616
4 x 1.7GHz Cortex A53
GPU Qualcomm Adreno 405 @ 550MHz
RAM 2GB LPDDR3
NAND 16GB eMMC + MicroSD
Display 5.0″ 1280×720 LCD 5.0″ 1920×1080 IPS LCD
Thickness / Mass 8.2mm / 142g
Camera 13MP Rear-facing
5MP Front-facing w/ fixed focus
Battery 2750mAh
OS Android 5.1 Lollipop
Other Connectivity 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n + BT 4.1, Micro-USB 2.0
SIM Dual SIM with 4G LTE
Price $129 $149

To be honest, I think it’s a shame that these phones never seem to make their way to North America. Looking at the specs and the price, you’re really getting a lot of phone for your dollar. The VIBE K5 is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 415 SoC, while the K5 Plus uses Snapdragon 616. What’s interesting about Qualcomm’s new SoC portfolio is that the only real difference between the best 400 series and 600 series SoCs is the clock speed, with both being octa core Cortex A53 chips. While I really can’t find a functional reason for putting eight of the same cores with the same max frequency on an SoC, I suppose that it does help greatly with a device’s marketability in regions like China. Both SoCs use Adreno 405, which really helps to address my complaints about the GPU performance that we’ve seen in devices at the low end of the market.

Aside from the SoC, the other point that separates the K5 and the K5 Plus is the display. The K5 is just advertised as having a 1280×720 LCD display, while the K5 Plus is a 1920×1080 IPS LCD. The fact that the IPS specification is omitted from the K5 does concern me, but I wouldn’t expect that it’s using a TN panel as that would probably be more difficult to source than an eIPS or a VA panel.

In all other ways the K5 and K5 Plus are identical. Both phones have 16GB of eMMC NAND and 2GB of LPDDR3 memory, plus a MicroSD card slot for expansion. Both have a 13MP rear-facing camera, and a 5MP front-facing camera which for some unfortunate reason has a fixed focus. WiFi connectivity is your standard 2.4GHz 802.11n, which is the best you’ll get at this price point. There is dual-SIM support, although it’s not clear whether this is DSDS or DSDA, and what network capabilities the second SIM has.

The Lenovo VIBE K5 and VIBE K5 Plus will be available in March, with the K5 priced at $129 and the K5 Plus at $149. Both phones will be available in silver, grey, and gold finishes. As usual, the phones won’t be coming to the US or Canada, but they’ll be available in the existing markets that Lenovo services.

Hands On With the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge
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Hands On With the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge

If you’ve followed our reviews for the past year, it was probably evident that the Galaxy S6 was one of the best phones launched last year. With one of the better designs in terms of camera, the first 14nm SoC, and a great AMOLED display, there was a lot to like, and consequently it’s no surprise that it was one of the best selling Android phones for 2015. With six iterations of the Galaxy S behind them, Samsung has done a lot over the years to improve the line, however even the S6 wasn’t perfect, and there were still issues that kept it out of the running from being the best possible phone that it could be, which Samsung is looking to address head-on with the new S7.