Lenovo Announces The VIBE S1 Lite

Today Lenovo introduced the VIBE S1 Lite at CES in Las Vegas. The VIBE S1 Lite is a mid range smartphone offered by Lenovo which offers some notable specs relative to its price. The known specifications for Lenovo’s newest phone are in the chart below, with a few bits of information like the dimensions and WiFi/Bluetooth specifications being unknown at the moment.

The Lenovo VIBE S1 Lite won’t be coming to the US, which is actually a shame because it looks like an interesting phone for the price. For $199 you get a 5″ 1920×1080 IPS display, support for LTE, and a 13MP rear-facing Sony camera with support for PDAF. Interestingly enough, Lenovo notes that it’s an ISOCELL sensor, even though ISOCELL is really a Samsung specific term for deep trench isolation, which is the process of putting barriers between the pixels on the camera sensor to reduce crosstalk. All of this is run off of a 10.26Wh battery.

If there’s one thing that isn’t too exciting about the VIBE S1 Lite it’s probably the SoC. MTK 6753 is an octa core Cortex A53 part with a max frequency of 1.3GHz. Considering that you’re put on the same playing field as Snapdragon 410 it’s definitely not bad for the price, but some of the other specs are definitely a bit more exciting at this price point.

The last notable thing about the VIBE S1 Lite is the design. Based on the press photos the phone actually looks quite nice for a phone at this price. The color choices are quite interesting, and when they’re combined with the metal band around the phone the design reminds me a bit of the Nexus 6. That’s somewhat intriguing when you consider that Lenovo now owns Motorola Mobility. 

The Lenovo VIBE S1 Lite will be available in white and blue in the first quarter of this year, for a price of $199 USD. Like I said earlier, it actually will not be sold in the US despite its introduction at CES, but it will be sold in all the markets that Lenovo phones are currently sold in.

ASUS Announces February Launch For The ZenFone Zoom

Today at CES ASUS showcased their upcoming ZenFone Zoom, and confirmed that it will be coming to the United States this February. ASUS has teased the ZenFone Zoom a couple of times, and most notably showed it at IFA last year. It was also mentioned during their CES keynote last year, and so it has taken quite some time for it to get to market. Just as a refresher, you can find the ZenFone Zoom’s specs in the table below.

The ZenFone Zoom is very similar to the ZenFone 2 as far as the internal specs go. In the 128GB model there is a bump in clock speed, as the SoC moves from Atom Z3580 to Z3590, but the phone remains the same otherwise. Obviously the big attraction is the rear-facing camera with optical zoom. It’s not clear exactly which camera sensor is used in the ZenFone Zoom, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it’s the same Toshiba sensor from the ZenFone 2. I hope that ASUS has put a lot of work into improving their camera processing from the state it was in on the ZenFone 2, as hardware has never really been the issue with photo quality on ASUS devices.

The ZenFone Zoom will be launching in the United States this February, with a starting price of $399 for the 64GB model. Pricing for the 128GB model with the Z3590 SoC is currently unknown.

Acer Announces Liquid Jade Primo, Flagship Windows 10 Mobile

Today, Acer is announcing the Liquid Jade Primo smartphone. This device is supposed to be their flagship smartphone running Windows 10 Mobile. This means the latest SoC, Snapdragon 808, a 5.5” FHD AMOLED display, a 21MP f/2.2 rear camera, 8MP front-facing camera, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and 802.11ac MIMO WiFi. In order to better support Continuum, the Liquid Jade Primo also supports USB-C and can connect an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse for enhanced productivity.

Acer indicates that the antennas are integrated into the back cover with laser direct structuring, which is an industry standard method for placing antennas in a back cover. The display is also said to have on-cell touch, which is standard for all SAMOLED displays. The Liquid Jade Primo also has some cooling system without much detail in the press release, but it wouldn’t be a big surprise to discover either the use of heat pipes and/or thermal paste to help disperse heat.

Pricing for the Liquid Jade Primo is currently unknown, but the specs are fairly high end so it’ll be interesting to see if Acer will try to undercut the Lumia 950 and 950 XL on price.