LeEco Le 1s Review: A perfect mix in budget

LeEco’s Le 1s comes with good blend of software, hardware, specs, camera and battery life

By Mohd Ujaley

In recent past, we have seen smartphone makers trying their best to differentiate their products and grab the headlines but very few were lucky to make substantial inroads. Among that very few companies, there is new entrant called LeEco, a Chinese Internet company formerly called LeTv and widely known as the Netflix of China. Recently, it has launched an affordable smartphone, Le 1s, exclusively in partnership with e-commerce portal flipkart. The three flash sale it has conducted so far seems to have created decent buzz as company claims to have sold 70,000 units in two second, 95000 units in 20 second and 55,000 units in 9 second respectively. Now, impressed with these numbers, LeEco wants to be in top 3 for smartphones and No 1 in Internet sales in India. Le 1s is a good blend of software, hardware, specs, camera and battery life. Priced at Rs. 10,990, although it has an edge of positive buzz in the market but the question remain, is it only the hype or does Le 1s has something substantial to offer? To know the answer, let us look into the device.

Out of the box the first thing that you notice about this phone is its design which has certain similarities with Apple iPhone. The body that is made of metal with plastic strips running along the top and bottom of the rear look premium and stylish. Also, with the thickness of 9.50 mm and weight of 169 gms, the device is neither too thick nor too heavy but help of second hand is needed because it is very slippery. Otherwise, it is comfortable to hold and operate.

The front is dominated by 5.5-inch screen which offers IPS LCD display with the resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. Over all the display quality is better than the any other device in this price range. You can read in direct light and also adaptive display works fine indoors. The front is also home to a selfie-camera and sensor window that have been arranged symmetrically on either side of the earpiece on the top. While three capacitive touch keys are placed in the bottom, but interestingly they are hidden until you tap them to light up. The un-detachable rear panel has LeTV branding in the centre and silver mirror-finished fingerprint sensor above the logo, and the rear camera and flash are in top left corner.

The power and volume rocker keys are placed on the right edge while left has space for tray with cutouts for one Nano-SIM and one Micro-SIM. Also, a 3.55mm audio socket, accompanied by a very non-standard IR emitter are on top edge, while the Type-C USB port between two speaker grilles are in the bottom edge. More device makers are likely to come with Type-C USB port as it is considered to be technologically advanced than the existing Micro-USB. Although, LeEco is ahead of the curve in terms of introducing it first in the market but for users the disadvantage is that they won’t be able to use any of the Micro-USB cables. Company claims that the fast charging features of the Le Type-C connector are supported by its two charging paths, 24W charger, 3A data cable and high density superfast charging battery. To some extent it does charge relatively faster but the overall performance of 3,000mAh battery is not very exceptional, it is at par with any other device in this range. With multitasking and continuous data usage, it could last between 6-8 hours only.

The phone runs on Android 5.0.2 with LeEco’s heavy eUI skin and its entrails are powered by 2.2GHz octa-core MediaTek Helio X10 processor with 3GB RAM. The device comes with non-expandable 32GB of storage that many users may find strange especially at time when expandable storage are norm. While doing multi-tasking and switching between the apps, we did not face any difficulty. It could handle, everything quite smoothly from graphic intensive games to heavy media usage, without any lag.

On the camera front, Le 1s comes with a a 13-megapixels rear camera and 5-megapixels front camera. Both the camera are able to bring decent picture and video in natural light, however same could not be repeated in low light condition. Although, if enlarged to actual size, the picture quality does not hold but overall, the quality is far impressive than any other device we have reviewed in this price range so far. The device comes with all necessary connectivity options. It support 2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

With Le 1s, LeEco seems to have made substantial in-roads in its maiden attempt in burgeoning smartphone market in the country. We used this phone for over two weeks for review and we could not find any solid reason to suggest, not to buy it. Overall the phone offers good blend of software, hardware, specs, camera and battery life.

SPECIFICATIONS
Display: 5.5 inch – 1080×1920 pixels
Processor: 2.2GHz Octa-Core MediaTek Helio X10
Operating system: Android 5.0.2
Memory & storage: 3GB RAM + 32 GB non-expandable internal storage
Camera: 13 MP front; 5 MP rear
SIM type: Dual Sim
Battery: 3000mAh, non-replaceable
Estimated street price: Rs. 10,990

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