Gadget review: The unexpected Lenovo X2 Vibe – power & style

Yes, Lenovo do make phones too. They are mostly known for their laptops and tablets – which they have been increasingly promoting in Romania – but Lenovo also have smartphones in their portfolio. I use an entry level Lenovo laptop at the office so trying our their Lenovo X2 Vibe made sense. It’s also quite eye – catching, as it comes in several colors (the trend nowadays, it seems) and several shades of the primary color applied to the sides of the device. The body is made of a magnesium alloy and the 5-inch phone –quite big – has an angular design. But this does not make it hard to hold in hand or unpleasant to look at – not at all, actually. I think the distinctive corners gave it a more ‘serious’ look. The producer also included a plastic cover case which comes together with the phone – you can choose to use it, or not. I have, and I felt it gave the phone a firmer grip. But let’s go beyond its shape and design: the X2 Vibe is quite a powerful phone. I had no expectations of it whatsoever. I like not to read anything about the phone prior to trying it. As I start using it, I then find out about its features, to make sure I am trying most of them. So with no expectations in mind, I was amazed to see how fast it was. Then I found out why: it’s an octa– core phone – basically, this means it has eight cores, four of which run at 2.0 GHz, and four low-intensity ones run at 1.69 GHz. So its speed ranked high on my list. The X2 Vibe is a unibody phone, which means the battery is included with everything else inside and cannot be replaced. Usually, the problem with unibody phones is that they heat up quite a lot when asked to run certain applications or when running too many applications. I did not have this problem at all with the X2 Vibe, not even when charging it. That’s another big plus. The battery life is also above average, even when used all day. However, most of us got used to charging their phones almost every day nowadays, so nothing new here. What’s new with the X2 Vibe, however, is a neat little feature that allows you to keep only a few basic phone functions to save battery life: calls, texts, alarm clock and access to contacts. It’s called the Ultimate Power Saver, and offers a standby time of several days. For example, when the battery is at 40%, the Ultimate Power Saver gets you 20 hours of these essential features. That’s very convenient and it’s the first time I’ve seen it on a smartphone. It would probably be one of the features I’d use most on the phone to increase battery life span. The scheduled ‘power off’ and on can also come in handy to this end – battery life – in particular for those who also want to get some privacy during certain hours (for example, on a work phone). Also to save battery time and to avoid the frequent situation when one would accidentally hang up when touching the phone’s screen with their face, the X2 Vibe turns off the screen automatically during a conversation. You can deactivate this function if you want – for me, having it on was a must. It also has a smart standby utility – it does light up when looking at it. The phone, launched in September 2014, runs an Android system: it comes with the Android 4.4 KitKat. It has some pre-installed apps – most of which all Google, as well as the handy Evernote, a compass, major social media apps, Skype, some games, an office suite and the Chrome browser for mobile. You can, of course, install how many apps you want from the Google app store. For some people, the downside to installing lots of app is all of them are added to the main screens; but they can also be grouped in folders, which can partially solve the problems of having lots of icons on your home screens. While it is not the top of the range for Lenovo’s X2 phone – rather mid-range – I think the Lenovo X2 Vibe manages to get very close to the premium range. It runs on 2 GB of RAM memory and has an internal storage of 32 GB. For me, the internal storage is quite enough. But for those who will want more, unfortunately the phone does not have any slot for SD cards, so that’s the maximum storage one can get. Like many phones nowadays, the Lenovo X2 Vibe runs on a microSIM. This is important to know before buying the phone so you can get the microSIM – if you don’t already have one- from your mobile phone service provider. Or invest in a microSIM to regular SIM kit, and then you have all SIM ranges. The X2 Vibe’s multitouch display was one of the features which impressed me – it’s a full HD display, which is pretty much obvious even to non-technical users. The videos and images are really stunning. The X2 Vibe is packed with two cameras, a 13MB rear camera with a LED flash, and a 5 MB front camera – the selfie camera. I’ve mostly tried the main one, as the 13 MB offering was impressive, and indeed the pictures were good – you can check out some pictures taken with the X2 Vibe here. The sound too was good when listening to the phone’s speakers. The headphones that come with the phone, however, could have been improved. I have had problems when using them for phone calls; they do not seem to capture the sound very well, so I was often frustrated. In combination with Skype, it also brought me some headaches, both with the loudspeakers, and with the headphones on. I don’t know whether this is a Skype software thing, a phone issue or a combination of the two. But I was forced on several occasions to switch to Skype on another phone to be able to hear well and be heard. This downside was however compensated by crystal clear sound on calls when using the regular feature; the noise cancelation feature on the phone did its job very well. Finally, the remote management from the laptop via WiFi was another handy characteristic – I hate having to remember to take the charger/connection cable with me when I want to transfer something from the phone to the laptop. With the X2 Vibe you can also backup everything to the cloud, via a Lenovo ID account. The phone sells in Romania at various retailers for prices ranging between RON 1,770 and RON 1,940 (the equivalent of EUR 393 to EUR 430).