LeEco Le 1s Review – Worth Every Penny


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Nairrk

Nairrk

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The first flash sale of LeEco's Le 1s, which is priced at Rs 10,999, will be held tomorrow at 12 noon on Flipkart. The handset has created a lot of buzz ever since its announcement for the Indian market.

Here is a detailed review of Le 1s which will help you in deciding whether to purchase this smartphone or not.

Design
The Le 1s, despite its affordable price tag, comes with an all-metal unibody, along with mirror fingerprint sensor. As per the company, the Le 1s is among few devices to offer a screw-less unibody.

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Indeed the phone looks stunning in its metal body. Infact it looks much like the new-gen iPhones. However, it feels a bit slippery and this could be a big issue in the summer season and especially for those with sweaty palms. I hope the company would make available some transparent back covers which would not hamper its looks but at the same time would give better grip.

Coming to the design, due to the metal body, the phone feels quite tough. The phone is compact and can easily be operated in one hand by most Indian users. The mirror finished fingerprint sensor in the back doesn't have any practical purpose but it certainly adds to the phone's charm.

The SIM tray is in the left hand side while the volume rocker and the power button is on the right hand side of the phone. The Le 1s has a microphone, for noise cancellation, on its back panel, besides the rear camera. The 3.5 mm jack and the Infrared port is at the top while two speaker grills and the USB Type C port is at its bottom panel. Another tiny speaker grill is just above the display alongside a proximity sensor and the front camera.

There are three touch buttons below the display – Menu, Home, Back. All these touch keys are back lit. An LED notification light is above the display.

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Display
The Le 1s has a 5.5 inch IPS display which has almost 180 degree viewing angle. The display felt quite smooth and responded to all my touches. I especially felt in love with the colour output of the display. There are various colour modes like Vivid, Natural, Soft and a special Letv mode which is the best possible mode in my opinion. The phone also allows screen colour saturation especially for videos. You can switch the font size as well.

However, the display is not totally immune to scratches despite having Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and I would suggest using a protective cover for peace of mind. The display's brightness also seems just average and may not be enough for bright outdoors, especially in the summer.

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User Interface
The Le 1s runs on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop operating system with the EUI 5.5 custom user interface on top of it.

The interface is a bit different from the default Android version. For instance, here while swiping from the top you will see the notifications but not the Quick Widgets like brightness controller, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS etc. Instead to access such widgets you have to touch the Menu key located below the display. Here you will see five shortcut apps at the top, music controller below that, then the brightness controller, then five shortcut switches and then the recently opened apps.

This particular feature is there in the iOS. So if you have been using Android smartphones so far, you will feel it a bit awkward and confusing but after sometime you would be okay with it for sure.

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Coming to the UI again, there is no app drawer either and everything is laid out in the home page itself. For device's security, you can use the fingerprint mechanism along with PIN or password. However, if you opt for the fingerprint sensor, you cannot use the Pattern method which is a bit weird as in all other Android smartphones, fingerprint and pattern are allowed together. The fingerprint though works perfectly.

Currently, Le 1s does not support any Indian languages and in this area LeEco needs to do a lot as smartphones of companies like Samsung and Micromax are now supporting many Indian languages.

Camera
The Le 1s has a 13-megapixel rear auto-focus camera with LED flash and a 5-megapixel front camera for selfies and video calling. Both the cameras are quite good and able to capture crispy pictures with a lot of detailing. It doesn't have any issues in capturing colours of detail in low light as well as in bright light.

Performance
The Le 1s is armed with the Octacore Helio X10 Turbo processor (64-bit) – the flagship Mediatek processor that has clock speed of 2.2 GHz, and 3 GB of RAM. The combination makes it easy for the phone to do multitask and run high end games with ease.

In terms of battery back up also, the Le 1s is quite impressive. With dual SIM, constant data connectivity (3G/WiFi), the 3000 mAh Li-Po battery of Le 1s managed to offer more than 12 hours of back up with moderate usage.

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The phone has two SIM card slots – one micro and one nano. I never had any connectivity issues, be it calling or internet connectivity is concerned. The phone also offers the WiFi (a/b/g/n/ac) version while its competitors offer the WiFi (b/g/n) version.
Besides, LeEco Le 1s offers the high speed Bluetooth 4.1 version compared to Bluetooth 4.0 version of its competitors. For navigation, it has GPS too.

The phone comes with USB Type C port which is not universal as of now, so you have to keep the charger with you all the time, otherwise you cannot charge it with the ordinary micro USB charger. The advantage of the Type C port is that, the phone gets charged quite quickly.

This port can be used as a MHL port too. Besides, it has WiFi Direct and WiFi Hotspot facilities. Also the Le 1s comes with an infrared sensor that allows it to be used as a remote controller.

However, the phone does not have FM radio which ordinarily taken for granted in low cost phones.

Verdict
'' The Le 1s is undoubtedly a great package at Rs 10,999. From the hardware point of view, it towers over its competitors. It also is not a mere paper tiger; the Le 1s fulfils all that it promises on paper. ''

Source: LeEco Le 1s Review-Worth every penny
 
Thread Starter #2
Nairrk

Nairrk

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Re: LeEco Le 1s Review – Worth every penny

Camera comparison: Le 1s vs Asus Zenfone Max

The LeEco's Le 1s was recently launched in India for Rs 10,999. It offers a 13 megapixel rear camera and a 5 megapixel front camera. The Asus Zenfone Max, which costs Rs 9,999, has the same camera figures. However, their camera outputs are not the same.

We have here compared the camera outputs of these two smartphones to substantiate our above claim.

Speed
The Le 1s' cameras are slightly faster than that of Asus Zenfone Max, and that's perhaps because they capture images in higher ISO value. While the Zenfone Max normally capture images in ISO 50 to 400 range, I have seen Le 1s clicking images as high as 889 while the lowest being 111. The Zenfone Max's camera capture images with as low as 50 ISO while the highest being 610.



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Detailing
Due to higher ISO value, the Le 1s' camera outputs should have have been grainy but Le 1s clicks pictures in higher resolution (4160x3120 pixels) which offsets the adverse effects of higher ISO value and thus offers crisper pictures. The Asus Zenfone Max though clicks pictures in lower ISO but due to lower resolution of 4096x2304 pixels, its camera pictures are not that crisper.



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Brightness
The pictures clicked through Asus Zenfone Max are slightly brighter but sometime that mars the fun altogether. Take these two pictures for instance. Here the Zenfone Max's sample looks washed out with extra white but the picture of Le 1s looks just right.



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Without Flash
The higher brightness though sometimes prove beneficial for the Zenfone Max which is obvious from these pictures.


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Flash
The flash light of Le 1s offers better illumination which is obvious from these two pictures.


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Close Up
Both the phones are able to capture images from very close distance.


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Against Light Source
Here we did not focus on the light source itself (the advertising board).


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Colour Reproduction
Both the phones managed to capture colours quite nicely, even under artificial light.


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Front
The Le 1s' front camera also managed to capture much nicer and crisper pictures than that of Asus Zenfone Max.


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Conclusion
The Le 1s seems a slightly better camera phone as it is a bit faster and offers much crisper pictures. However, the Asus Zenfone Max is not that bad as a camera phone. Infact in darker environments, it offers better illuminated images than Le 1s. We are currently reviewing the phones and will let you known about their performance in other areas also.

Source: Camera comparison: Le 1s vs Asus Zenfone Max-page10
 
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