Lenovo has a good reputation with their Laptops, especially Thinkpads, but their smartphones are so obscure that many people in Nepal would be surprised to know that they also make mobile phones. I was one of those people but now that I have had the pleasure to use one of their budget phones, the Lenovo A6600, I am thinking of seriously considering their mobiles in my next purchase.

Yes, this is the first and only mobile that I have used from Lenovo, and I shouldn’t speak so highly of them so soon, but you know what they say about first impressions. And what a first impression! The Lenovo A6600 made me want to ditch my current phone, Huawei Y6, but alas! I have money problems. You should note that I’m not setting the bar particularly high for it because of its price which is Rs 14,000 and the fact that it met all the requirements that I look for in a smartphone.

Lenovo A6600 Review

BUILD and DESIGN

I am going to say it flat out, I am not a fan of the design. It is a little too plain for my taste. It has a plastic body all around but that is to be expected for phones at this price point. The front is covered by glass, except for the speaker grills. It has capacitive buttons for back, home, and overview which, personally, I prefer instead of the onscreen buttons because they don’t take away from the screen’s real estate.

At the back, there is the rear camera and flash and another speaker grill near the bottom. There is a silver plastic frame on the sides and the top and bottom which is very standard nowadays. The volume rockers and the power button are on the right side, a headphone jack is on the top and next to it is the micro USB port. The position of the port at the top made me raise an eyebrow but other than that there is nothing interesting about the design. I would buy a case for it if I had owned it.

SCREEN

The screen has me impressed. It gets really bright at full brightness but it’s not the brightest phone, of course. It’s a 720 * 1280 resolution, 5-inch IPS display with a pixel density of 320 dpi.

Also, it supports multitouch of up to 5 fingers. So, media consumption in this phone is very satisfactory. You usually don’t get as good of a screen for this price. I found out first hand after realizing that my current phone is not as color accurate or gets that bright. In fact, the best thing about this mobile is its screen.

ALSO READ: Xiaomi Redmi 4X Review – Best Budget Smartphone?

SOFTWARE

It runs Android 6.0 aka Marshmallow. I don’t think Lenovo plans on providing the Nougat update for it. I hate it when companies don’t give any attention to their budget products.

There are the cool guys at XDA Developers though who might help you cure that feeling of being left out of the newest Android updates if you’re brave enough. For those that don’t like tinkering with their phone, Marshmallow is a great OS so you should be fine with it. It helps that the OS here is very close to stock Android. There are only one or two bloatwares which aren’t completely unnecessary.

The animations are very smooth and the apps open fairly quickly. It’s the standard Android experience. I didn’t come across any lags or freezes. The default launcher is horrendous to look at, the icons are too big and ugly so I immediately installed a Nougat Launcher from the app store. Another flaw I couldn’t get over was that you can’t customize the notifications panel. It has all the necessary features but I expect to be able to at least customize the notifications panel in a manufacturer’s version of Android.

PERFORMANCE

It got an AnTuTu Benchmark score of 21,940.The hardware in this thing is comparable to any other mobile in this price point and the performance is also similar. It handles normal tasks without a sweat and light games run respectfully. The phone never got hot enough to be an issue. It struggles with heavy games though. I downloaded Injustice 2 which ran but was stricken with lags and freezes. Need for Speed: No Limits ran well enough to be playable. I don’t play many games in mobiles so it wasn’t much of a big deal for me.

Lenovo A6600 Key Specifications

• Display – 5.0 inches IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 720 x 1280 pixels (294-ppi pixel density)
• Chipset – MediaTek MT6735P
• CPU – Quad-core 1.0 GHz Cortex-A53
• GPU – Mali-T720MP2
• Memory – 16GB internal storage with microSD expandable storage(up to 32GB), 1GB RAM
• OS – Android 6.0 Marshmallow
• Primary Camera – 8 MP, autofocus, LED flash
• Secondary Camera – 2 MP
• Battery – Removable Li-Ion 2300 mAh battery
• Others– Accelerometer, Proximity, 3G, 4G VoLTE

Lenovo A6600 Price in Nepal: Rs. 14,000

CAMERA

The worst part of this mobile is unsurprising, the camera. The pictures come out grainy, washed out, lackluster or in other words, terrible. It does have an HDR mode which helps in some cases but it still doesn’t make it up to par. I don’t recommend taking out this phone while taking group selfies or to click any photo that you might post in social media.

BATTERY

The battery is only 2300 mAh but I could make it through 2 whole days of regular use. Watching videos and playing games will discharge it very fast but you can expect to last a couple of hours. The weird thing is, charging takes forever. I don’t know why that is the case. It takes around 2 hours for the phone to get from 10% to a 100. It is tolerable but a big flaw nonetheless. It is removable though which is kind of a plus.

VERDICT

Lenovo A6600 is a pretty decent phone on a budget. It fulfills everything that you might want from a smartphone except for the camera. I loved using it as my daily driver for a week so much so that I would happily replace my current phone with it.

It might fall short for you if you want more from a smartphone than what it offers. I recommend to you, the bit more expensive, Redmi 4A. As for me, I don’t ask much from a smartphone. It should get the job done and it does it without a hitch. You might offer me an iPhone or a Galaxy to choose over it and I’ll choose those phones but since you aren’t I’m fine with the phone I have.