Lenovo Vibe S1 Hopes to Impress with Dual Front Camera Setup [Camera Review and Sample Shots]

This year, the China-based mobile maker Lenovo launched an array of devices in the Indian smartphone market focussing on different audience and their demands.

Earlier this year, the company launched a mid-range smartphone -- the Lenovo Vibe P1 with a huge battery of 5000mAh, followed by camera-centric smartphone Vibe Shot and then came the Lenovo Zuk Z1. This one offered some powerful specs including Snapdragon 801 SoC and 3GB RAM. However, the latest device to join the Lenovo family is none other than the Vibe S1.

The Lenovo Vibe S1 comes in two color variants including Pearl White, Midnight Blue color at a price of Rs. 15,999 exclusively on Amazon India.

With Vibe S1, the company targets the selfie lovers as it's being marketed as the world's first dual selfie camera. The company claims that Lenovo Vibe S1 has got unprecedented creative options, including one touch refocus, background swap and more. Elaborating on its USP, the Vibe S1 comes with two front cameras, which is 8MP - this one helps in capturing photos and 2MP for depth sensing.

Basically, the Vibe S1 smartphone comes with 13MP rear camera, 8MP/2MP front facing snapper capable of recording full HD resolution video and today GizBot has come up with a camera review of the smartphone, after spending a few days with the phone. Let's move ahead and find out.

Camera Functionalities:

The Vibe S1 camera comes with an handful of features including HDR (High Dynamic Range), Auto and Panorama. There are borders and filters available inside the app and can be accessed only via gallery for both the front and back camera pictures.

Also, the Vibe S1 camera comes with tri-axial leveling along with the command over of photo resolution and photo quality. Anyhow, there are some limitations to the dual-cam, as it is impossible to take video with dual-cam mode.

Moreover, on the front camera, it allows the user to capture images with Depth-of-Field (DOT) by providing the exact information about the subject and background. Also, there are option to super- impose the background with some graphics on the picture you have clicked.

Camera review and sample shots

From our experience, the camera app is simple, clutterless and got a decent amount of controls and features. You need to touch the camera button on the top right corner, to toggle between the front and back camera.

Coming to the dual camera set up, once the picture is clicked you can tap to refocus the object by clicking the blur or you can swap the entire background with cut out option.

If suppose you are clicking selfies with the dual cam, it will leave you with two options - blur and cut out options. In case of blurring the image it gives you three different options - Simple, Spiral and Fast, which works smoothly.

Coming to the cut out option, it leaves you with again with two options which is - Manual Cut and Automatic Cut. When the specific subject got cropped, you can place it over the various existing background including Eiffel tower, Pisa tower and other backgrounds.

Eventhough, it looks simple this dual camera feature is a sure shot treat for the selfie lovers. Moreover, the selfie taken with dual camera mode is indeed amazing and very detailed. However, the camera quality goes below, during low light scenario.

Moreover, the rear camera with 13MP is not that impressive when compared to the front snapper. In a line, we can say that the quality of the image depends on the surroundings and ambient lighting. Below we have attached some shots on different lighting and environment. Have a look:

Day light shots

This image was taken by Vibe S1's 13MP rear camera on cloudy day. However, in this picture the exposure is not even and looks grainy in parts.

In the above picture, the shot is accurate but lacks focus and sharpness on some part.

This image was taken inside the studio. It gives the accurate shot of the Droid toy with natural color reproduction with over saturation.

Low light shots

During low light, the device performance is under par. In this image, the subject is hardly covered.

This device gives decent picture in low light with the help of flash lights. However, there are grains visible in the picture due to LED light.

In this droid picture, grains can be seen all over and lacks focus during the low light photography.

Night shot

This shot was taken at night with environment lighting. Here, most of the part are out of focus and gets pixelated when zoomed.

The image seem to be bit blurred, but managed to get few colors correctly.

Selfie with imposed background

Selfie with blur background

Selfie

Verdict

The Vibe S1 front camera set-up performs very well with creative functionalities during day light conditions, however, the rear camera seems to be bit erratic. On the whole, the camera of Vibe S1 Smartphone is mediocre!

When it comes to low light, the picture quality of both the cameras is a let down. On the brighter side, the rear camera seems to capture decent pictures provided the flash is on. In some cases, the camera tries to reduce the grains on the low light, but it fails eventually giving us a mixed bag of performance and the deivce also heats up a bit during video recording.