Lenovo Vibe S1: Up Close and Personal with the Twin Selfie Camera Smartphone [FIRST LOOK]

By Vijaykumar
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At one the most-talked about tech shows across the globe, phone maker Lenovo unveiled its mid-range -- the Lenovo Vibe S1 - in September, during IFA 2015 at Berlin. Consequently, this device has now reached Indian boundaries recently at a price of around 15,999.

Rating:
3.0/5

Lenovo Vibe S1 First Impression

The USP of Lenovo Vibe S1 handset is it's dual front camera! What does it do? Well,the twin selfie camera shooter lets you to click picture and super-impose them on each other. So now you can easily change the background of your selfies.

Under the hood, the smartphone sports a great hardware along with a decent design. The Lenovo Vibe S1 is available in India for Rs. 15,999. Here is our first impression of the new Lenovo Vibe S1.

Lenovo Vibe S1 First Impression

Design and Built

The Vibe S1 comes with a compact design, which sets it apart from other smartphones launched till now by Lenovo. It sports a unibody design with an ergonomic curved-glass back. On the front it has a 5 inch display along with dual front-facing camera, light sensor and Android navigation capacitive-touch keys.

Lenovo Vibe S1 First Impression

Around the edges, the device has power button and volume rocker on the righ-hand side, while the ejectable tray for SIM and microSD card is on the left. At the bottom, you can see a micro-USB port for data transfer and charging and an iPhone 6-inspired speaker grille on either side of micro-USB port.

Lenovo Vibe S1 First Impression

The back of the Vibe S1 sports an attractive curved-glass with Corning Gorilla Glass protection. The presence of glass makes it a fingerprint magnet and a bit slippery. There is also a 13 megapixel rear camera along with LED flash on the back.

The Vibe S1 is fairly slim at 7.8mm, and is quite lightweight at 132 grams, thanks in part to its aluminium frame.

Lenovo Vibe S1 First Impression

Display

Lenovo Vibe S1 features a 5 inch IPS display with 1920x1080 pixels resolution that translates to an impressive 441ppi pixel density. The display has 67.9 percent screen-to-body ratio and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The full HD resolution offers a great color reproduction along with a nice viewing angle.

Lenovo Vibe S1 First Impression

Under the hood

The Vibe S1 is powered by an octa-core MediaTek MT6752 chipset clocked at 1.69GHz speed. It comes with 3GB of RAM and Mali T760-MP2 GPU under the hood.

The device features a built-in storage option of 32GB and also supports to expand memory up to 128GB using a microSD card. Further, it packs a non-removable 2,500mAh battery, which is claimed to power the device up to 264 hours of stantby time over 2G and 240 hours on 3G.

We got hands on the Lenovo Vibe S2 for a while. We have not seen any issues while using the device, thanks to the octa-core processor and 3GB of RAM, for smoothly managing the performance. Stay tuned for full review.

Lenovo Vibe S1 First Impression

Software

Lenovo Vibe S1 runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system along with Vibe UI on top. It seems like Lenovo has improved its Vibe UI after Motorola acquisition. The interface transition of the Vibe S1 appears to be near stock Android.

Lenovo Vibe S1 First Impression

Camera

The Vibe S1 sports a 13 megapixel primary camera with dual-LED (dual tone) flash. The camera features phase detection autofocus, touch focus, face detection and camera modes like HDR and panorama. The camera has been impressive so far and does take photos with decent and natural color.

The key feature of the smartphone is its dual-camera setup in the front. It comes with an 8 megapixel and 2 megapixel front-facing camera. The working of the front duo-cameras is similar to that of what we have seen in the HTC One M8 dual-rear camera setup.

Lenovo Vibe S1 First Impression

The front-facing 8 megapixel sensor in the Vibe S1 is meant to focus, while the 2 megapixel unit is to capture depth information. The phone lets you to click picture and change the background similar to the HTC One M8. We used the Vibe S1 for a while, and the selfies with blurred background was quite impressive.

Lenovo Vibe S1 First Impression

Verdict

Lenovo Vibe S1 sports a thin design with good specs and a unique camera hardware. Well, there are tons of selfie-centric smartphones available out there in the market, but the dual-camera setup on the Vibe S1 gives a USP to the device, that stands out from the crowd.

However, there are few factor to consider like battery life and the glass-back, which makes it very prone to fingerprints.

To cover up, Lenovo has provided a transparent back panel right out of the box. At the price point of Rs. 15,999, the Lenovo Vibe S1 is certainly a good looking smartphone with great hardware.

We will soon review its performance and features in depth. Stay tuned with GizBot for the full review.

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