Lenovo ZUK1

Finding Phones has never been easy and now a days especially when it comes to the under 15k segment. There's tons of options to choose from, each offering better value for money than the other and at the same time, you want to make sure you avoid the ones that may look good at first but then make you suffer later, such as phones which boast about their quality and price value and after a while lets you feel down.

The Lenovo Group already has made his name in the world of mobile phones by its dashing looks and awesome phones under the companies: Lenovo itself, and Motorola. As a result, the company has a variety of solid products that sell in huge numbers the world over. However, like done by some known companies like xiaomi and yu (Micromax Sub-Brand), Lenovo has decided to market a part of its product range as online-only which is currently coming to be named as Zuk (originally a Chinese company established in August 2015). Zuk is Going to be the sub-brand of the Lenovo Company.

Design and display

Lenovo ZUK Z1 is a very contemporary looking phone with a curved back that makes it easier to hold. The curved back is also a good way of hiding the extra-large 4100 mAh battery, which will come in handy. However, the design in nothing out of the box and is very similar to a lot of the phones we have seen over the past few months. It does not have a design which will excite you and especially from the back, it looks like you are using the old fashioned arena’s phone. It is a 5.5-inch phone which has been overloaded in the marker now-a-days, a metallic finish of the frame and a plastic back which looks like a piece of metal, where the battery is not accessible as the back panel is non-removable.

It has a dual sim tray which is on the left side of the phone, within the frame and there is no slot for a microSD card. There are two colour options for the Lenovo Zuk Z1 in India; white and space grey. The back has a dull, metallic finish, as does the frame. The phone is bare of any Lenovo branding, with just a Zuk logo at the back and nothing else. The camera and flash are located at the centre of the back near the top, and on the whole we quite like the minimalist styling of this phone.

The bottom has the microphone, speaker, and USB Type-C port for charging and data transfers. The right side of the phone has the power and volume buttons, while the top has the 3.5mm socket. At the bottom is the physical home button with its integrated fingerprint sensor, and capacitive Android navigation keys. The Box includes a 13W power adapter and a USB 3.0 cable with a Type-A plug at one end and Type-C at the other. The screen occupies nearly 70 percent of the front of the phone, while the camera, earpiece and proximity sensor sit above it. The Zuk Z1 does not allow you to unlock the phone in standby mode. This isn't itself a problem, but the button is slightly settled down and a bit firm, needing some effort to press down. The sensor itself is quick and accurate in unlocking the phone, but the process isn't quite as easy as it is with other devices. The sensor does not have any other use.

The screen of the Lenovo Zuk Z1 sports a resolution of 1080x1920, with a density of 401ppi. It's a decent screen, and is sharp enough to serve most of the requirements. A polarising coating on the screen does help with legibility under bright sunlight, so it doesn't need to be too bright. therefore, brightness isn't quite as great as we'd have expected from an IPS-LCD screen, and even at its brightest it doesn't quite seem as bright as it should be. It is best to control brightness manually, as the adaptive brightness mode usually makes it too dull. Black levels are decent as well, as is the contrast ratio which ensures a fairly accurate representation of colours through the spectrum.

Additionally, there is also LiveDisplay which usually comes with CyanogenMod Roms, a setting that allows you to optimise the colour tone of the screen based on the time of day. You can choose how cool or warm you want the colours to get based on the time of day, or set the colour temperatures manually. This lets you set up the IPS-LCD screen exactly as you want it. The temperature switches made a noticeable difference to viewing comfort, and the ability to adjust this at any time is a great addition to the phone. Personally I recommend the CyanogenMod Roms, these are really great for UI and Customizations.

Performance and camera

The phone was first launched a year ago, therefore it is using an older 32-bit quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, clocked at 2.5GHz. So It is actually an old chipset which was first used around 2 years ago, as now-a-days at a time when new smartphones priced at under Rs. 15,000 are running the latest MediaTek Helio or Snapdragon 600 series SoCs .However, you're still buying a phone with an old SoC, and this is cause for concern about the longevity of the Zuk Z1. That said, the phone does run the latest and most stable variant of the Snapdragon 801, the MSM8974AC, and has the excellent Adreno 330 GPU. It's an extremely capable SoC even today, continuing to perform with the same consistency and strength as when it was new.

The Zuk Z1 packs with 3GB of RAM, 4G connectivity on its two SIM slots (Indian bands supported), Wi-Fi ac connectivity, and a 4,100mAh battery. The phone has a significant internal storage capacity of 64GB as well, but there's no support for expandable storage so you're limited to that much.

Software used in the Phone is fantastic and has the most customisable UI, which is a copy of stock android loaded with many custom features, the phone currently uses Cyanogen OS 12.1, which is based on Android 5.1.1. Although there has been talk of a planned upgrade to Cyanogen OS 13 based on Android 6.0, this update isn't available through the phone's OTA software update system yet. While Cyanogen OS isn't quite as tweakable as the geek-inspired CyanogenMod, it offers a decent blend of customisability and stability. In most ways, Cyanogen OS functions just like stock Android, and you can even change the theme to have it look like that. The system's trademark is its high degree of customisability, and we see a lot of this in Lenovo Zuk Z1.

The home screens and app drawer can be changed to different layouts, the grid sizes, scroll effects and icon labels can be changed and toggled, and there's much more to play with. You get a fair amount of control over how the user interface looks at its most basic level. It is the phone for all those tech geeks who wants to change their looks every day. Going further in, the Settings app also has a few different options that give you a greater sense of control over the device than most standard manufacturer UIs offer. This includes being able to control whether the screen should light up when you plug in a charger, the colour of the notification light for battery alerts, custom actions for the home and recent buttons, the position of various elements on the status bar and notification drawer, and much more. Cyanogen OS is the ideal operating system for advanced users who want control over more aspects of their phones, and one we love using because of its general stability, light footprint and ease of use. Additionally, it's free of any bloatware and has a good set of system apps that are well designed and light on phone resources.

Now coming on to the camera it has a 13-megapixel primary camera built on Sony's IMX 214 sensor, and also features optical image stabilisation and a dual-LED flash. The camera app is of Cyanogen's own Camera Next, which is a fairly decent option in terms of ease of use and functionality. The most useful toggles are easily accessible from the viewfinder screen itself, including flash, camera and timer settings.  The front camera sports an 8-megapixel sensor, and both cameras can record video at up to 1080p, with the rear camera also featuring 60fps video recording. Video recording is also a one-step procedure, and panorama mode can also be quickly toggled this way.

Additionally, resolution settings, manual controls and codec selection can be done through the settings menu, which gives you an a typically large amount of control over your pictures and videos.

SOME PICS CAPTURED BY IT

The camera itself is fairly capable, taking pictures that are sharp and detailed, and manage to capture colour tones effectively and accurately. In well-lit images, the handling of light and dark areas is particularly good, while low-light images succeed in capturing a fair amount of detail with an acceptably low amount of noise and grain. Indoor shots aren't quite as good as well-lit outdoor shots, but are up to an acceptable standard as far as detail and colours go.

Videos are fairly good in decent light, but suffer a bit in low-light conditions. However, the ability of the camera to focus quickly and readjust to lighting conditions is commendable, and far better than other devices we've seen in this price range. High-speed and slow-motion modes produce fun results with a clean sense of motion and fluidity.

SOME BENCHMARKS

The elephant in the room then. The Snapdragon 801 is an able SoC, but it’s also over two years old. Hence, logic dictates that the Zuk Z1 is equal to a two-year old flagship smartphone, upon arrival. It’s a tough sell, but here again, Lenovo’s Zuk team has done a good job. Benchmark scores don’t tell the story here, because this phone is less about numbers and more about experience.

The fact that CyanogenMod has been tweaked for the phone is evident by how smoothly the UI performs, or how fast regular apps open. App load times go up only when you’re running heavy games etc, like Injustice: Gods Among Us. That said, it’s worth noting that actual gameplay is pretty much lag free, except over extended periods.

The temperature is below 40 degrees, even when the processor goes up to nearly the max clock speed, at around 2.4GHz. If you’re outdoors, in the summers, this would of course be more.

have about 50 apps that I use on all my phones though, and each one of them is compatible with this device. What wasn’t acceptable in the OnePlus X, is acceptable at a price point of Rs. 13,499. Moreover, it has 64GB of internal storage, which makes it a better bet than the OnePlus X. The fingerprint sensor on the device isn’t as fast as Nexus imprint, but it’s not slow enough to complain either.

Our suite of benchmark tests corroborated all of this, with impressive scores through the tests, particularly with the graphics benchmarks. AnTuTu and Quadrant produced scores of 57,835 and 24,885 respectively, while GFXBench and 3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited returned scores of 28fps and 19,550. All of these are excellent, particularly when you consider the age of the Snapdragon 801 SoC, and are an indication of just how capable and ahead of its time the SoC was back in 2014.

The Zuk Z1 ran for 13 hours, 40 minutes in our video loop test, which is an impressive figure. In ordinary day-to-day use, the phone would last us well over a day on a full charge, despite continuous 4G connectivity, a bit of gaming and the screen brightness set at the highest level throughout. Wi-Fi, cellular connectivity and call quality are excellent as well, and the only drawback is the somewhat weak speaker that sounds poor. However, with headphones, the sound quality is decent enough to use the phone as your primary music player and for watching the occasional video.

Verdict

Lenovo has an excellent device on its hands with the Zuk Z1. The phone is well built, runs excellent software, has a good display, comes with plenty of storage, and has excellent connectivity and good battery life as well. There's also a great screen which is sharp and can be tweaked and customised to your preferences. Above all, the company has achieved all of this at a great price that will tempt a lot of buyers, particularly advanced users who know a thing or two about the advantages of Cyanogen OS over other manufacturer-developed user interfaces.

Unfortunately, there are some noteworthy drawbacks as well. Although we faced no performance or compatibility issues during our time with the phone, it does run an old 32-bit SoC with a GPU that may have trouble with new games and apps going forward. There's also the previous version of Cyanogen OS and Android out-of-the-box, with no timeline on an update to the newest software. Although a relatively minor complaint given the ample 64GB of on-board storage, the phone does not support expandable storage. And finally, buying the Z1 won't be easy because of the annoying flash sale model.

However, the Lenovo Zuk Z1 is a great option nonetheless, particularly considering its price and the features on offer. If you don't expect the age of the hardware to be a problem for you over the next couple of years or plan to use this as a secondary smartphone, the Zuk Z1 may well be worth considering over some of the other options in this price range.