Lenovo A7000 First Look: Features Android 5.0, Dolby Atmos; priced at Rs 8,999

Lenovo had announced the A6000 at CES and it was launched in India in February. It has been just three months, and Lenovo is already **out with the A7000** which it had released at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The A7000 for all practical purposes seems like an upgrade to the A6000. The smartphone will be exclusively available on Flipkart, starting April 15. Registrations for the Lenovo A7000 have already begun. With the 5.5-inch display and a Rs 8,999 price point, the Lenovo A7000 will compete with the Yu Yureka as well as the Xiaomi Redmi Note. Just like its competitors, the Lenovo A7000 will also be sold in a flash sale model. We had a chance to use the phone for a brief period and here are our first impressions. Build and Display  It comes with a plastic rear cover which is not as flimsy as the one seen on the A6000. The A7000 is slimmer than the A6000 and has a flat profile on the edges and the rear side. Removing the rear cover reveals the dual SIM card, microSD card slots and the removable battery. Of the two SIM card slots, one can take in a 4G SIM card.  Lenovo A7000 has a 5.5-inch HD display which is similar to what was seen on the Yu Yureka as well as Xiaomi Redmi Note. The display is bright and colours appear vibrant and thanks to the IPS panel, the viewing angles are good. Just like the Lenovo A6000, the A7000 also drops any kind of Corning glass protection. While using the phone, we had to clean the display surface for smudge marks a couple of times. Processor, Storage, RAM The Lenovo A7000 has upgraded to the MediaTek MT6752m SoC which has 1.5GHz octa-core processor along with Mali T760MP2 GPU. This is paired with 2GB of RAM. Both these specs are an improvement over the entry level A6000. According to a Lenovo A7000 **benchmark leaked** last week, the AnTuTu scores of the A7000 is seen to be higher than Xiaomi Mi 4 and Samsung Galaxy S5. While that certainly is saying a lot, we will need to test it out for ourselves to believe that. The phone’s response was quick though.  One of the unfortunate aspect of having a proprietary skin on the phone’s OS is that the phone ends up taking up a lot of storage space. According to the Lenovo mobiles product head, of the 8GB storage only around 3GB is available to the user. That’s really not much space. Sure you get the microSD card slot to increase storage capacity, but that comes with added investment in a microSD card. OS, Dolby Atmos and other features Android 5.0 Lollipop, Google’s latest mobile OS, is seen on the Lenovo A7000. But like most Lenovo phones, the A7000 comes with the Vibe UI skin atop it. Barring the notification bar, the overall look of the Lenovo A7000’s UI isn’t different from the A6000 which is based on Android 4.4.4 KitKat.  One of the USP of the Lenovo A7000 is the Dolby Atmos support. Dolby Atmos is a sound certification involving sound experience where the sound is moving within a three-dimensional space. You can experience this kind of sound in a Dolby Atmos certified movie theatre where the movie also needs to be mixed with Dolby Atmos. On the Lenovo A7000, the Dolby Atmos tries to simulate that experience on a decent pair of headphones. We will be able to elaborate more on this once we get the phone for testing. It is said to work best with Dolby Atmos certified movies or trailers. The Lenovo A7000 houses a 2,900 mAh battery which the company claims is good to last for a day. Camera  The Lenovo A7000 comes with an 8MP rear camera with the Sony Exmor IMX219 sensor along with a 5MP front-facing camera. The camera interface is clean and the settings menu is divided into tabs for still and video imaging. These specs look good on paper but we will reserve our judgement till we try out the camera for ourselves as the changing low light conditions at the launch venue weren’t an ideal area to test the camera. Conclusion Lenovo A7000 was expected to be priced closer to Rs 10,000 when it was first announced at Barcelona. But the India pricing of Rs 8,999 has certainly put the price point under check. The phone comes with some interesting features specially if you are a multimedia enthusiast. The octa-core chipset claims to give a good performance (which obviously we will have to check). Finally the phone comes bundled with Android 5.0 out of the box. While it will certainly give some competition to the likes of Yu Yureka and Xiaomi Redmi Note, what will be more interesting to watch is if it will also attract the prospective A6000 buyers, in effect cannibalising its own sibling, because for Rs 2,000 more someone looking at a phablet has more incentive to opt for the A7000 over the A6000. Do check back on our full review of the Lenovo A7000.