Back at IFA 2015, Lenovo had announced a new selfie focussed smartphone, the Vibe S1. With Selfie becoming an obsession with smartphone users, Lenovo also joined the bandwagon with the Vibe S1. The Lenovo Vibe S1 is the world’s first selfie focused smartphone with dual front cameras. The front dual camera set up comes with an 8MP camera which captures the images and there is also a 2MP camera for analysing the depth of field for bokeh effects.
So does the phone live up to the expectations? Let’s find out in this review.
Related Reading: Lenovo Vibe S1 Unboxing
Design and Build:
While most of the OEMs are running behind the specs versus price war, Lenovo has decided on looks. Without doubts, the Vibe S1 is the best-looking smartphone from Lenovo in the recent times. Lenovo has used premium metal unibody on the Vibe S1 and it looks gorgeous. The device is made of sturdy aluminium and also has diamond cut chamfered edges. The front and rear panel are made of 2.5D Gorilla glass which adds protection. The rear panel has a curved design reminiscent of Motorola’s Moto G series.
The right side houses the power and volume keys while the SIM/micro SD card slot is on the left side. It has dual nano hybrid SIM card slot. The top panel houses the 3.5mm audio jack while the bottom panel has micro USB charging slot and the speaker unit. The rear panel has a glossy finish because of the glass panel and has 13MP camera, Vibe branding and dual tone LED flash. The front panel has the 5 inch Full HD display, front-facing 8MP and 2MP secondary camera and three capacitive touch buttons which are sadly not backlit.
Overall, the Vibe S1 is a beautifully designed device in the mid-range segment.
Display:
The 5 inch Full HD display (1920 X 1080p) display has 441PPI and looks good. While the colors aren’t as vibrant as the OnePlus X, they look pretty good for a mid-range phone and the sharpness levels are very good. The touch response is also very good and is very accurate. The viewing angles are good thanks to the IPS panel.
The brightness levels are a tad lower than the competition, but it is still not a bad display by any means. The display is protected by Corning Gorilla glass.
Software:
Lenovo Vibe S1 runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop with the company’s custom Vibe UI 3.0. While the phone has Lollipop, we are surprised by the fact that it does not run 5.1 found on Vibe Shot and also on Vibe P1. The UI is mostly similar to the one found on Vibe Shot but with a few options missing. The notification center is again a stripped down variant with few features missing compared to Vibe UI on Vibe Shot.
It comes with multiple home screen devoid of app launcher. It also has a custom notification center and quick toggles which are customizable.
Lenovo has included quite a lot of bloatware into the device which we feel could have left out. There are some useful tools like recorder, calculator, Radio, Compass and other apps. It also comes with a file manager app.
There is also a custom settings panel and a theme center is included where you can do a bit of customization with themes and lock styles. But unlike MIUI which offers theme download, Vibe UI does not offer that feature. The phone also comes with a handful of gestures like double tap to wake, quick snap, smart scene and wide touch.
Performance:
The phone runs on 1.7Ghz Mediatek MT6752 Octa-core 64 bit processor with 3GB RAM and Mali-T760 GPU. The overall performance of the device was pretty good considering it is one of the few devices offering 3GB of RAM in this segment. The UI was pretty smooth in day to day tasks. The gaming experience of the device was also decent although there was slight sluggishness in high-end games. Surprisingly, the heat generated while playing games was also on the lower side considering it has a glass panel on the rear side.
Related Watching: Lenovo Vibe S1 Gaming Review
Multi-tasking was very good on the device and switching between apps was pretty smooth. The call quality on the phone is very good and we seldom had any issues with calls. The speaker performance was also decent for a mid range phone.
The phone also supports 4G LTE in India.
The phone comes with 32GB of internal storage and out of which around 25.5GB is available to the user in the first boot. Comparing the storage offered on OnePlus X, this is one of the highlights of Vibe S1. The phone also uses hybrid SIM card slot, which means you can also expand the storage at the cost of second SIM card.
Overall, the phone performed pretty well in day to day tasks.
Camera:
The USP of Vibe S1 is the selfie camera, the first smartphone with a front-facing dual camera set up. There is an 8MP selfie camera and a 2MP secondary camera for bokeh effects. You can add blur effects after you have taken the photo. The rear camera is 13MP shooter with dual tone LED flash and phase detection autofocus.
The camera interface has decent features to offer, but unlike Vibe Shot which was a camera centric phone, Vibe S1 lacks some added features. The camera interface is also not the quickest when it comes to taking photos. You can take photos in 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios and video recording is at 1080p. The quality of the photos taken with the device was decent and at times, the software processing was over sharpening the photos. The colors are good, but the contrast was slightly on the higher side, especially for the daylight photos. The low light photos were also decent with adequate lighting. Talking about the front camera, the quality of selfies were again good and with added effects and features you can make the selfie experience even better. Here are some of the samples taken with the camera.
Battery Life:
Lenovo Vibe S1 comes with a 2500mAh battery which is on the lower side considering the specs. The battery performance of the device was decent and you end up with a day of battery life if you are a moderate user. But if you are a heavy user with 4G LTE, the battery drop was quite high and tough to get a day and you might have to carry the power bank.
Verdict:
Summing up, the Lenovo Vibe S1 priced at Rs 15,999 is a good offering in the mid-range category. With great design, good performance, decent camera and premium build, it is definitely one of the better offerings from Lenovo. OnePlus X is definitely better in terms of specs, but the invite system makes it difficult to buy and also it has only 16GB storage compared to 32GB offered by Vibe S1.
