Lenovo Vibe X2 detailed review

Lenovo has tried its best to be one of the top selling laptop brands in the world but the smartphone segment still lacks that momentum. To address this issue, Lenovo has been experimenting with screen sizes, material choices, and customizations for some time, and has recently begun to show some improvement. The Lenovo Vibe X2 looks like a delicious treat, reminiscent of a candy cane. Let’s take a look at the details of the phone and see if it works well.

Design and build

Unlike any other Candibar smartphone, the Lenovo Vibe X2 has a colorful striped exterior that makes the phone look like a Candibar. Lenovo has gone head-to-head with a different design. Unibody slim and flat body has a sour spot, you can not easily lift the phone from a flat surface, such as from the table. Overall, we like the design, it has a certain elegance.

The Lenovo Vibe X2 is definitely a new design but the design of the flat candybar is not easy to hold and the edges dig into the palm of your hand. There are three contact points on the back of the phone and this allows the phone to connect with additional accessories like battery case or JBL speaker case. The phone is well made and we are satisfied with the strong build quality of the phone, although the phone looks like a flexible candybar.

Display and UI

Let’s move on from the Candy Reference to the 5-inch screen 1080p screen that we like. The display of the smartphone reproduces bright colors and has a viewing angle. The 1080p screen is complemented by a thin bezel which adds a good viewing experience. There is a slight problem with visibility with the screen under direct sunlight but not so much that you have to curl up for it, but the same cannot be said about the keys on the dim light at the bottom of the screen.

The custom UI of Lenovo Vibe X2 may please some people but an Android phone without app drawer can also come as a mistake. This does not mean that the UI is in any way inferior to the stock Google UI, it just feels unnecessary and so does the bloatware of the phone. Some Nifty features like ‘Take a picture from a black screen by double tapping the home button’ or ‘Answer the phone with your device close to your ear’ are neat and purposeful.

Performance and battery

The Lenovo Vibe X2 covers the new MediaTek octa-core chip that lets you perform whether you’re going through your Gmail or playing real racing on the phone. The MediaTek chip inside the Lenovo Vibe X2 runs everything like air but it does so at the expense of battery life and heating. We haven’t yet reviewed a phone with a MediaTek chip that doesn’t get that hot. But apart from the heat and battery issues, the phone is a good performer which is quite clear from the synthetic benchmark comparison sheet given below.

The call quality and touch performance of the phone was good and there was no problem at our reception either. Video quality on smartphones is much higher, but the phone has not been able to impress us with the same audio quality as its bottom or headphones through loudspeakers.

As we have said, the battery is not the most powerful in the Lenovo Vibe X2 and it may or may not let you use it all day, and it depends entirely on your gaming habits and your screen time. Even in our battery test the phone only managed to last a little over 5 hours which is a matter of concern.

The camera

The Lenovo Vibe X2’s 13MP camera is easy to use and good at what it does. It comes with optional grid lines and advanced settings. The pictures taken by the camera were good but the cool side of the color palette. The 1080p video quality of the phone was satisfactory but extra perfect in ambient lighting conditions. The front 5MP camera is the best passable and will do the job for you for occasional selfies.

Camera sample from Lenovo Vibe X2

The last row

The design with Lenovo’s Vibe X2 has taken a different approach with its layered design on the front, making it quite different from an Orthodox Candibar smartphone. The phone has a nice screen, a good camera, a custom UI that desperately tries to look like iOS which we won’t crib and a powerful MediaTek chip, but here the deal breaker is below average battery life where the processor plays. The main culprit. It looks like the phone has a brain as well as a brown one, but with a bigger battery it could do better. Consider the Huawei Honor 6 as a good alternative but keep in mind that Huawei faces some issues like poor audio quality and an average camera.