Reviews, firmware, repair of Lenovo smartphones, laptops and tablets

• Description and characteristics of the smartphone
• Equipment
• Appearance of the laptop
• Screen
• Performance
• Availability of camera
• Phone operating time
• Smartphone capabilities
• Specifications
• Conclusion

The K30 line of smartphones, according to experts, is simply gorgeous. At a fairly low cost, the Lenovo K30 w has decent characteristics, allowing owners of this device not only to use it as a regular phone, but also as a compact mini computer.

Appearance of the laptop

Lenovo K 30 phones are quite bright, they are positioned as youth phones. Although not everyone shares this opinion, and many mature people acquire this model for themselves. Manufacturers produce the body of the device in several color shades: black, white, yellow, blue, green, red.

The phone is lightweight, has a nice appearance, a thin body, and fits well in the hand. The matte surface of the back cover provides a pleasant tactile sensation. Its dimensions are: 141 x 70.5 x 7.9 mm.

On the front panel of the laptop there are:

• Company `s logo;
• navigation buttons;
• 2 MP camera;
• speaker

On the other side of the body are:

• 8 MP camera with flash;
• stereo speakers;
• microphone;
• Company `s logo.

The cover of the Lenovo K30 laptop is removable and has two slots for stereo speakers. Under it there are two cells for micro SIM cards and a slot for an SD card.

On one of the sides of the case there is a micro USB connector and a cell with a diameter of 3.5 mm for headphones. There is a microphone on the bottom edge that allows you to make phone calls.

On the side of the laptop there are volume and power buttons.

Users note the excellent build quality of the device. The device does not creak or crunch when you press hard on the back panel, which is quite expected from this manufacturer. Both from the outside and inside the laptop makes a good impression - a well-built product. Despite the fact that the screen is rather large, the controls are quite comfortable.

Multimedia

When starting the review of the “lemon”, I expected its excellent sound when playing music, but in reality the sound reproduced by the earpiece is characterized by average volume and quality.

The sound in the headset is of the same average quality, without a proper volume reserve.

But the situation is corrected by 2 speakers, located on the back cover and producing very decent sound for a phone in this price range. Of course, he is unlikely to break the eardrums of his listeners. The volume is not so great, although according to the announcements everyone expected something completely different.

If you wish, you can try installing one of the modern players, of which there are plenty on the World Wide Web. Albeit a little, but you can improve the sound quality of music tracks.

Screen

The five-inch screen of Lenovo K30 w shows a clear, bright picture. We are pleased with the decent display resolution, which is 1280 x 720 pixels. The screen resolution is 294 pixels per inch (PPI). This is quite enough to avoid seeing graininess on the display. With a higher PPI, the battery will discharge faster and the processor will load more slowly. The smartphone has a good, juicy image. Even in bright sunshine, the information on the phone is quite readable. In addition, this mobile device has a good reserve of brightness. Considering that the device is budget, these characteristics are quite decent.

Camera

Lenovo K3 is equipped with two cameras of 2 and 8 MP. It is worth saying that the front camera takes very good pictures, despite the lack of pixels. For Skype, this model is perfect.

Speaking about the main camera, we can note that the resulting frames are not very highly detailed and have good color rendition. For its not very high price, the device copes well with the task. A small, medium-power LED flash helps with night photography.

Of course, examples of photos taken with standard settings are not particularly pleasing with their beauty, but for the price they are worthy. Examples of the resulting photographs are presented below.

Videos with insufficient detail are shot at 30 frames/sec and a resolution of 1280*720 pixels.

Performance

The laptop is equipped with a quad-core processor – MSM8916 Snap dragon 410 with a fashionable architecture (64 bits) and a maximum frequency of 1.2 GHz, which is typical for middle-class devices. The RAM is small, only 1 GB. The undoubted advantage of the smartphone is that under heavy system load, it does not heat up much. The phone does not slow down and behaves quite adequately during operation. However, it is not suitable for complex games, so it is not recommended for gamers to buy it. The presence of a slot for a 32 GB memory card allows you to expand the functionality of the device.

Budget smartphone Lenovo Lemon K3 - review

Budget smartphone Lenovo Lemon K3 - review

Readers constantly write that it would be nice for me to review more interesting budget smartphone models, because flagships for 30-40 thousand rubles are, of course, all very nice, but users for the most part do not spend that kind of money on smartphones, but prefer to buy phones are within 10 thousand rubles, so more reviews of inexpensive smartphones, they tell me, and you will be happy.

Well, I actually have no objection to studying all sorts of interesting budget phones, especially since now among them there are some very decent models.

Recently, by the way, I just reviewed the quite budget smartphone Mlais M52, and in today’s article we will look at an even more budget (just over 7 thousand rubles, or 127 euros, on Tinydeal) Lenovo Lemon K3 phone, which I got from Tinydeal and sent.

I feel more than good about the Lenovo brand: all the smartphones from this company that I came across were very decent, and I generally consider the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 8 tablet to be the best on the market, I use it all the time and don’t even want to exchange it for an updated model.

The Lenovo Lemon 3 model, apparently, is made only for the Chinese market: this model is not presented on the Russian and European Lenovo websites, it is only on the Chinese website. But on Tinedeal, the smartphone is sold with European firmware: it contains all Google services, the use of which is prohibited in China.

Well, let's take a closer look at this phone.

Specifications

Operating system:

Android 4.4.4 (5.0 Lollipop)
Display:
5.0″, HD (1280×720), IPS, 294 PPI
Processor:
Qualcomm Snapdragon 410, 1.2 GHz
RAM:
1 GB
Flash memory:
16 GB
Memory card:
microSD
Network:
GSM 900/1800/1900, TD-SCDMA 1880-1920/2100-2025 MHz, TD-LTE
Wireless:
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
Camera:
8 MP, autofocus, flash
Front camera:
2 Mpix
Ports:
microUSB, audio jack
Navigation:
GPS, A-GPS support
SIM card:
microSIM and microSIM in Dual Standby mode
Battery:
2300 mAh, removable
Dimensions:
141 × 70.5 × 7.9 mm
Weight:
128 g
Back cover color:
yellow, black, white, blue, green, pink
Additionally:
gravity sensor, proximity sensor, light sensor
Price:
7384 rubles in TinyDeal

Well, the equipment for such a price is quite decent. Two SIM cards, LTE support, a good processor, 16 GB of memory. The battery is not very capacious (what do you want for that kind of money), but we'll see how it performs.

However, judging by the supported frequencies, in Russia not only will LTE not work for this phone, but 3G is also unlikely to work. This is for the K30T version that arrived to me. There is also a version of K30W, which has different frequencies and seems to be suitable for Russia.

(Although on the smartphone page on the Tinydeal website it is written that this model should work with 3G and even 4G in both Europe and Russia.)

Contents of delivery

A simple box without any frills.

The package contents are also extremely ascetic: telephone, USB-microUSB cable, power adapter, European adapter, brochures.

Appearance and features

Budget model - budget appearance. A telephone is like a telephone.

The back cover is a piece of plastic, but it looks quite good. By the way, despite the word Lemon (lemon, yellow) contained in the name, the lids of this model also come in other colors: black, white, blue, green, pink. I got the white one.

The speakers are located at the bottom of the back cover and are equipped with special plastic protrusions so that the sound is not muffled when the smartphone is lying on the bottom cover.

Below the camera lens there is a flash and a microphone for recording audio when shooting video.

The cover is easily removed, revealing a removable battery, a slot for a microSD memory card and two slots for microSIM cards.

On the right side there is a volume rocker and a power button.

At the top end there is a microUSB output and a headset output.

The control buttons here are touch sensitive and are located under the display. The buttons are barely noticeable (I highlighted them in the photo), and they cannot be backlit at all.

Here is our hero next to Huawei Ascend Mate 7 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

Regarding the quality of materials and assembly, we can say that the phone makes a very good impression: for its price, the materials and assembly are very good. The plastic of the matte back cover will eventually receive noticeable scratches and abrasions, but this cannot be avoided.

Display

High-quality five-inch display with a resolution of 1280×720 pixels, IPS matrix, made using OGS technology.

Viewing angles are very good. The colors are bright, but the colors are not acidic.

Apparently, there is no oleophobic coating here: the screen gets dirty with your fingers quite quickly.

Comfortable brightness in normal daylight was somewhere around 60-70 percent. The automatic adjustment worked well during the day, although with a sharp change in lighting conditions it noticeably slowed down with the adjustment, and in artificial lighting it sometimes made serious mistakes with the adjustment.

In direct sunlight the screen looked very good: the information was quite legible.

In general, this is a high-quality display, which is usually found on much more expensive models.

Device operation

Android 4.4.4 is installed here with a proprietary shell from Lenovo Vibe UI. There is no separate application window; the icons of all applications are located on desktops.

Here is a list of all applications.

Notification area.

Quick settings icons.

Menu with desktop settings.

Desktop settings.

Recent running tasks with an icon for unloading running applications.

Lock window. Sliding to the right opens the Camera app.

By default, the desktop contains a disabling widget for the device optimization program, which calls this application.

Telephone

An incoming call, for some reason the photo of the caller is not shown.

During a call, you can turn on the record button. By the way, with localization into Russian everything is quite weak here - very often you come across untranslated English terms.

The sound quality during calls is good, I did not find any problems. Apparently, there is no noise reduction system here.

A black list of subscribers is supported.

A test of mobile Internet access showed amazingly low speeds - almost disappearing. I compared the speed with my Galaxy Note 4, which has a SIM card from the same operator, and it was many times faster. Then I took the SIM card out of the Note 4, put it in this phone and measured it again. Where the Note 4 showed 5 megabits in and 4 in, this smartphone showed 0.11 in and 0.5 in. I measured it several times - still the same dreams. There are clearly serious problems with mobile Internet here. But maybe it was just such a specimen that came across?

SMS/MMS

A simple application with few features.

Settings.

With MMS you can send almost anything. Although it is not very clear who will actually use it.

Audio

In some stores, for some reason, this smartphone is positioned as a “musical” smartphone. Interestingly, its sound actually turned out to be noticeably better than I expected.

The built-in speakers provide amazing quality for a smartphone: the sound is loud, clear, without wheezing, and there is even some semblance of volume.

Earbuds (Huawei Ultimo Power ANC Earphone) - very good quality: surround sound, excellent highs, good bass for earbuds.

In-ear headphones (Plantronics BackBeat Pro in wired mode) are also very good: volume, quality, good highs, decent bass.

In general, the sound was frankly pleasing. This is a smartphone on which you can actually listen to music, which rarely happens with smartphones.

Images

Regular android application. There are simple editing tools.

Video

Videos of any resolution are played back without any problems. 4K videos with a hardware decoder are played back perfectly, with a software decoder they are played back without any brakes, but the sound periodically disappears. With FullHD with any decoders there are no slowdowns.

Security

A proprietary application from Lenovo, about which I wrote a separate article.

GPS

It picks up satellites very quickly and keeps its coordinates stable.

Games

The smartphone's performance is sufficient to play almost any modern games, but not at maximum quality settings. Asphalt 8 offered to reproduce graphics in medium quality, but when switching to high quality, the game did not slow down much, although it ran a little less smoothly than on medium quality.

Settings

Mostly the usual Android settings, but there are some additional features.

Camera

Minimalistic and not very user-friendly interface.

Settings. There's even a histogram - why the hell is that in a smartphone?

Switching modes.

Now examples of photographs. (All are clickable.)

Well, here's an example video. (Maximum video quality is 720p.)

For a budget smartphone camera, in my opinion, it takes very, very good pictures. The pictures are clear and sharp. When focusing, it very rarely misses. But the white balance is clearly out of whack - it’s better to adjust it manually, because the camera clearly tends to slide into blueness - the sky is frankly turning blue.

The video, in my opinion, is of decent quality.

In general, I was rather pleased with the camera, otherwise I have often seen the quality of cameras on budget smartphones that are significantly below par.

Performance

The smartphone is not too fast, but I wouldn’t call it slow either. Its speeds are quite enough for comfortable work and entertainment.

AnTuTu gave him 21,323 parrots. This is 8,677 parrots less than 30,000 parrots.

Battery life

The battery here is not a fountain, but the screen resolution is not particularly high, so I assumed that the battery life would show good results.

The declared battery capacity is 2300 mAh. I measured the actual capacity with a special device - yes, everything is fair, it’s practically 2300 (the device showed 2312 mAh).

Internet.

The brightness is set to a comfortable 70%, wireless networks are turned on, and the page in the browser is refreshed every 30 seconds. 6 hours 25 minutes. Not a fountain, but for such a battery it’s decent.

Video.

Wireless communications are turned off, the brightness is set to a comfortable 70%, and a video of the series is playing in a loop in MK Player. 9 hours 44 minutes.

Reading.

The brightness is set to a comfortable 50%, all wireless networks are turned off, and the book is scrolling in AlReader. 12 hours 15 minutes.

Under normal operating conditions, the smartphone only survives until the evening. If there is a noticeable additional load, such as navigation, then you may not survive until the evening.

In general, we can say that operating time is not the strongest point of this smartphone, but for such a capacity it is quite normal.

Observations during operation and conclusions

During the testing period, I did not find any problems in the operation of the phone (except for the above). The back cover practically did not heat up even under heavy load.

In principle, I would call this phone very successful, especially considering the more than attractive price. The only thing that confuses us about it is the strange behavior of the mobile Internet access module, but it seems that this is due to the fact that this particular K30T model is “tailored” exclusively to Chinese communication standards. And, judging by reviews of the K30W model, it does not have such problems when used in Russia. (Or maybe you just came across a specific phone with a buggy module.)

And if you look in general: a good display, sufficient memory, surprisingly high-quality sound reproduction, a very good camera. Is that the battery is a little weak? And all this for 124 euros, that is, for 7443 rubles - in my opinion, very good.

And I’ll still need to study the Lenovo K3 Note - it has a 5.5″ display and more powerful specifications.

PS For my readers - discount codes for TinyDeal.

10% discount on LENOVO K3 NOTE Yellow smartphone. Coupon k3note10off until June 30. Price with coupon $170.99.

9% discount on LENOVO K3 NOTE white smartphone. Coupon K3NOTE9off until June 30th. Price with coupon $171.99.

LENOVO LEMON K3 white. Coupon LEK313off until June 30th. Price with coupon $121.99.

LENOVO LEMON K3 Yellow. Coupon LEK316off until June 30th. Price with coupon $117.99

Upd: Instructions for flashing this phone to Cyanogenmod or MIUI.

Smartphone capabilities

During testing, the K30 device proved to be a high-quality device and there were no problems with it. Good connection when using two SIM cards, a fairly powerful Wi-Fi module that allows you to use the Internet through a barrier in the form of a thick brick wall. Navigation works well - GPS, GLONASS support is available. I would especially like to note the musical capabilities of the device, which are its main feature. The sound in the headphones is clear. Good audibility in both the speakers and headphones, which experts recommend replacing with a more advanced model.

Wireless technologies

The device supports work with 2 SIM cards of the 2G/3G/4G standard. At the same time, the quality of work always remains very high. True, the 4G module operates at a frequency of 2.6 GHz, which is not supported by domestic operators, so it is not yet possible to fully test the operation.

Bluetooth confidently copes with receiving/sending any information, without supporting the OTG function.

Wi-Fi and GPS work without any complaints. From a cold start, the device quickly finds the first satellites, but an accurate determination is possible only after 10 minutes. Moreover, the positioning accuracy does not exceed 18 meters, which is not typical for chipsets from Qualcomm.

Specifications

Autonomy

To maintain proper autonomy, the K3 has a rechargeable battery with a capacity of 2300 mAh. When tested in the new version of AnTuTu, the device received just 5500 points, which can guarantee fairly good battery life.

In full loading mode with data transfer always on, maximum screen brightness and running test programs, the lemon was able to last more than 3 and a half hours. With an average load, this figure exceeded 8 hours, and during normal operation, the phone with one SIM card could last more than 6 days! Thus, for a very reasonable price, the buyer receives a very durable device.

The kit includes a 700 mAh charger, with which the smartphone replenishes the battery charge from 0 to 100% in just 3 hours.

Conclusion

If you paid attention to the Lenovo K 30 w smartphone, its characteristics are quite decent. They allow their owner to communicate with friends on Skype, browse the Internet, read necessary information, communicate on social networks, listen to their favorite tunes in good quality, and watch videos on a five-inch screen in an excellent, bright image. And all this - at a low cost and excellent assembly of the device.

Lenovo k30 w firmware