Lenovo’s Zuk was expected to launch in China in April last year but its first product was launched in August. Ahead of the India launch, Gadgets 360 got a chance to spend some time with the new ‘Zuk Lenovo Z1’.
Lenovo Z1 smartphone does not look like the recently launched devices by Lenovo. Its design is completely new. The smartphone has a 5.5 inch display. The glass on the front makes the frame of the device look bigger. The rear panel of Zuk Z1 is slightly curved which makes the phone grip better.
The rear panel appears to be made of plastic but is non-removable. There is no company branding on the front but there is a Zuk logo on the rear. It is worth noting that the Lenovo logo was not present anywhere in the sample unit we received.
The chamfered edges give the handset a good look and plastic antenna strips can be seen on the top and bottom of the Zuk Z1. The volume and power buttons are on the right side which can be used with one hand. The 3.5mm audio jack is at the top while the speaker grille and USB Type-C charging port are at the bottom. Lenovo says that the phone supports 5Gbps USB 3.0 transfer speed which means data transfer is 10 times faster than USB 2.0.
Overall, the Zuk Z1 has a great design and the phone feels good. At 175 grams, this smartphone can be said to be slightly heavier than the OnePlus One (162 grams) with a larger screen size. The dimensions of the Zuk Z1 are 155.7×77.3×8.9 mm and it is comfortable to hold.
The Lenovo Zuk Z1 smartphone has a physical home button just below the screen which also has an integrated fingerprint scanner. The phone can be operated with one hand. We were told that the Zuk Z1 can recognize fingerprints from any angle and respond quickly. But we could not test this in the limited time we got with the device.
The Z1 smartphone has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor running at 2.5 GHz. There is Adreno 330 for graphics. RAM is 3 GB. Zuk Z1 has 64 GB storage but the storage is not expandable. Another big feature of the Zuk Z1 smartphone is its 4100 mAh battery. The dual SIM smartphone supports Nano SIM and supports 4G on both SIMs. In India, it supports FDD Band 3 (1800 MHz) and TDD Band 40 (2300 mAh).
The biggest feature of Lenovo Zuk Z1 is that the phone runs on Android based Cyanogen OS 12.1. This means that users will get many options to customize their phone. With the help of theme app, users will be able to change wallpaper, font, icon and boot animation. Zuk Z1 also has pre-installed apps like Audio FX, which can be used to set equalizer settings of music. Like other Cyanogen 12.1 devices, Zuk Z1 also comes with Truecaller integration. During the time we spent with Lenovo Zuk Z1, we did not see any problem in multitasking and touch.
Talking about the camera, Lenovo Zuk Z1 has a 13-megapixel rear camera with Sony IMX214 sensor. The camera comes with optical image stabilization (OIS). This feature is mostly seen in premium smartphones. The phone has an 8-megapixel front camera. We found the camera app easy to use. In the limited time of camera testing, Zuk Z1 took good pictures in daylight. Even in low light, the quality of the pictures was good and the pictures came with good detail. But the pictures taken from the front camera can be said to be of average quality.
We would like to reserve judgement on the overall performance of the Zuk Z1 for now. We will give our final verdict only after the detailed review process.
Lenovo Zuk Z1 was launched in China at a price of 1,799 Chinese Yuan (around Rs. 18,250). So we can expect the phone to be launched at the same price in India as well. We will have to wait for the official launch by the company in the second week of May.
As expected, the smartphone will be sold online only. The price will put it at a price comparable to the OnePlus 2 and other phones in the same price range.
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