Lenovo K9 Talking about the main features of the smartphone, this smartphone comes with four cameras. The most interesting thing is that after a long time, Lenovo has launched its favorite K series phone in the market. Lenovo K3 Note, Vibe K4 Note, K6 Power And Lenovo K8 Plus, launched last year, is included in the company’s K series. Let us know whether Lenovo will be able to repeat its past successes or not.
Lenovo K9 design
Generally, glass back panel is not seen in smartphones coming in this budget, but the company’s Lenovo K9 smartphone comes with glass back panel. The blue and black glass panel of the phone is reflective. Due to having a glass panel, it slips easily in the hands, which is why the user is advised to be careful while holding the phone in the hand. After using the review unit with us for a week, we noticed that there were scratches on the back panel of the phone.
There are two selfie cameras, sensors and earpiece on the front panel of the phone. This model of Lenovo brand is a budget smartphone. Being a budget smartphone, the front panel still has thick borders at the top and bottom. But at this price, the look of Lenovo K9 looks quite impressive. The glass on the front and backpanel comes with curved edges. The rear camera setup is slightly convex. Due to the curved frame, the grip of the phone remains good. For security, a fingerprint sensor is visible on the back panel. A 3.5 mm headphone jack and USB Type-C port for charging are provided at the bottom of the phone. The buttons on the right side are very small and very close to each other. It is possible that you may sometimes get confused in choosing the right button.
Lenovo K9 specifications and software
This Lenovo phone is equipped with the new MediaTek Helio P22 processor. The phone has eight ARM Cortex-A53 CPUs with a top speed of 2 GHz and also uses the PowerVR GE8320 GPU. Keeping in mind the price of the phone, we liked 32 GB storage with 3 GB RAM. To bring life to the phone, a 3000 mAh battery has been provided.
It has a 5.7 inch HD + (720×1440 pixels) display. It is quite crisp and bright. But due to reflection on the glass surface, there was difficulty in using it outdoors. There is a 5 megapixel camera along with 13 megapixels on the rear. The same setup is also on the front panel. Accelerometer, ambient light sensor and proximity sensor are part of the phone.
The presence of a USB Type-C port surprised us. Because almost all budget phones and many premium phones still come with standard Micro-USB. On the other hand, the hybrid dual SIM tray is a disappointment, which means you can either put a SIM or a microSD card in the second slot. If you use two SIMs, you will get LTE support on both. Lenovo has also added some of its own features to the software, but it still feels like stock Android 8.1.
The first thing we noticed about the Lenovo K9 is that its UI elements, such as icons, text and even the status bar, appear larger. You will be able to easily take screenshots using three fingers. It will be possible to use customization with the help of gestures. DuraSpeed feature is provided in Lenovo K9. We have also seen this feature in phones equipped with other MediaTek processors. This feature will completely close the current app, due to which the app will not run in the background after closing. Note that after using this feature, you will not receive notifications related to that app. The review unit we have runs on the August 2018 security patch.
You will already get Gameloft games and UC browser pre-installed in the phone, the good thing is that you will be able to remove these apps. In Lenovo K9 you will get SyncIt app which will help in backup and restore your contacts, messages and call logs. With this, it will not be possible to uninstall Lenovo App Daily App Store.
Lenovo K9 performance, battery life and camera
We did not have any complaints with the phone in normal use. But heavy apps lag was felt. Many times this problem occurred even while scrolling in Google Play Store. The gaming experience was also not very good. Watching videos on this screen was fun. The speaker is suitable for conversations, but the sound gets distorted during music. The fingerprint sensor works fast. The phone doesn’t even get too hot.
Lenovo K9 has scored 78,460 on AnTuTu benchmark and 4,876 on PCMark Work 2.0. The Lenovo K9’s performance in the GFXBench T-Rex graphics test scene was 27fps. Battery life is good. According to our experience, the battery of Lenovo K9 will last the whole day in normal use. The battery lasted 11 hours 22 minutes in the HD video loop test. At the same time, the battery takes one hour to charge from zero to 40 percent, which will be called slow.
Regarding the performance of the four cameras of this phone, we will only say that the results were mixed. The focus of the 13-megapixel primary rear camera is soft. Some of our shots came out blurry, that too in sunlight. The Lenovo K9 also struggled in scenes where there was a lot of contrast between light and shadow areas. The colors also came out quite dull and washed out. One or two shots in Bokeh mode were excellent, but the background was artificially distorted. You can also take portrait selfies by using the two front cameras. The effect was good, but the overall quality of the image suffered.
Shots taken at night came out a bit dark. But whatever detail was visible seemed fine. Noise and grain were clearly visible when zoomed in to full size. But considering the price the quality cannot be called bad. The videos also came out grainy and dark. Apart from panorama mode and beautification, not many features will be available in the camera app.
Decision
The most important feature of Lenovo K9 is four cameras – two on the front panel and two on the rear. However, photo quality is not this phone’s strongest point. The camera setup gave us some surprisingly weak shots even during the day. We hope that the company will make some improvements through software updates. Apart from this, it is a very attractive phone. We don’t think there is any significant need for a notch or a very thin border. Lenovo has struck a good balance between features and portability with this phone.
The performance and battery life of this phone is enough for the budget segment. Its biggest drawback is the only hybrid slot present in the phone. We recommend using a protective cover to protect the phone. For security, if you like the look of Lenovo K9 and can compromise with its cameras, then it is a good alternative to Xiaomi Redmi 6.