LeEco, the Chinese Internet conglomerate better known by its former name Letv, has finally launched its first products for the Indian market. The Le Max and Le 1s have been unveiled and will be available in India using the infamous flash sale model, in which interested buyers need to sign up in advance for a chance to buy one of a limited number of units that will be available.
The company recently garnered a lot of interest with its CES announcement of the Le Max Pro, first smartphone to sport the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor. Letv recently rebranded itself to LeEco( short for Le Ecosystem) ahead of the Indian launch, and offers live-streaming, e-commerce and cloud services and sells smartphones, TV set-top boxes and smart TVs, among many other things, in its home market China. At the launch event in New Delhi, LeEco had members of its SuperFans community in attendance. We have seen many other brands including Asus, Meizu, and Xiaomi following the same strategy at their respective launches.
The Le Max( seen below) smartphone was initially launched in China back in April last year. The Le 1s, on the other hand, was unveiled in October. India will be the first country outside China where the Le Max and Le 1s will be going on sale.
The Le Max and Le 1s smartphones both feature all-metal unibody designs, fingerprint scanners, nearly bezel-less displays, and USB Type-C ports - more than enough to keep feature-obsessed consumers happy. But will these features be enough for a new smartphone brand to establish itself and make a grand entry into the Indian market - only time can tell. We spent some time with both devices at the launch event and here are our first impressions.