There’s only so far you can go with specifications, and so LeEco has decided to bring premium materials and build quality to the budget smartphone space.
The Le 1s is made almost entirely of metal, save for two plastic strips running along the top and bottom of the rear for the various antennas to work. The strips are certainly noticeable, but not as prominent as the plastic antenna lines on the iPhone 6 and 6s series, for example, so some might actually prefer this.
The front face is pretty slick, with black glass surrounding the screen and extending all the way to the two sides. The front camera and sensor window are arranged symmetrically on either side of the earpiece. There are the standard three capacitive Android navigation buttons below the screen, but they’re hidden until you tap one, at which point they all light up. The metal band running around the sides has chamfered edges, but the Le 1s manages to avoid looking like an iPhone 5 overall thanks to its proportions.The primary camera and flash are in one corner of the rear, and there’s a silver mirror-finished fingerprint sensor lower down and in the middle. It looks great but is actually a bit slippery, so we’ll have to see if form and function are balanced. The company obviously didn’t manage to time its rebranding with its India launch, so our test unit had a large LeTV logo - units sold here in the future might say LeEco instead, though we can’t be certain about that.