LeEco has only recently launched its first two smartphones in India that will also be pegged as its media consumption devices, considering that they will be tied up to the Le Ecosystem for content services such as movies, shows and more. We really liked the LeEco LeMax. Keeping its gigantic phablet-sized display in mind, the smartphone really impressed us with its performance and construction in our full review.
In the case of the budget Le 1s it has some really “big” shoes to fill partly due to the reputation of its bigger sibling the Le Max. But with all that was promised in terms of hardware at the launch, it is expected to be a big seller as well, thanks to its hardware and pricing. But can it stand up to the really tough competition from the budget range? Let’s find out.
Build: 8/10
The LeEco was launched at a price tag of Rs 10, 999 in India. The phone looks a lot more premium compared to what the price tag suggests. A majority of those who saw and used the phone, clearly thought that it would be priced in the Rs 15, 000 to Rs 25, 000 price bracket and this is all thanks to its metal body.
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Starting from the front we have 5.5-inch Full HD display with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 screen to protect it. The look is very minimal and we have the LED notification light, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, receiver and the front facing camera on the top bezel, while the bottom bezel features capacitive multi-tasking, home and back keys that light up only when the display is on.
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On the back we have a primary camera accompanied by a single LED flash top left. Sitting a little below at the centre is the fingerprint reader with the Letv logo below it. Also visible are the gold coloured plastic inserts on the top and bottom that have been placed for better reception for the smartphone’s antennas.
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Coming to the sides, we get 3.5mm headphone jack on the top that is also accompanied by an IR blaster. The IR blaster is used when the smartphone is used as a remote control via the Remote Control app.
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At the bottom we get the USB Type C port, which is flanked by the smartphone’s loudspeaker grilles on both sides. Only the grille on the right side hosts the actual loudspeaker.
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On the sides, we have a sim tray for the dual 4G sim slots ( one micro and the other a nano) , while the right side sports the volume rocker and the unlock/power button.
Features: 8/10
The Le 1s features a 5.5-inch Full HD ( 1920 x 1080 pixels) In-cell display that is capable of 500nits of brightness. Inside, we get a 2.2GHz, octa-core MediaTek Helio X10 ( MT6795T) processor with a PowerVR G6200 GPU. Accompanying the processor is 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 32GB of eMMC 5.0 internal storage that is not expandable.
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The camera department consists of a 13MP rear camera which is an ISOCELL sensor that is accompanied by a single LED flash, and sports a bright f/2.0 aperture and Phase Detection Autofocus ( PDAF) . On the front we have a 5MP camera for selfies that sports a Samsung S5K5E2 sensor and an 85-degree wide-angle lens.
On the communications front, we have plenty of options. There’s 4G LTE and 3G bands with a dual SIM setup ( micro+ nano) Wi-Fi 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and USB 2.0 Type C port. On the back is the chrome-finish fingerprint reader that we had no problems with. It unlocked the smartphone almost instantly and recognised our fingerprint accurately unlocking the smartphone to the homescreen every time.
All of the above is fuelled by a 3000mAh battery and the smartphone boots to Android 5.0.2 Lollipop with the EUI 5.5 to keep things refreshed.
Display: 8/10
Coming from the Le Max, we really had no clue whether LeEco would deliver a great or even an average display inspite the mix of good hardware inside; turns out we should not have doubted them. To begin with, the 5.5-inch, Full HD ( 1920 x 1080 pixels) in-cell display was above our expectations, considering the price and the mid-range processor that this budget handset packs in.
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The display was indeed as bright as mentioned during the launch event ( 500nits) and faired reasonably well both indoors and outdoors. Colour reproduction was a bit saturated on the default settings, but the EUI software let us tweak it to our liking and we eventually settled for the Natural setting. Also available in the Colour Mode settings were other presets like Letv, Vivid and Soft.
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Sharpness was not a problem for the 5.5-inch display, which showcases a pixel density of 403ppi and we could not see any pixellation or jaggies no matter how closely we looked at our display with our naked eyes. Viewing at an angle was not a problem and we had great video viewing experience with deep blacks that almost merged with the black bezels.
Software: 7/10
The software on the LeEco Le 1s comes with plenty of customisation options. The software seemed to be a bit more updated with refreshed icon sets and more themes compared to the stuff we had on the Le Max during our review.
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The customisations were plentiful indeed. You can change themes and you have a wide selection of wallpapers as well. Then there were the minor yet handy features that were similar to those on the gigantic Le Max phablet. These would include the lockscreen keypad showing up on th left, center or right depending on where you swiped up on the display to unlock the smartphone. Other minor additions include the Scale View in Display Settings that let you change the DPI ( to an extent) to show more lines of text compared to what you can see on other smartphone displays with similar dimensions. Also available among the Settings was the ability to power down your smartphone at a specified time. One can also schedule the smartphone to switch on and off with an alarm.
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The My Letv app for now does not do much apart from syncing your contacts and app data. The Control Center that is activated by hitting the multi-tasking key certainly impressed and you could choose from a wide range of toggles available from the selection.
Performance: 7.5/10
The performance is an area that many Android users worry about, the LeEco Le Max with its octa-core Helio X10 chipset chugged along just fine without any signs of lag or stutter. We were thoroughly impressed by this smartphone’s performance and this shows in the benchmark tests as well, where the Le 1s showed scores that were more in line with the mid-range and far ahead of any budget smartphone currently available.
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Strangely, that slim metal contruction did take a toll and we had a few heat-related problems. The smartphone ran surprisingly cool, while gaming it warmed up ever so slightly with Dead Trigger on max settings and other graphically intensive games, and we noticed plenty of heating when we opened the camera.
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While the heat levels were not abnormal, and the software did not shut any active apps, it did get noticeably hot especially while shooting in sunlight. Apart from this we had no complaints from the level of performance we witnessed while using the Le 1s. The volume levels on the loudspeaker at the bottom were sufficiently loud, while the audio quality while listening to music was pretty good with clear bass notes.
In terms of call quality, we had no problems listening to the caller and the receiver volume was loud enough to be heard in traffic. However, on the other end of the line, the listener did complain that the audio was muffled and not clear. All-in-all, voice quality was average and could have been a lot better.