Barely a few months after entering India with the extremely tempting Le 1s, Chinese juggernaut LeEco has begun pushing a slightly lower priced version with pretty much the same features, but a couple of interesting changes.
The phone has been launched as a vehicle for the company’s new content and services effort, called LeEco Membership, which is designed to make money for it long after customers have paid for the phone itself.
It’s an interesting strategy, and somewhat of a gamble. Will buyers pay for content subscriptions once the free year of service is up? Will entertainment content be able to offset the costs of selling premium hardware at rock-bottom prices? Will LeEco manage to put together a package that Indian smartphone users can’t resist? We review the new Le 1s Eco to find out.
Look and feel.If you’ve already seen or used the Le 1s ( Review) , there’s absolutely nothing new to say about the Le 1s Eco. The two are identical for all intents and purposes. The newer model is currently available only in gold, but there are no physical markings that would help tell the two apart. Nothing has changed in terms of physical dimensions or weight either. Our test unit even had the old LeTV logo on the rear, despite the company having had enough time by now to update it.
That said, the Le 1s was top notch in terms of its materials and build quality, and so we are not disappointed in the least. The Le 1s Eco is just as slick and, like its near-twin, feels a lot more expensive than it is. There’s almost no space wasted to the sides of the screen, and the top and bottom are narrow enough to give this phone a relatively small footprint. It’s a little sharp at the edges, but is otherwise quite comfortable to hold and use.
Everything is within easy reach, including the shiny fingerprint reader on the rear. The tray on the left can hold one Nano-SIM and one Micro-SIM, but there’s no support for microSD storage expansion - not even a hybrid slot. The Le 1s Eco has a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfers, and comes with the same interesting reversible USB cable that we first saw with its sibling. You also get a quick charger, which is larger and heavier than most common chargers, but it’s worth the added bulk.
Specifications
The only difference between the Le 1s and the Le 1s Eco is that the newer variant has a slightly slower CPU. It’s still an octa-core MediaTek Helio X10, but the company says it runs at 1.85GHz rather than the 2.2GHz of its sibling. There’s no word on whether the integrated PowerVR G6200 GPU is similarly reduced in speed.
The screen is still 5.5 inches diagonally with a resolution of 1080x1920, and there’s still 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage with no scope for expansion. The 3000mAh battery, 13-megapixel rear camera and 5-megpixel front camera are unchanged as well. You still get a fingerprint sensor on the rear, and an Infrared emitter on the top ( though you can only use it with LeEco’s own app, not popular third-party ones) .
There’s also Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth 4.1 and A-GPS, along with LTE support on both SIMs. As stated, you don’t get microSD storage expansion, but there is an offer of 5TB of cloud storage space for the duration of your Le Membership subscription. This is a pretty good set of specifications for any phone, making the Le 1s Eco’s price all the more impressive.
All of this means that you’re getting basically the same phone, with just one minor concession, at a slightly lower price. We’ll have to see what effect the underclocking has on performance, heat and battery life, but we don’t expect it to have very much of an impact.
Software
Here’s where the new Le 1s Eco differs most significantly from its sibling. The phone still runs Android 5.0.2 and we still think the custom EUI skin needs a lot of work - moving all quick settings to the app switcher screen and dumbing down the general capabilities of Android still feel to us like unnecessary changes. There’s a neat feature that lets you set u