Lenovo K6 Note A mixed bag
THE Lenovo K6 Note looks pretty darn good on paper. With real-life use, however, it is fine, and if you’re looking for something stellar, this might not be it. But if you’re looking for your run-of-the-mill smartphone with a few bonuses, the K6 Note’s great battery and Dolby Atmos-enhanced speakers might do it for you.
GREAT ON PAPER
Looking at the specs, the K6 Note can be quite impressive for a mid-range smartphone. It sports a 5.5-inch, 1080p, ~401 pixel-dense LCD display, 32GB internal memory with 4-GB RAM, 16-MP and 8-MP cameras, microSD card slot, and a whopping (non-removable Li-Po) 4,000 mAh battery. For a smartphone costing P11,999, that’s really enticing and worth the money by itself. You don’t see ~401 pixel-dense displays or 4 GB of RAM, or 4,000 mAh batteries very often at this price point under such a reputable brand like Lenovo.
The build is simple and easy to hold despite the heft ( 169 grams), the fingerprint sensor works instantly and accurately, the enhanced speakers will fare well for those of us who are hard of hearing, and the battery is a workhorse despite the lack of fast- charging ( microUSB v2.0). Lenovo doesn’t neglect memory either, offering 32 GB of space that’s expandable up to 256 GB via microSD ( using SIM-2 slot; dual Nano- SIM).
IN REAL LIFE
However, some features of the smartphone are less than stellar in practical use. The biggest problem out of the box is the intermittent signal disruption. The K6 Note randomly loses all signal (not just on data) or receives no information despite indicating 4G on the status bar — not great for those of us whose work relies on data or smartphone usage. The device’s problem on network performance has also been mentioned by users in online forums and tech blogs. This is perhaps fixable by a software update. The display, despite the impressive specs, still shows pixels where there is supposed to be gradation and blurry borders instead of crisp lines.
Flipping through screens, switching from one app to the other, and general usage is less than fluid and slower than instant, but for a mid- range handset, it is acceptable and not really bothersome. Perhaps what is bothersome is that if it’s like this now, one has to wonder what the K6 Note will be like, with a Snapdragon 430 chipset, Adreno 505 GPU, and Octa- core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A53 CPUE, a year down the line with software updates (out of the box at Android 6.0) and regular wear and tear.
The battery is reliable enough, sure, but there is heating when charging and heavy usage. You don’t have to worry about the K6 Note dying on you for the whole day but you might worry that the heating is a symptom of a problem to be encountered in the future. (Plus, you’ll need a case if you want to use it despite the heating.)
The cameras also are nice on paper but disappointing as it struggles with basic functions. Auto- focusing can be a hassle and that’s not even for close- ups or busy backgrounds. It struggles to get white balance and color reproduction right, taking a few seconds to adjust and not even guaranteeing that the colors are accurate. You can take two shots within a second between each other and get two different iterations of color. Dynamic range, despite having “Smart” HDR (where it will supposedly automatically detect whether HDR mode is needed in real time) and Artistic HDR (where the user can choose the effects), it still produces some of the worst blown out highlights and blurred lowlights. The front camera can capture a lot of face details given the sufficient amount light, but otherwise produces grainy shots combined with artificial skin blurring. If you want to produce truly great photos, it won’t come easy here.
So it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Some aspects of the Lenovo K6 Note are impressive given the price, and some are not great at all but not horrible either. If you’re looking for a mid-range phone, it might be wise to compare first the K6 Note with other models of the same price range then decide if the phone is worth buying.