Lenovo Z2 plus: A Flagship Level phone in Below Mid-Range price

Lenovo Z2 plus is a power pack bundle and offers almost everything a smartphone buyers wants in these days without charging a hefty amount for it.

Lenovo has been launching mobile devices regularly, accompanied by the moto series, Lenovo also launches mobile phones in other segment as well, known as the ZUK series. Lenovo Lenovo Z2 plus is the latest smartphone by ZUK series of Lenovo intended to tackle Oneplus 3 in India. Sadly, ZUK Edge and ZUK Z2 Pro were launched only in china. The ZUK Z1, first smart phone in the ZUK series offered a lot of top-end specification with unique features at low price. Now, the Lenovo Z2 plus is trying to do the same thing.

So, let’s look at the smart phone which brings the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset in the sub- Rs 15,000 price range.

Design and Build

The Lenovo Z2 Plus is not one of the thinnest devices with thickness at 8.49 mm. It is relatively thicker than ZUK Z1 and Redmi Note 3, and after snapping on the stealth cover, which comes out of the box, it looks even more thicker. But thankfully, it doesn't weigh much at 149 grams. There is a glossy black glass back and the frame is roll caged design which is made of fiberglass mounted on metal frame, which the company claims, is stronger than aluminium frame and with better thermal management. From a distance, it does resemble a black iPhone 7, if you put the stealth case on.

The 5-inch form factor of the phone helps it to fit well in the hand and there is good finishing around the edges which does not give any sharp edges. The rear side makes the phone a little bit slippery to grip with wet hands. There is a physical button on the front which also acts as a fingerprint scanner. The button/scanner is capable of doing multiple functions which we will discuss later.

The volume rocker and power buttons are present on the upper half and the dual SIM card tray on the lower half of right hand side. Top and left hand surfaces are clean. At the bottom edge, we have the 3.5mm audio jack microphone, a USB Type C port for charging and data transfer and on the right of the port lies the mono speaker.

The design is functional and unique design makes the Lenovo Z2 Plus stand out among the other Chinese mobile handsets available in this price range. Build quality is sturdy and doesn’t feel plasticky, but the rear glass panel is a fingerprint magnet.

Display

In an era 5.5-inch devices, it is pleasant to see a flagship level phone with a 5-inch display. The Lenovo Z2 Plus comes with a 5-inch Full HD LTPS LCD display and the device have a pixel density of 441ppi. Viewing angles are good and Colours are natural. Lenovo says the phone comes with a hardened Glass to protect the display, but it is not a corning gorilla glass.

The display looks good both indoors as well as outdoors. Shooting in direct sunlight is not a problem at all. Watching YouTube videos is a pleasant affair with good levels of contrast.You also get a black stealth cover in the box to provide extra cover for your smart phone.

Features

Lenovo Z2 Plus packs in a lot of good specifications. The device is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset. This is all weather chipset, the flagship SoC (newer version 835 is also seen). The Snapdragon 820 SoC comes with a quad core Kyro CPU (2xclocked at 2.15GHz and 2xclocked at 1.6 GHz) with top of line Adreno 530 graphics. It comes in two variants. The higher one is paired with 4GB of DDR4 RAM and 64GB of storage out of which around 58.7GB is available to the user, selling at Rs.17499. The other one is paired with 3GB of DDR4 RAM and 32GB of storage out of which around 29.12GB is available to the user, costing Rs.14999.

There is no option to expand the storage by adding in a microSD card. For storage, Lenovo Z2 Plus have a SanDisk i7232 smartSLC storage with SLC memory which is faster than traditional flash storage options available in market.

The Lenovo Z2 Plus comes with a configuration of dual Nano SIM which can take in two 4G SIM cards and also supports Volte, which means Reliance Jio sim will work out of the box. It supports Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.1 and for location it has GPS with A-GPS, BAIDU and GLONASS. There is a USB Type C port for data transfer and charging. FM radio and NFC are not supported, which means you won’t be able to use Google Android Pay.There is single colour white notification light on the right of the earpiece.

Performance

Benchmark scores quite impressive and it can be compared with the Xiaomi Mi 5, OnePlus 3, LG G5, HTC 10 and the other Snapdragon 820 chipset sporting phones. Antutu Benchmark scores of my Lenovo Z2 plus was 1,34,148, which are quite impresive.

Gaming part is something which you don’t have to compromise with Lenovo Z2 plus. Gaming performance is spectacular with no frame drops observed while playing graphic intensive games like NOVA 3, Asphalt 8: Airborne, Dead Trigger 2. The temperature of the phone does remains well in limit of 40 degrees Celsius. While playing for longer periods does heat up the phone, but again the temperatures bearable which does not cause discomfort. The overall heat management is good, thanks to the outstanding design.

Call audio quality is up to the mark and the earpiece speaker is clearly audible in loud environments. The audio speaker on the bottom is not loud enough, but you don’t buy a premium smartphone for using it as a boom box. The audio output is ok, not the best but, it is not the worst. I would recommend you to buy a good pair of earphones for a better audio experience, as Lenovo doesn’t provide one in the box. The output through the 3.5mm audio jack is fabulous, it adds a little base to the song which I really liked. Sadly, equalizer dos not work on this device, even the third party one doesn’t work except the one on Poweramp Music player.

Fingerprint scanner is good, and works even without pressing the button, even a smooth touch unlocks the device. Lenovo call the front button as U-touch, which can do bunch of tasks. The U-touch feature which lets you tweak your home button to perform tasks such as single tap for back. swiping left and right to switch apps, long touch and long touch, long press and long hold. You can specify different apps and functions to these different actions. After a day or two of using, you will get adapt to U-touch, and will regret why other phones don’t have it, which makes the phone special. Even if you want the on-screen navigation, there is an option to turn in on in the settings.

Camera
The Lenovo Z2 Plus boasts a 13MP Samsung ISOCELL rear camera sensor with 1.34-micron pixel size and an f/2.2 aperture which is coupled with an 8MP front facing camera with a 1.4-micron pixel size and f/2.0 aperture. The rear camera can shoot 4K videos and the front camera can shoot full HD videos. The device also supports slow motion video recording at 120fps, 240fps and 960fps – in which the 240 fps and 960 fps is software tweaked, which will play only in the device (means you won’t be able to share them). But the 120 fps videos are perfect and plays as a normal slow motion video at resolution of 720p HD resolution. The camera UI is easy to use and different camera modes are available in one touch or two. The camera menu present itself in a circular layout. There is manual shooting mode available in the Nougat Update, which also updates the imaging algorithms giving a better image output, both on the front and rear cameras.

 

Image quality in the well-lit conditions was impressive, with images showing a lot of detail. Auto Focus is pretty quick, thanks to the PDAF. Close objects are sharp, but the far objects lose sharpness on zoom. Low-lit conditions and indoor shots is something you have to compromise on. Indoor images show noise, and show less clarity. There is also an auto-HDR mode available which is similar to Google Nexus series and Google Pixel series.  With HDR mode on, photos live up to the expectations, adding more details to the photos. But if you are a professional, you might notice little abnormalities in shadows and bright areas. The front camera is quite good with built in beautify to enhance the photos accordingly. You have the option of auto, boy, girl or off it, which I personally liked. You can also record Full HD videos with the front snapper.
Video quality is excellent, the EIS does its job well, and the video does not shake while walking. The phone is capable of recording 4K videos, and the quality difference between a 1080P full HD video and a 4K video can be seen easily. Slow-motion video at 120 fps works good only in well-lit conditions, indoor slow-motion shooting is average. The 240 FPS and 960 FPS slow motion video is just a software gimmick, which in my opinion is just a show off on paper.

By and Large, camera performance is average, but considering the price of the device, it lives up to the expectations.

Software
The Lenovo Z2 Plus comes with its own user interface, ZUI, which is a custom skin based on Android Marshmallow 6.0. Google Now launcher is on the top which gives a stock like experience. There are bunch of other google apps too, which sadly you cannot disable or remove without root. But the plus point is that the non-essential bloatware like 9Apps can be removed easily.

The U-touch button can do lot of tasks, which I mentioned earlier.

 

Notification tray is almost useless, means it only shows notification and takes you directly to the app, but don’t expect quick replies or quick actions. The quick actions panel (2x4 panel, with one left swipe for more options) comes from the swiping up from below and is customisable, which I think is attempt to copy apple. The quick action create frustration when we try to use it in landscape mode.

Lenovo Z2 Plus have a U Health app which keeps a track of your daily steps 24x7 and shows daily, weekly, monthly and yearly trends You can also set personal goals of daily steps with a little of personal details.

The ZUI which comes out of the box is buggy and freezes the device a lot. Lenovo updated the ZUI 2.0 to ZUI 2.0.133ST which is stable and is readily available for download. This update also improves the camera performance. I will strongly recommend all users to first update the device as soon as possible to have a flaw less experience of the phone, but sometimes, the system reboots itself automatically, for me, it was 2 times in 3 weeks, which I don’t see as a problem.

Lenovo is also giving a Nougat update to the device, which the users will start receiving in May 2017. The update brings major improvements and bug fixes to the system especially to the camera and quick panel. The manual mode for camera and camera improvements can be noticed easily. And the quick panel shows up easily even in the landscape mode. The basic feature on Android Nougat like screen spit and screen recording are also added in the update but in a tweaked manner.

There is also a trail recruitment currently going on for enthusiasts to try the beta version of the update and give feedback. Here is the link. http://bbs.lenovomobile.cn/z2/t681693/.

For complete information on Nougat update, visit Lenovo Z2 Plus Official Nougat Update.

Battery
The power plant is a 3500mAh battery which is non-removable. This battery juice is sufficient to give 7 hours+ screen on time on normal usage and around 6 hours on heavy usage. It also supports Intelligent Charge Cut-off technology provided by Qualcomm which stops power from the AC power source after the battery is 100 percent charged. With a daily usage including messaging, calling, two email accounts on syncs, audio and video streaming and some casual gaming the phone would easily last for 1 day without rushing for a charger. Lenovo does not give details about the charging speed but the charging speed with the 2A 5V charger supplied in the box is comparable to Quick charging 2.0.

Conclusion
So, while comparing this device with other Snapdragon 820 chipset sporting smartphones – Is this phone better than the Xiaomi Mi 5 or the OnePlus 3? The answer is no. There are many areas where these two smart phones still excel such as camera, build quality, performance and so on.

But under Rs 15,000 price bracket, the Lenovo Z2 Plus has little competition. It is preferable to go for the 4GB RAM / 64GB storage variant of the Z2 Plus, but if don’t want to shell out more than Rs 15,000 go for the 3GB RAM/ 32 GB storage variant. With the Z2 Plus you are getting a flagship level chipset in the below mid-range segment giving tough competition to the Redmi Note 4 and the Moto G5 plus. It definitely appeals to the teenage crowd or someone who wants to upgrade from sub-Rs 10,000 phone segment.

Fast performance, good battery life, compact form factor, good display, are some of the positives of the Lenovo Z2 Plus. Camera is good, not something great. It is great for casual photo sharing, but it is definitely not for camera enthusiasts. If you want to upgrade from a low cost smart phone to a high-end smartphone without paying much then go for the Lenovo Z2 plus without hesitating.