Big screen, strong battery and powerful processor, A7000 has all the features a smartphone should have. This phablet with a 5.5 inch screen is a budget smartphone and apart from this it is the world’s first phone to feature Dolby Atmos. Let’s know more about A7000 and whether it will be able to compete with other phones in its price range.
Look and design
Looking at Lenovo A7000, it seems as if someone pulled out Lenovo A6000 from the edge and presented a new model in the market. There are a lot of similarities in the looks of both the models. The edges of A7000 are rounded and its design is also very useful. This phone is 8mm thick and weighs 140 grams. With a screen of 5.5 inches, A7000 is probably the best budget smartphone designed keeping your needs in mind.
The entire phone is made of plastic but it doesn’t feel cheap at all. We found the phone to be sturdy enough, meaning there is less worry about rough use. The volume rocker and power button are on the right edge of the phone. These buttons are made of metal and respond well. There is a 3.5mm audio port on the top edge of the phone as well as a micro-USB port. The microphones are at the bottom. The capacitive buttons are below the screen, and since they are not backlit, it is difficult to find them in the dark.
The earpiece, front camera and ambient light sensor are placed above the screen. The primary camera and its accompanying dual-LED flash are placed on the top left side of the back of the phone. The speaker is on the right side of the back of the phone and was out of our reach while holding the phone, so there is no chance of sound being blocked. However, the sound will become muffled if the phone is placed on its back. The rear cover is removable, underneath it is the battery, two micro-SIM card slots and a microSD card slot.
Specifications and software
The A7000 uses a 1.5GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6752m SoC processor, which is the entry-level version of the MT6752. This SoC has integrated Mali-T760MP2 graphics. Lenovo has been generous in terms of RAM, the phone has 2GB of RAM but the internal storage is only 8GB. The storage can be expanded up to 32GB via microSD card, apart from this the phone also has support for USB OTG. Actually, you can charge other devices through USB OTG feature, this is a very useful feature for emergencies.
The A7000 has an 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash. The phone also has a 5-megapixel front camera. One SIM card can also be used on 4G networks and this can be done on the 2300MHz frequency band used in India. For connectivity, the phone also supports Wi-Fi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0. The battery capacity is 2,900mAh.
The phone’s 5.5-inch IPS LCD screen has a resolution of 720p, with a pixel density of 267ppi. The screen is protected by Asahi’s Dragontrail glass. The saturation level of the display is not too high and it looks crisp. Brightness and viewing angles are not that bad either.
The phone runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system with Lenovo’s Vibe UI 3.0 skin on top. This skin does not use an app drawer. It gives users a lot of customization options and there is also a separate app for themes which makes the process easier. The notification slider and multitasking card feature are the same as those in Lollipop, the only change is that Lenovo has added a quick settings option. Apart from Lenovo’s Shareit and Sync apps, more preloaded apps can be removed.
Performance and camera
The A7000 is quite powerful and I never noticed any lag while using it. I did not face any issues while using multiple apps. I did not notice any frame drops while using the graphics-intensive game Asphalt 8.
The phone scored 30,159 and 14,714 in AnTuTu and Quadrant benchmark tests respectively. Graphics benchmark tests like 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme and GFXbench scored 22fps and 5,990 points respectively. These figures show that the A7000 is a perfect phone for gaming.
While the phone had no issues playing all of our sample videos, we did notice some strange lags in the 40Mbps sample. Videos in other formats and at various resolutions played fine on the phone. We were really excited to try Dolby Atmos on the A7000, but sadly, the feature disappointed.
Dolby Atmos on the phone is essentially an app that can be used to handle sound as per your needs, be it listening to music or watching movies. In fact, it looks like a sophisticated equalizer app that lets you adjust the frequency levels of sound as per your needs. We played a variety of content on the phone. There was no noticeable difference between regular stereo and Dolby Atmos during music, movies and gaming. In fact, Dolby’s own lossless demo did not work on the phone. The sound was not very loud at maximum volume levels, be it from the speakers or the microphone. However, it is not that bad, the sound quality is quite good.
There was no problem while making calls on the phone. There were no call drops and the voice quality was also good. The battery life of the A6000 surprised us, but the A7000 performed even better than that. The 2900mAh battery of this phone lasted 10 hours and 58 minutes on the video loop test. During normal use, it will last about a day and a half, which is excellent.
We had a fun experience using the A7000’s camera app. The device’s 8-megapixel camera shoots fast for a budget phone, but the photos are average. The daylight samples we took were underexposed and some details appeared blurry. However, colours were quite natural and there was no pixelation at full resolution. Photos taken in low light were not of much use as they appeared blurry due to software glitches. The front camera is good enough to take selfies. While recording videos, the camera failed to maintain focus despite having an autofocus function.
Our verdict
Lenovo has adopted the right strategy in terms of price range by pricing the A7000 at Rs 8,999. This phone is Rs 1,000 cheaper than phones like Micromax’s Yu Yureka, Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G, Huawei Honor 4X and Infocus M330, which makes it a good deal. Lenovo A7000 is an excellent phone for gaming and general use.
Unfortunately, the multimedia features that were highlighted during its launch fail to live up to expectations. This doesn’t mean that the Lenovo A7000 doesn’t perform well on multimedia. It just isn’t as good as it was being promoted. Overall, the A7000 is a great phone and the price is its biggest asset.