Lenovo Vibe S1 Review

Aside from PCs, Lenovo has established itself as one of the main competitors when it comes to smartphones. They have a number of units from budget to mid-range Androids. Released last November 2015, the Lenovo Vibe S1 is one of the highest offerings of the Chinese brand with a 1.7GHz octa-core chipset, 3GB of RAM, and dual front cameras, but can this justify the asking price of Php17k? Here’s our review to find out.

Table of Contents

Design and Construction

Lenovo gave the Vibe S1 a premium design treatment. Starting off with choice materials of aluminum frame and glass slab on both the front and back. Interestingly, the back panel is arched which adds more appeal to the handset.

The front of the device is dominated by the 5-inch display along with the proximity and ambient light sensor, earpiece, and the dual front camera setup above while the usual trio of capacitive buttons is beneath the display.

The right side of the aluminum frame sports two physical buttons, the power/lock button, and the volume rocker.

The left side houses the access to the sim slot which can be ejected using a tiny pin. It’s a dual nano-SIM tray with support for microSD card expansion using the second slot.

Going to the top will show the 3.5mm headset jack with the secondary microphone pinhole sitting beside it. At the bottom, we have the micro-USB for charging and data connection plus speaker grilles which also hides the main microphone. There are also a couple of plastic strips to allow radio signals to pass through.

What’s striking about the Vibe S1 is its weight. At 132 grams, it’s light on hand and should not constrain hands when used for hours. It’s also pretty slim at 7.8mm.

Display and Multimedia

There’s a 5-inch Full HD display on the Vibe S1 with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on top. Its 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution puts in the territory of 441ppi pixel density of sharp and crisp panels. It’s also got IPS technology which gives it wide viewing angles and good color saturation.

The speaker grilles may look like a stereo setup but the sound only fires on the right. Nonetheless, output quality is okay at best. It’s able to fill in a small room and will suffice for quick video playbacks. If you’ve got a good pair of headphones, it’s best to use so.

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Daniel Morial

This article was contributed by Daniel Morial, a film school graduate and technology enthusiast. He's the geeky encyclopedia and salesman among his friends for anything tech.