Lenovo A60+ review

Looking for a dual-SIM capable Android smartphone that won’t hurt your pocket? Lenovo’s A60+ smartphone might just be the one you’re looking for. Check out our full review after the break.

Design and Construction

At first glance, the Lenovo A60+ looks very similar to the Nokia Luma 610 but with less sleek. It has a curved plastic body with a chrome strip around it and a textured back panel. On the front is 3.5-inch display, the earpiece, three capacitive buttons and a pinhole for the microphone. Right on top is Power/Sleep button and a headset jack. Flip it on its back and you’ll find the 2-megapixel camera and speaker grill. At the bottom is the microUSB port and on the right side is the volume rocker.

The A60+ is not really a tiny smartphone but it somehow gives an illusion that it’s really small. It carries a decent amount of weight at 120g.

Display

The A60+ sports a 3.5-inch HVGA (480×320) display. As the spec suggests, it is has low resolution display but not at all ugly. However, it suffers from glare and has limited viewing angles.

UI

The A60+ runs Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread out of the box. Lenovo customized the UI that it will remind you of the MeeGo OS on the Nokia N9. The UI is smooth and responsive. No lags in navigating and scrolling but the transition from landscape to portrait is frustratingly slow that I ended up disabling the Auto-Rotate feature.

Camera

You have a 2-megapixel camera on the A60+ which has face detection, color effects, smile shot, burst shot, panorama and video recording capabilities. As for picture quality, some images appear washed out and out of focus even when there’s an abundance of light while some appear decent enough even when shot during a cloudy day. Overall, images captured by the A60+ are good enough to be uploaded to social media sites.

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Multimedia and Apps

Multimedia playback and app availability is not an issue for the A60+. You can play videos but it’s not going to be a visual treat. Music playback is good, the speaker is loud and crisp but lacks bass. For your app needs Google Play Store is present. We were able to install and play Temple Run and Fruit Ninja without any problem although there are times when Temple Run stalls then crashes.

Performance and Benchmarks

The review unit we received somehow suffers from WiFi connectivity issues. It can easily connect to the network but it just can’t receive and send data. I hope that this is just an isolated problem. We ended up downloading APKs from websites to the computer then manually installing them on the phone.

For benchmarks, AnTuTu gave it a score of 3,966 while NenaMark scored the A60+’s PowerVR SGX531 GPU a 29.9fps.

Battery Life

The A60+ has a user-replaceable battery rated at 1500mAh. Under regular texting, calling and few minutes of gaming, I was able to make the phone last for three days. However, if you’re constantly connected to the internet then expect battery life to suffer a bit.

Conclusion

We don’t know how to put it but it’s a bag of mixed emotions for the Lenovo A60+. It gives you dual-SIM, dual-standby functionality with smooth and attractive UI in a budget-friendly package. However, it also is frustrating to use every now and then. If you’re not going to push it past its limits, then this dual-SIM Android phone will surely handle your basic smartphone needs.

Lenovo A60+ specs:
3.5-inch HVGA (320 x 480 pixels) Capacitive touchscreen
MediaTek MT6575 1GHz single-core processor, ARMv7
PowerVR SGX531 GPU
256MB RAM, 512MB ROM,
144MB Internal Memory
microSD up to 16GB
Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread
3G / HSDPA Technology
SIM1: WCDMA/GSM
SIM2: GSM
2 megapixel camera
WLAN, Bluetooth, GPS
115.8 x 60.8 x 11.9 mm
120g
1500mAh battery
SRP: Php4,999USD 85INR 7,222EUR 81CNY 620

What we liked about it:
● Small profile
● Smooth and attractive UI
● Affordable

What we did not like about it:
● Poor display
● Low-resolution camera
● WiFi connectivity issues