Lenovo Vibe S1 Review

Table of Contents

Call Quality and Connectivity

Calling on the Vibe S1 is a fair experience with decently loud earpiece and noise-cancelling feature. Cellular reception is also on the good side as we were able to have signal bars most of the time using a Globe LTE SIM card.

The handset is well equipped with LTE radios so you’ll be connected to 4G network. The dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n can connect to 5Ghz bands if available to address congestion. There’s also GPS with A-GPS support for better and faster lock on, Bluetooth 4.0 for your wearables, and an FM radio for some air tunes.

Battery Life

With its 2420mAh non-removable Li-Polymer battery, one can expect a somewhat whole day of use with the Vibe S1. It lasted for a whole day starting at 7 AM and ending it around 8 PM with mix use of texting, calling, and minimal use of data connection.

Using the battery test of PCMark, it’s able to score for 7 hours and 8 minutes. While a routine video loop test with zero volume and 50% brightness in airplane mode managed to squeeze out 7 hours and 15 minutes.

Conclusion

In the end, Lenovo has made a quality handset with the Vibe S1. You get all the goodies to expect from a mid-ranger with snappy performance, premium design, solid build, and boastful camera features. Although its SRP of Php15,999 could turn some consumer down but you’re paying for a better handset from the established Lenovo brand.

Lenovo Vibe S1 specs:
5-inch Full HD IPS LCD @ 1920 x 1080 pixels, 441ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 3
1.7GHz 64-bit MediaTek MT6752 octa-core CPU
Mali-T760MP2 GPU
3GB RAM
32GB internal storage
Expandable via microSD, up to 128GB (uses SIM 2 slot)
13-megapixel PDAF rear camera w/ dual-tone flash
8-megapixel + 2-megapixel front-facing cameras
Dual SIM / Dual Standby
4G LTE
Wi-Fi 802.11 dual-band a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
GPS w/ A-GPS
FM Radio
2,420mAh battery
Android 5.0 Lollipop w/ Vibe UI
143.3 x 70.8 x 7.8mm
132g

What we liked about it:

Premium design
Solid build
Great performance
Dual front camera enhancement
Good camera optics

What we didn’t:

Average battery life
Unlit capacitive buttons
Vibe UI is not everyone’s cup of tea

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.