Le Eco
has just announced their three new phones in the Chinese market.The company is
making a lot of noise and positioning itself against its competition in the
smartphone space and beyond.
LeEco has been
making a concerted push into the smartphone space. And today they are updating
their smartphone lineup with a trio of devices all appropriately suffixed as 2.
These are the Le 2, the Le 2 Pro, and the LeMax 2.
Starting
at the flagship level, we have the LeMax 2. Based around Qualcomm’s popular
Snapdragon 820, the 5.7” phablet’s spec sheet reads very similar to some of the
other flagship phones we’ve seen launched this year. LeEco is pairing the 820
with 32 or 64GB of UFS 2.0 NAND, and as a first for any Android smartphone, up
to 6GB of LPDDR4 RAM. To have the first 6GB phone show up here is admittedly
unexpected, but given the prevalence of 3GB/4GB configurations elsewhere, it
was only a matter of time until someone used higher capacity chips to get to
6GB.
Shifting gears,
the display for the phone is a 1440p LCD, which will put it in competition with
the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Note5 and S7 series, and the LG G5. The display
subjectively looked good with high brightness and good viewing
angles. Otherwise for image capture purposes, LeEco has outfitted the
phone with a 21MP OIS-capable rear camera, utilizing Sony’s IMX230 sensor.
As has been the case for a number of phones this generation, there is a sizable
camera hump here to house the camera while keeping the rest of the phone
relatively thin. Meanwhile front facing camera duties are handled by a
8MP camera with 1.4µm pixel pitch on the sensor.
Rounding
out the package, LeEco is equipping the phone with a 3100mAh battery.
But
perhaps the most notable aspect of this phone will be the I/O connectivity.
That LeEco is using the increasingly common USB Type-C port is, if
anything, to be expected. However what’s unexpected is that this is the only port;
a 3.5mm audio jack is not present. Instead the company is piping out audio over
the USB port and including a USB Type-C to 3.5mm audio adapter to maintain
compatibility with standard headsets. Underlying the USB audio connection in
turn is a brand-new technology LeEco is calling CDLA (Continual Digital
Lossless Audio).
LeEco will be
offering two configurations of the LeMax 2. The 32GB NAND + 4GB RAM
configuration will sell for ¥2099, or roughly $325. Otherwise the more spacious
64GB NAND + 6GB RAM configuration will sell for ¥2499 (~$385).
Below the LeMax 2
are the duo of Le 2 series phone, the Le 2 Pro and the simply named Le 2. Both
of these phones share the same basic chassis and screen, incorporating a 1080p
LCD in a 5.5” phablet form factor. The design is also the same as the LeMax 2
so except for the smaller camera bump on the basic Le 2 you wouldn't be able to
tell the difference between the Le 2 Pro and the LeMax 2. The difference,
as you might expect from the name, comes from the feature set and price.
Starting with the
Le 2 Pro, this phone is based around MediaTek’s Helio X25 SoC, which offers 3
clusters of ARM Cortex CPUs – 2 A53 quad core clusters at different
performance/power levels, and a dual core A72 cluster. The X25 in turn is
paired with 4GB of LPDDR3 and 32GB of eMMC 5.1 NAND. Also setting it apart from
its more basic counterpart is the rear camera module, which like the LeMax 2 is
a 21MP camera utilizing Sony’s IMX230 sensor. However OIS doesn't seem to
be available in this somewhat smaller phone.
As for the basic
Le 2, this sees LeEco dropping down to the lower performance Helio X20 SoC,
which cuts down on both the A72 cluster and GPU clockspeeds. The Le 2 gets a
smaller 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM and the same 32GB of eMMC 5.1 NAND, however the
camera module is a simpler 16MP camera utilizing a hereto-unknown sensor.
Otherwise both
phones share identical specifications as far as all other features are
concerned. The Helio SoC offers its own integrated Category 6 LTE modem, and
both phones incorporate a 8MP front facing camera. And since both phones share
the same chassis, both phones also come equipped with a 3000mAh battery.
Finally, for I/O and connectivity both phones share the larger LeMax 2’s
configuration: dual-band WiFi + Bluetooth 4.2 for wireless data, and the sole
USB Type-C port for data and audio.
The
Le 2 will be hitting the market at ¥1099 (~$170), while the more powerful Le 2
Pro adds another ¥400 to the price tag, bringing it to ¥1499 (~$230).
That’s
it for now.
Thank
you for visiting
Will
see you next time…
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