Lenovo K9 First Impressions: Four cameras in a budget phone

While Motorola came out with a bunch of smartphones this year, it’s parent company, Lenovo has been missing in action for the better part of the year. The Chinese brand finally broke its silence on Tuesday with the Lenovo K9, a smartphone that the company hopes will take on budget rivals like the Honor 7S, Xiaomi Redmi 6, Realme C1 and the likes. It’s primary feature is the dual camera setup both at the front and the back. However, while the earlier K-series phones from Lenovo all boasted of big batteries, the Lenovo K9 only packs a 3,000mAh battery. It certainly looks classy with a laminated glass body, and the K9, for the short time I had it in the hand, felt quite impressive to use.

Lenovo’s absence from the Indian smartphone market is well documented. The company’s CEO has admitted mistakes were made in its strategies for this highly competitive market. He also promised to bounce back and the Lenovo K9 is the answer to its critics. Perhaps it’s the dual-brand strategy, or strong competition from its rivals, Lenovo lost the strong grip it once had over the Indian smartphone market. The company’s PC business, however, continues to thrive.

The Lenovo K9 is a freshly made phone, and in a lot of ways, incorporates features from more expensive smartphones. It’s back panel is made of laminated glass with a uniform black colour, unlike the metal body designs Honor and Redmi phones offer in that price range. Further, the Lenovo K9 has the older 18:9 display sans the notch on top, which has now infiltrated smartphones in almost all price ranges. I’m not particularly keen on having the notch on a smartphone, and I like the fact that the Lenovo K9 sticks to the old school way of things.

The Lenovo K9’s highlight is the dual camera setup both at the front and the back. It’s not the first smartphone to do so, but it certainly gives it some flair. The Honor 9 Lite at the beginning of the year also had a similar camera setup. There’s a 13+5MP dual camera unit on both the front and the back. The secondary sensors on both sides are used for depth sensing to offer portrait shots. Essentially, it is required to blur the background so the subject gets more attention. The camera is quite barebones though, and only has options for panorama, bokeh and photos. There’s no option for slow-motion videos, hyperlapse and others which is a bummer. The camera does have a beauty mode that essentially smoothens out the skin like most Huawei and Oppo phones. We’ll explore how well the cameras work in our in-depth review.

The Lenovo K9 has a 5.7-inch HD+ display housed in a metal chassis with glass on the back. Under the chassis is a MediaTek Helio P22 chipset coupled with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Smartphones competing in that price range more or less have the same hardware, so there's nothing distinctive here. The Helio P22 is a powerful and efficient chipset for the budget segment, and we expect to see more phones powered by it in the near future.

The stockish Android UI on the Lenovo K9 runs quite smooth, although it's long term performance may not be so. For the few minutes I used the phone, I didn’t face any slowdown. The transitions are smooth and apps launched with the expected waiting time of around 1-2 seconds. If you're looking for a phone to play graphics-intensive games though, the Lenovo K9 might be disappointing.

The Lenono K9, as a result, comes off as a strong attempt at grabbing back the market share the company once enjoyed in the mid-range and budget segment. The company is back in business in the smartphone industry after a hiatus of more than a year, and it's attempt to innovate in the budget segment is commendable. Although amidst the strong competition from the likes of the Realme 2 and the Honor 9N, how well the Lenovo K9 will be received remains to be seen. We’ll be testing the phone out thoroughly for a detailed review, so stay tuned for that.

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Subhrojit Mallick

Eats smartphones for breakfast. View Full Profile