Review
Introduction
The Motorola acquisition will put even more wind in the sail of outward bound Lenovo but blockbuster smartphones carrying their own brand are needed just as much, both at home in China and internationally. The QHD Vibe Z2 Pro is undoubtedly the top-of-the range offering, but what about the midrange? The Lenovo Vibe X2 reporting for duty.
The Vibe X2 looks stunning in its layered magnesium alloy body and that's exactly the impression Lenovo was after. It's hard to get noticed in this particular segment of the market, but the Vibe X2 has nothing to worry about. The layered design of the Vibe X2 is not unlike the Jolla phone, but there's an extra layer, for a total of three, whose different colors complement each other nicely.
Key features
5.0" 16M-color 1080p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen
Android OS v4.4 KitKat with Vibe UI 2.0
Quad-core 2.0GHz Cortex-A17 and quad-core 1.7GHz Cortex-A7; MediatTek MT6595m True8Core, PowerVR G600 GPU
2GB of RAM
13MP camera with 1080p video recording @ 30fps
5MP front-facing camera, 1080p video recording
32GB of built-in storage
LTE Cat. 4 (150Mbps), Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, GPS/GLONASS receiver, Bluetooth v4.1+LE, FM Radio
Standard 3.5mm audio jack
Accelerometer and proximity sensor, notification LED
Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
2,300mAh battery
Main disadvantages
No microSD
No NFC
Front camera is fixed focus
No 64GB option
No 4K video recording although the chipset supports it
A bit pricey
Non-removable battery
Performance
The Lenovo Vibe X2 sports a MediaTek MT6595 chipset with four high-powered Cortex-A17 2.0GHz cores and four low-power Cortex-A7 1.7GHz cores for when you need to conserve battery. The only other phone to tout this chipset is the Meizu MX4, but there, the Cortex-A17 cores are set to run on to 2.2GHz. The RAM is at 2GB and the GPU is the PowerVR G600, so overall, we're looking at a very respectable hardware setup.
Before we proceed with the tests, we would like to note that we specifically checked whether the Vibe X2 cheats in the tests and it doesn't.
So, our first test inspects the raw CPU performance. In the multi-OS GeekBench 3 the Lenovo Vibe X2 tops the chart among its main rivals and also beats the Meizu MX4 by almost 100 points. In the similar AnTuTu 5 benchmark, the Vibe X2 is marginally slower than the Galaxy Alpha and the Meizu MX4
