Lenovo P770
Street Price: Rs 14,500
 

Many a PC manufacturers have been eyeing the booming smartphone market. While Dell's venture in the cellphone market didn't go the way they intended it to, but Lenovo did manage to garner some positive response with their budget Android smartphones. The recently reviewed P700i was quite good; therefore, we were looking forward to the P770 that packs in relatively more power. Without further ado, let's find out if it's worth the price tag of Rs 14.500.

Design And Build
Just like the Lenovo P700i, this phone doesn't flaunt a slim waistline. With 12 mm of thickness, it actually feels quite bulky in hand. The blue variant of the phone uses the same hue and texture that we've seen on the Samsung GALAXY Note II. I wouldn't say it's a wise decision since I'm not a big fan of faux-metal finish. Below the display, the phone features three backlit keys, namely Home, Options, and Back. The Volume Rocker is on the right side, while the left side is completely bare. 3.5 mm jack, micro-USB port, and the Lock button are on the top.

 

While the phone doesn't impress with its design and feel, there's nothing to complain about the build quality. The construction is quite solid, and I'm sure the handset can take a few knocks and falls. The P770 sports a protruding camera lens, which makes the phone a little wobbly when placed on a table. Since Lenovo has gone with a sensible 4.5" screen size, single-handed usage is fairly manageable on this phone.

 

Screen And Basic Hardware
The display on the P770 is IPS type with 540x960 pixels. The colour reproduction and viewing angles are good. The display is reasonably bright, and the sunlight legibility is just about ok. On the flipside, the contrast could have been better. Another gripe I have here is that the display isn't protected by a scratch-resistant glass.

The phone is powered by an MTK 6577 chipset that packs in a dual-core 1.2 GHz Cortex A9 CPU and PowerVR SGX531 GPU. It has 1 GB of RAM, 4 GB internal storage, microSD card slot, 5 megapixel camera, and 3500 mAh battery. The detailed specs can be found at the end of this article.

UI And Performance
The P770 packs in Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) that's heavily customised by Lenovo. The first thing to grab your attention is the launcher widget that features five zones (shortcuts), which provide quick access to select apps. You can personalise this widget and add your favourite apps here.

The menu icons look different than what we usually see on Android. They're oval shaped much like what we see on Symbian platform. Lenovo has done a good job when it comes to optimisation. Transition effects and even swiping across the homescreens is smoother than similarly-priced Android phones.

 

The browser supports tabs and an option to save pages for offline viewing. The page rendering isn't the quickest, but it gets the work done nonetheless. The handset comes preinstalled with a bunch of useful apps such as Kingsoft Office, File Manager, and Lenovo Note App. Coming to the subject of gaming, the casual games such as Temple Run and Fruit Ninja run fine. However, the GPU intensive games like Dead Trigger stutter a lot.

In AnTuTu, the P770 scores 7253, which is slightly better than Samsung GALAXY Nexus. You can see the comparison chart below:

 

Multimedia
The music player offers equaliser presets and other sound settings. The sound quality is good, but nothing that will set it apart from similarly priced handsets. The video player can handle 720p videos, but the full-HD ones are a no-go.

The phone comes with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash. The snapper allows you to control quite a few settings including white balance, exposure, and saturation. Then there are scene modes such as Auto, Night, Portrait, and Landscape. In terms of image quality, the camera is disappointing. Even in the well-lit environment, the shots contain excessive noise. Click here to view the unedited sample. Moreover, the flash doesn't seem to be properly calibrated, as it completely washes out the picture. So if you like photography, this phone isn't for you.

Moving on to video recording capabilities, the handset can record 720p videos. The clips are saved in 3GP format. Similar to the still camera's performance, the quality isn't good. The videos too lack detail and looks grainy.

Telephony And Messaging
Being a dual-SIM (GSM) phone, the P770 features a proper SIM management menu. After using it for almost a week, I found no issues with the handset's network reception or call quality. On the messaging front, the on-screen keyboard isn't very responsive, but gets the job done. One nice touch here is that the volume rocker lets you adjust font size while reading messages.

 

Battery
The P770 packs in a 3500 mAh Li-Ion battery. In our video loop test, it lasted for around 9 hours and 15 minutes. On a normal work day it easily lasts for two days. Now that's very impressive for an Android phone. But with the big battery that it comes with, such a performance was not entirely surprising.

Verdict
For Rs 14,500, the Lenovo P770 does a good job at handling Android Jelly Bean. The battery performance of this dual-SIM handset is excellent. Considering the phone's 14.5k price tag, the display and music quality are good too. On the flipside, the device feels rather clunky in hand. It stutters a bit when playing latest games. The lacklustre camera is another point that stops us from recommending the P770. If you're looking for a mid-range Android device, the XOLO Q700 is a much better option. Not only does it perform better than the P770, thanks to its Quad-core processor, but is also Rs 4,500 cheaper. And if you're ready to try out something beyond Android, you should consider the Nokia Lumia 620.

Features: 3/5
Design And Build Quality: 3.5/5
Performance: 3/5
Value For Money: 3/5
Mojo: 2.5/5
Overall Rating: 3/5

Specifications:

• 4.5" IPS screen with 540x960 pixels.
• Dual-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, PowerVR SGX531 GPU.
• 1 GB RAM, 4 GB of storage, MicroSD card slot.
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with flash, VGA front-facing camera.
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Micro-USB port.
• 3.5 mm jack, FM radio.
• Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean).
• Dual-SIM (GSM), Supports 3G.
• 133 (l) mm x 67 (w) mm x 11.2 (d) mm. Weighs 161 grammes.
• 3500 mAh battery.

 

TAGS: Mobile Phones, Multi-SIM, Android, Lenovo