Lenovo at MWC 2015: VIBE Shot SmartPhone/Camera Crossover Announced
by Ian Cutress & Andrei Frumusanu on March 2, 2015 7:52 AM EST
As part of our booth tour at Lenovo during Mobile World Congress, on display was the recently announced Lenovo VIBE Shot and we managed to get some hands-on time. The VIBE Shot is described by Lenovo as a ‘2-in-1 camera smartphone’ attempting to bridge a gap between smartphones and point-and-click cameras. The device attempts this by placing buttons on the sides of the smartphone similar to how a point-and-click would do so, as well as having a full-frame 16:9 16MP low light sensor and a tri-color flash.
The 5-inch full HD device includes optical image stabilization as well as providing simple and pro modes with a button adjustment on the top. Simple mode is equivalent to the auto mode on most cameras, whereas the pro-mode offers manual adjustments such as exposure, white balance, focus mode, saturation and more. Hardware under the hood includes an eight-core Snapdragon 615 (A57/A57) at a 1.7 GHz peak on the fast cluster with 3GB DRAM and 32GB of internal storage.
Battery capacity comes in at 2900 mAh, with LTE Cat-4 and Android 5.0. The device will be offered in a dual Nano-SIM arrangement, weighs 145g and comes in at 7.3mm thin. Storage is expandable, with guaranteed support of up to 128GB via a microSD.
The phone felt pretty solid in hand, and the thinness is remarkable. What wasn't remarkable was the aluminium band on the back along the camera side, as it attracted fingerprints. The display unit had seen a lot of use, and it was quite hard to clean it.
The VIBE Shot will be available in red, white and grey, and come to Lenovo’s regular markets in June starting at $349.
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ToTTenTranz - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
The Snapdragon 615 has two Cortex A53 clusters, not A57.I don't see how this smartphone approaches a camera anymore than the usual flagships. The camera sensor can't be any larger than the typical 1/3"-1/2.6" because it's close to the corner, and the "manual adjustments" can usually be done through a third-party camera app.
There's also no optical zoom, no xenon flash...
The Panasonic DMC-CM1 is in fact a serious smartphone+camera hybrid, but this is not.
mkozakewich - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
That Panasonic is actually a really interesting one! I've been debating getting it (or waiting for prices to drop a bit), but it doesn't seem to have the fastest DSP.zodiacfml - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Unimpressive as a camera and the CPU too. The flash is intriguing despite I never used the flash for photography in my Nexus5.EddyKilowatt - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Camera is tops on my list of phone features so this will get some attention, but it goes without saying that no device can simultaneously have "thinness... [that] is remarkable" and a decently large sensor, without rewriting some laws of physics. I also don't think Lenovo's got much experience in the camera UI and image manipulation fields, and as Sony continues to demonstrate, even an imaging powerhouse can fail badly at getting that subtle mix correct.Still it is great to see another "phone/camera crossover" put into play. Several of the bigs have already tried; someone will get it right sooner rather than later, and I think we'll see a legitimate new category of gadget emerge.
aggiechase37 - Thursday, March 5, 2015 - link
Say, remember when Lenovo was caught red handed putting spyware in their laptops? No thanks Lenovo. You can keep your pathetic business practices to yourself.Shahzaib - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
It has been overpriced though it's a nice smartphone but lack full frame sensor..<a href="http://www.topmediabox.com/">matricom</...