Lenovo's title-holder for longest battery life has a few minor flaws, but you can't argue with the price
Have you noticed that your beloved smartphone tends to run out of juice before you can rush it to the nearest socket? I'm pretty sure users everywhere have this headache quite often, especially when they're using one of the latest battery-gulping phones out there.
There are few possible solutions. One is to lug a portable power bank with you wherever you go. Another is to turn off the features that drink the battery dry. A third option is to buy a phone with a colossal battery capacity.
The subject of this review, the Lenovo P780, is one of the few models on the market that could currently be classified under solution No.3 above. Its 4,000 milliampere-hour (mAh) battery has outrageously good life with a duration of about two days for general online-all-the-time use. It has twice to three times more capacity than most smartphones on the market at present and even outmatches Motorola's Razr Maxx which held the "smartphone battery-life king" title for a few years in a row.
While the Lenovo P780 is an Android phone, it doesn't come with really cool, novel functions like the Samsung S4, that you can control without touching the screen, or the LG Optimus G Pro that you can take and combine frontal and rear videos simultaneously. But it does everything that a smartphone should do: it makes calls, lets you browse the web, send SMS texts and email, indulge in real-time chat, play crappy games, etc.
This phone really focuses on preserving battery power and comes with an application that helps you to make the battery last even longer (basically, when not in use, it turns off every online feature and function that requires power). It comes with Microsoft Office alternative, business card and document-scan applications as well.
It also has a nice, bright, 5-inch, high-definition screen but I found its sensitivity to my touch commands a bit slower than most other touch-screen phones I've used to date. Unless you're planning to play a lot of games that require rapid response times, this phone will do just fine.
It's very sturdily built and gives you plenty of connectivity with two SIM card slots (for managing two lovers simultaneously, perhaps), a micro SD slot and a mini USB port. The back can be opened up to let you swap the battery with a full-recharged spare, if need be.
The P780 also comes with the latest version of Android. It also has a very loud rear speaker, though the sound produced isn't very smooth overall.
Here are a few downsides I discovered while using this phone for a period of one week. First, its ability to pick up 3G and Wi-Fi signals is not as good as in the big-name phones and I occasionally got cut off. Secondly, it doesn't look very fashionable (a totally subjective view, admittedly). Third, its notification light (which warns you that there are new updates to be viewed) is easy to overlook because it's hidden behind the top speakers. Lastly (and oddly), I couldn't run a few graphic-intensive applications _ namely, Horn and several live wallpapers _ even though they had been installed successfully.
The above cons may not be an issue for most people, especially those who are looking for the best bang for their buck. This power bank that can make calls costs just over 10,000 baht which, in my book anyway, makes it an excellent deal indeed.
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