Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus: A practical choice

The wait to own a Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus, from the moment bookings opened, to the day it was delivered, turned out to be arduous. Coming from a firm that’s not known for smartphone-making credentials, one must acknowledge that the experience was a surprise. The colour choices that the brand provides, to begin with, are rather safe ones — gold, silver and dark grey. The phone’s USPs are the smart pricing and its focussed set of features. Of course, you can’t ignore its similarities with the Moto G third generation phone (interestingly coming after Lenovo has acquired Motorola) in terms of characteristics, right from the 5-inch display to its Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, with its not-so-pleasing 32 GB limit on expandable memory through the microSD slot. Its sync detection with Android apps, tracked from the user’s earlier phone (through the email-id) is a smooth way to kickstart things. There’s a system update in due course as well, which doesn’t take much time over a reasonably fast Internet connection. The system takes up one-third of the internal memory. Surprisingly, unlike most of its counterparts, it doesn’t thrust upon you must-download apps, including a few products of Google (but for Google Chrome). The apps bunch themselves well. Google products come up in a widget-like box, whereas the tools feature does its part in bunching daily essentials such as the calculator, recorder, clock and compass (even the likes of Truecaller if you choose to). The recorder facility, besides as a standalone, works efficiently with calls and FM stations, allowing recordings to be saved in AMR, 3GPP and WAV formats. The reception quality is not stellar; the noise elimination and loudness are aspects the phone-makers can improve. To the other side of the mobile, is music, which is a class of its own with the Dolby setting. There’s an option to disable it too, but the equaliser comes with a good set of choices, to match up to different tastes of users. There’s no headset provided with the mobile, which is a downer, for all its efforts to be a musically-efficient piece. You’d have wished the 13 MP rear camera and 5 MP front camera were as good as the numbers. They come with their own set of limitations. The flash works just fine, but for simplistic photographs (where HDR isn’t of great use), the auto-focus feature isn’t very consistent. The image-editing features create a certain element of intrigue, though. The battery, a removable one, with an impressive 2750 mAH capacity, after the initial dose of extensive charging, shows signs of over-heating. However, it lasts most of the day. Multi-tasking and display are some of the phone’s bigger strengths; and there are no issues of lag, for the 2GB RAM does a neat job. The phone weighs on the heavier side at 142 grams. The Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus, given its wholesome effectiveness and minor quirks, is a workable bargain. The Hindu Tech