While the Lenovo Vibe Z costs more than most of the phones we review here, it is worth mentioning that at around $400 this phone is still far cheaper than most of it’s Snapdragon counterparts. Lenovo have designed a slim yet solid device with a 5.5 inch 1080p screen and a Snapdragon 800 processor but ditched the big price tag.
In addition, the phone is dual active SIM unlike most other devices that have dual SIM, dual standby. The difference being the Vibe Z has two RF’s, two SIMS’s and two modem stacks allowing the device to be connected to both networks at the same time, hence allowing calls to be received at any given time.
Dual standby allows both SIM’s to be on standby waiting for a call. When a call is established on one SIM, the other is no longer active. Callers to the other SIM will hear a message that the phone is off or it will go to voice mail.
Display
The screen on the Vibe Z is very good, but I wouldn’t call it great. It lacks the extra brightness and vivid colours many other devices are achieving these days. That being said, it has Gorilla Glass 3 which is great addition to any phone.
Software
This is the weak point of the phone. Lenovo did some original things here but it just wasn’t enough.
First off, getting use to the phone and setting it up was a nightmare. The Lenovo launcher doesn’t have a main app menu so every app you download goes onto your main screens. I didn’t like this at all, especially considering the phone does have some Chinese apps that you can’t easily remove so they are visible all the time. If you are like me and load a lot of apps, things become cluttered very quickly.
It didn’t take me long to put Nova Launcher on as my default launcher.
The settings and pulldown menu’s have a Samsung Touchwiz look about them. They initially seemed overwhelming and I couldn’t find anything, but as time went on it started to grow on me. Lenovo have added some options into the settings and I really like the shake your phone to put it to sleep feature. It’s convenient and will save the power button from wear over the long run.
It took a very long time for my google contacts to get picked up by the phone and when I sent texts they went out with all the contact info but responses came back in a separate thread with just the telephone number. This is a simple thing, but makes it very hard to keep track of who you are texting.
Lenovo have included a security app called SECUREit. It’s a great idea but can cause you a lot of problems if you are unaware of the way it works. One of its features is privacy guard which works like a firewall. It’s default setting is to block any SMS activity that doesn’t come from the stock apps. If you like to load any 3rd party SMS apps, you’ll need to allow them in this setting.
Probably the biggest surprise came when I tried to connect my phone to the PC. In order to communicate with the computer, some Lenovo software was required. I’m not a fan of this, I like to connect my phone and have it show up like a drive. I followed the install directions and when it was all done to my surprise it was all in Chinese and of no use to me. I could not locate an English version online, so I was forced to look for a work around. What I opted to use is a free app called Airdroid. This allows you to have complete access to your phone via your PC. All the transferring you would normally do with a cable, Airdroid does wirelessly. It’s not as fast as transferring with a cable but I averaged 5Mbps, which is good for most things.
I also experienced quite a few apps that aren’t compatible with my device. This presents a problem since some of them are important ones like banking apps, etc. Even sideloading doesn’t work.
Leave a Reply