LeEco recently launched two new smartphones in India, Le 2 and Le Max 2, redefining the premium budget and flagship smartphone standards. The biggest highlight of these new phones was the USB Type-C audio port with CDLA standard, which the company claims to deliver lossless sound quality through its compatible earphones.
We already reviewed LeEco's USB Type-C earphones and also compared it against capable 3.5mm earbuds. The outcome favoured the CDLA USB Type-C earphones, delivering great sound, detail, clarity and an overall balanced performance. The earphones are sold separately for Rs. 1,990, but are given free for those who purchase the Le 2 or Le Max 2 on their first sale on July 28.
We received the review unit of Le 2 smartphone on Tuesday, and before we get down to the testing of individual features, here's our first impressions of the affordable handset. It is worth noting that the Le 2 smartphone is priced at Rs. 11,999 and poses quite a challenge to some of the best selling devices in the market such as Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, Meizu M3 Note, Lenovo K4 Note and many others.
Design
LeEco Le 2 smartphone is a close replica of the Le 1s and Le 1s Eco with slight differences. The similar design can be a good thing for the company in building a signature style statement. The handset features a full metal body made of aircraft-grade aluminium for durability.
The front design of the L2 looks just like the Le 1s smartphone with chamefered edges and edge-to-edge glass. The front camera and the proximity sensor is on the sides of the speaker and the lower bar houses the capacitive buttons for back, recent and home
The rear design of the Le 2 is slightly changed. There are two horizontal antenna lines on the back panel and large camera housing with a dual LED flash next to it. The fingerprint scanner is placed just below the camera and the LETV (the company's former name) is seen at the centre.
As for the sides, the volume controls and power/lock button is found on the right and a SIM card tray is on the left. The speakers are positioned at the bottom surrounding the USB Type-C port.
Display
LeEco Le 2 features a 5.5-inch Full HD IPS display and it is nothing different than the Le 1s or Le 1s Eco. Viewing angles are great, good readability in sunlight, true and vibrant colours are displayed and the touch is smooth and responsive.
Camera
LeEco Le 2 features an upgraded 16MP rear-facing camera with dual LED flash with PDAF, f/2.0 aperture and an impressive 8MP front snapper with wide-angle lens. Compared to its predecessors, the camera resolution is clearly improved to a noticeable level. The details are crispier and low light imaging is slightly improved. We will be testing different modes of the camera in our full review and share samples as well.
Performance
LeEco Le 2 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 octa-core processor clocking speeds at 1.8GHz, 3GB RAM and offers 32GB eMMC5.1 storage. With this configuration, Le 2 is likely to deliver a lag-free experience. With the previous Le models, Le 1s and Le 1s Eco, we were quite impressed by how well they handled various tasks. We are expecting a much improved performance from the Le 2.
During the launch of the handset, the company had said the Le 2 scored 79636 on AnTuTu benchmarking test, which we are yet to confirm.
Battery
LeEco Le 2 features a 3,000mAh battery supported by fast charging technology. We are sure that the rapid charging will work like a charm, like it did on Le 1s and Le 1s Eco, but we are yet to test the battery life on the Le 2 smartphone.
Add-ons
LeEco Le 2 offers fingerprint scanning tech, USB Type-C port for headphones and charging and comes with LeEco Membership. All of these features combined, Le 2 makes for a strong bundle of high-performance smartphone.
We will be sharing the full review of the Le 2 smartphone in the next few days, and the above mentioned descriptions are based on our initial view about the device. We will be sharing a lot about the phone in the coming days before we provide a fully-featured review.
