Thursday, March 28, 2024

REVIEW | Lenovo K6 Note smartphone

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What’s in the box?

  • Unit
  • 2A wall charger
  • USB cable
  • Headset
  • SIM eject tool
  • Manual and leaflets

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Build and design

The Lenovo K6 Note won’t necessarily stand out in a crowd. The design is safe and typical of a 2016 Chinese smartphone. It uses the same design language with the midrange offerings from Huawei and Xiaomi phones. At 8.6mm thick, it isn’t the sexiest either. But the added waist line has to do with the built in 4000 mAh battery.

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At the top of the 5.5-inch display are an 8-megapixel front camera, earpiece, ambient sensor, and a concealed LED notifications light. Just below the screen are non-lit capacitive keys.

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Flip it on its belly and you will be greeted by a slightly protruding 16-megapixel camera with concentric markings. There is also the fast circular fingerprint scanner. The dual-tone LED flash is sandwiched between the camera and the fingerprint scanner.

At the bottom is the Lenovo logo. The back is mostly metal built but the top and bottom parts where the edges meet are made of plastic, but painted metallic. This is to ensure better signal reception rather than having visible antenna bands.

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The right edge is where you can find the tactile volume rocker and power button.

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The plastic top edge houses the 3.5mm jack and noise-canceling mic.

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The left edge is devoid of any buttons but features the dual nano hybrid SIM slot. With it, you can go for one SIM and one microSD card or two-SIM setup.

At the bottom edge, you can find the slowly being phased out USB 2.0, a 7-hole speaker grille infused with Dolby Atmos, and another 7-hole grille which conceals the mic. This keeps the bottom edge uniform-looking.

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Display

The K6 note has a beautiful 5.5-inch Full HD screen with 1080 x 1920p resolution. The display is bright and very readable outdoors. The K6 Note has a 2.5D curved glass that is often seen in modern smartphones.

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However, there is no mention of the protection used on this device so you might want to invest in some screen protectors or tempered glass. Overall, the screen is impressive.

Performance

The Lenovo K6 Note is endowed with a very generous 4GB of RAM and an 8-core processor clocked at 1.4 GHz. For its chipset, Lenovo used a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 paired with a graphic processing unit Adreno 505, which is noted for high quality graphics output but is battery friendly.

For day-to-day usage, the K6 Note was able to run applications thrown at it. Switching between apps like Facebook and Instagram or watching a series was a breeze, thanks to the generous 4GB RAM.

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I tried the following HD games on the K6 Note and here are my ratings for it.

  • Asphalt Extreme
    Little to no lags experienced and very playable
  • OTTTD
    Little lags but can be adjusted in the settings to reduce gore. Playable
  • Mobile Legends
    Very playable with almost no lags

Camera

The K6 Note has a 16-megapixel rear snapper paired with a 8-megapixel front camera. As mentioned, the rear camera is slightly protruding ? an apparent trend in 2016 as seen with the Zenfone 3 base models, iPhone 7, and Samsung S7 series.

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It also has a dual LED flash dubbed as dual CCT flash. CCT stands for Color Correlated Temperature flash, which simply means the other flash is white and the other is yellow to help avoid overexposed photos.

The 8-megapixel front camera features beautification mode and gesture-triggered shots and captures good photos in low-light conditions.

The camera app is clean and minimal. Supported modes include Pro mode, Panorama, Art Nightscape, Artistic HDR, Fast Motion (time lapse) and Slow Motion mode. In the Pro mode, you can adjust the WB, Focus mode, ISO, EV and also shutter speed but only up until ? of a second, which isn’t that long but at least it is there.

Added feature is the triaxial level to determine your shooting angle. The K6 Note can record between 480p, 720p and 1080p Full HD videos.

Below are sample shots of the K6 Note.

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Features and UI

The K6 Note ships with the now aging Android Marshmallow out of the box. The UI is mostly stock Android with some features injected by Lenovo like gesture- or touch-based triggers to activate behaviors.

Notable features include the native VR Mode which, when enabled, splits the screen into two identical smaller screens ideal for VR headsets.

It is a native capability so any content or app in the phone automatically is displayed into two windows. There is no need to convert videos to have a VR experience. This should be a standard feature for phones. Too bad it doesn’t come with a VR headset.

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Battery

The K6 Note has a generous 4000 mAh battery. Combine that with a power efficient processor and some software optimization by Lenovo, the device can last you between 2 to 2.5 days depending on how you use it.

Though the Snapdragon 430 supports Qualcomm’s quick charge 3.0 technology, Lenovo did not enable it for this unit which is a shame given the large 4000 mAh battery of the K6 Note. However, it still charges fast and is able to get half the capacity in under 30 minutes.

Fast charging might be there but Lenovo did not put any indicator if the device is going through fast charging as some manufacturers do, like Motorola with their G4 plus. Incidentally, Lenovo now owns Motorola Mobility for those who are unaware. Anyway, all-in-all the battery life is very impressive on the K6 Note.

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The verdict

Considering the price of the Lenovo K6 Note (under P12,000), the long battery life, a capable performer, and that beautiful screen, it wouldn’t be hard to recommend this phone.

The Good

  • Ample RAM to help mid-level processor
  • 4GB RAM and Snapdragon phone under P12,000
  • Little bloatware
  • Fluid for day-to-day use
  • Beautiful Full HD screen
  • Fast fingerprint scanner
  • Decent camera
  • Good battery life

The Bad

  • Typical phone design of 2016
  • Deactivated Quick Charge capability
  • Cheap bundled headset
  • Native VR support but no VR headset included

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