Lenovo Vibe Shot Review

The Lenovo Vibe Series are premium designer series of smartphones from Lenovo, which have high standards in both design and engineering. The Lenovo Vibe Shot is the recent addition to the Vibe series. The Vibe shot was announced at the Mobile World congress this year and now it has made its way to India. The highlight of the Vibe Shot is its camera. Let’s go ahead and check how good the camera is, and of course the mobile as well.

In the box

• Lenovo Vibe Shot Mobile
• Wall unit charger
• USB / Data cable
• In ear headphones
• SIM ejector pin
• Back cover
• Screen guard
• Manuals

Design

The Vibe Shot has got an interesting design. It looks more like a point and shoot camera than a mobile. It has metal rims and glass body. It weighs 145 grams and is 7.3 mm thin. On the right side, in addition to the usual volume and power buttons, you get a dedicated button for camera shutter. Also there is a switch to toggle between pro and auto mode of the camera. The Left side has slots for SIM tray and microSD card tray. The memory can be expanded by upto 128 GB with microSD card. Also along the bottom of the left side, there is a groove to attach a lanyard. Moving along the bottom there are speaker grills and micro USB socket. The speakers are not very loud and the placement may not be ideal for gaming as you may block it with your hands. At the top there is the 3.5mm audio jack and mic.

The back of the mobile is sealed and not removable. It houses the 16 MP camera along with tri color flash and IR Hybrid autofocus system. The back is made of glass and it has the Lenovo Vibe branding horizontally. The back is really flush and don’t we love flat designed mobiles! Also the glass at the back is not a fingerprint magnet. On the front is the 5 inch IPS LCD display with 8MP camera, sensors, notification LED and earpiece on top. The menu keys are back-lit.

Overall the design is top-notch. I have used this mobile for a week now and already managed to drop it once. No scars so far. I would even say that it is the best designed Lenovo mobile in recent times. I love everything about the design of this mobile. The premium metal sides, the flush glass back, comfortable dimensions, backlit keys and meaningful hardware keys; wish every mobile takes a page out of the Lenovo vibe’s design.

Display

The display is a LCD touch screen capable of full HD resolution and packs in a resolution of 441 pixels. Yes, it is sharp, responsive, vibrant, bright and all. But the highlight of the display is its sunlight readability. I could not just read clearly, I can also see the images clearly in the display under harsh direct sunlight. I like to use mobiles without any screen guard and the Vibe shot display has corning gorilla glass 3 for protection against accidental scratches. I wish it had Corning Gorilla Glass 4 for protection. A few minor scratches have already started coming up on the screen after 1 week of usage. So I recommend you to use a screen protector to protect this amazing display.

Hardware and performance

The mobile is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor with Adreno 405 for the Graphics processor. It has 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage. Surely the processor is of a mid segment specification and the device scores just above average in the benchmark test. But as I always say, benchmark scores is not a reflection of real life performance.

I threw in everything at this mobile. Installed over 50 apps and 10 games, filled the storage with music and videos, sill the response speed of the mobile was not affected. It gets heated up when I use the camera outdoors in daylight. But the temperature does not go beyond 41 degree even after long sessions of intensive gaming. Also there is no lag or frame drop while playing games like NFS or Asphalt. But I did not like the graphic rendering as the edges were not smoothly rendered in 3D games. The speakers were another bummer while playing games. It was weak and does not pack a punch while playing games. Both the SIM cards are 4G LTE compatible. Telephonic calls were clear and the mobile was comfortable to hold in hands and talk for long.

Camera hardware and UI

The rear camera is a 15.937 MP CMOS BSI sensor with 6 element lens arrangement assisted by a tricolor LED flash and IR assisted auto focus system. The lens has a max aperture of f/2.2. It is capable of capturing 1080p videos at 30 fps and no support for recording 4k videos. It had a dedicated shutter button and switch to toggle between auto and pro mode. . It has optical image stabilization to give you that steady shot or footage. However, the Vibe Shot being a camera centric mobile, I would have appreciated if the aperture had been wider and the mobile was capable of 4k videos. The front camera is a 7.9 MP module with f/2.2. It is capable of recording full HD videos as well.

The Auto mode is pretty simple and straight forward. The UI is simple and smart. When the Smart mode is on, it detects the scene and automatically adjusts the calibration. Underneath the settings, there are loads of options, but the best among those is the Smart composition. I leave the rest of the settings untouched and the smart composition on. There is also an inbuilt video tutorial to familiarize you with the concept of composition. When enabled the mobile guides to take shots with best composition. Be it portrait, landscape of food, the smart composition feature will tell you the best angle and distance to click the shot.

Switching to the Pro mode gives you a lot more control over the camera. But the pro mode is not just for professionals. Even if you don’t understand photography jargon, the pro mode has a lot for you. Clicking on the small grid icon at the bottom of the UI, you are shown with 6 additional modes other than the pro mode. The panorama, nightscape, HDR, background blur, wide selfie and light painting are these 6 modes.

The panorama mode lets you click 360 degree panoramic shots. The nightscape mode is a low light mode with special modes for clicking city at night or people moving around, stage performance or even just plain indoor shots. All you have to do is choose the right mode for the right scene at low light. The HDR mode also has 4 sub modes to click automobile, portrait, still life or city. I would suggest to play with these modes and not necessarily use them as labeled. The blur background mode gives a good deptch of focus for the shots. The wide selfie does just as labeled. The golden years is my favorite of all the modes. I use my DSLR for light painting and in DSLR, you are not sure of the outcome, until the shot is completed. It may take a few seconds to shoot the shot and a few more seconds for the DSLR to write the image from buffer to memory card. But in the Vibe Shot, you can see in live what you are painting with light. I was amazed with the Lumia 1020 and 925 when they first introduced the 4 seconds shutter speed for capturing busy nightlife or light painting. Very little has been improved in mobile photography since then for long shutter shots. But the Vibe shot has taken it to the next level with its live monitoring and guided pro mode. Also the pro mode is not relevant for video or front camera mode.

Camera Performance

On the regular pro mode you get to control white balance, focus, ISO and exposure compensation. You also get to control the shutter speed, but limited between 1/15 and 1 second. Would have loved to have a faster shutter control. That being said, there are no dedicated modes for capturing fast-moving objects. It would have been really good, if the Vibe Shot was capable of shooting images in RAW mode.

Well, there are certain areas this camera succeeds and a few where it doesn’t. It does not give you a quality depth of focus. The objects in the background are blurred, but the blur is not smooth.

Sometimes there are indoor shots when the subject has enough light, but the ambient light is a bit low. At such situations, the metering fails to calibrate and judge the light in the scene and gives you a slow shutter speed. At such conditions, if you are a professional, then you would switch to spot metering (center weighted) rather than the average metering in the auto mode, but then its an auto mode, why do you need to fiddle with the controls? The Auto mode is not very smart, though it is functional. Especially with metering the right exposure and focusing the subject, the Auto mode fails at times.

Just switching to the pro mode gives you accurate and fast focusing with the IR hybrid focusing system

The IR focus system works like a charm. It is as fast as a laser assisted focus system and a tad bit more accurate as well. However at times depending on the direction of light, the IR fails to get the subject in focus. In those situation, I switch to the pro mode and focus manually. If not doing a manual focus, just switching to the pro mode gives you accurate and fast focusing with the IR hybrid focusing system.

Talking about the actual quality of photos, the Vibe Shot gives you the brilliant images. The colors are accurate and natural. The exposure and white balancing metering is accurate as well. The color contrast is just too good. The subject in focus gives in a lot of details when there is ample light. The tricolor flash is good as well. I am not sure if it is better than dual tone flash, but definitely more natural and subtle than the traditional LED flash.

Low light photography is the strength of the Vibe Shot. Usually, under low light the sensitivity is high and dark areas are pumped up with light and this leads to noise. In the Vibe Shot, the dark areas are dark and the bright areas are naturally bright. So the noise due to high ISO is minimal. Also the final shot is natural as it is. In short, the images from the Vibe Shot is truly amazing.

Here are a few more shots from the Vibe Shot, that show you how brilliant the camera can be, if you know what you are doing with it. Overall. I am truly impressed with the camera. If you are into serious mobile photography, you will definitely have fun with the Vibe Shot.

Check out the high-resolution samples here.

Software

Vibe Shot runs on Android 5.0 out of the box with Vibe UI skin on top. Apart from the limited customization for the look and feel, the Vibe Shot offers extensive feature level customization. The notification bar has notifications features are extensively customizable. I would also suggest to disable the pocket-dial prevention mode. This mode messes up with the proximity sensor and even when the mobile is not in a pocket, when your hand is accidentally over it, the display is locked. I found it really annoying and disabled the feature. Also the UI offers permission control on app level, power management for improved battery life and a secure zone incase you needed a private area to keep personal apps and data. The device offers tap to unlock, but the gesture based controls stop there. The UI offers the right mix of customization features and does not go overboard just for the sake of it. Also its is fast and responsive.

Battery

The Vibe Shot has a 2900 mAh battery sealed within its body. On a normal usage, the device lasted for little less than 24 hours. But if you are going to use the screen often and take a lot of shots with the camera, then be prepared to carry an extra power bank along. Also it does not have wireless charging or quick charging. It takes more than 2 hours to charge fully with the adapter included in the box.

Verdict

Right from the design to its functionality, the Lenovo Vibe Shot is a camera with mobile functionality. It has a fantastic design, good performance and a sensible UI. The camera is exceptional, though it has a few short comings. The size and design of the mobile is also optimal. If there is anything wrong with this mobile, that would be its pricing. It is priced at Rs 25499 and at that price it is actually competing with the flagship killers like the OnePlus 2, Zenfone 2 or the Moto X Play. Lenovo is relying on the strength of this mobile, which is its camera reinforced by its design. I have compared the camera quality of both the OnePlus 2 and the Vibe Shot and would say that the Vibe Shot is marginally better than the OP2. But then the OP2 has a strong spec sheet, so lets not even go there. If you need a perfectly engineered mobile that takes into account both aesthetics and functionality and if you are into serious mobile photography, I would recommend the Lenovo Vibe Shot.