Asian smartphone and photography enthusiasts have a new reason to be excited. Lenovo, following the release of several budget-oriented smartphones, has finally released a high-end phone with an impressive camera in India. Priced at RS 25,499 (roughly $390), the new Vibe Shot is, as the name clearly suggests, a phone centered around its camera. Speaking of which, the Vibe Shot has a 16 MP rear camera, as well as a tri-color LED flash. It’s tailored around taking high quality pictures in low-light conditions and indoors, having a full-frame 16:9 ratio low-light sensor. Add a competent infrared auto-focus (which Lenovo states is twice as fast as any regular auto-focus) feature, and you might have a winner for photography enthusiasts.
That’s not to say that the Lenovo Vibe Shot is just a fancy camera in a mediocre phone (cough, Nokia, cough). The Vibe Shot features a 5.5 inch, Full HD display, and is powered by a Snapdragon 615 octacore chip clocked at 1.7 GHz, along with 3 GB of RAM. Storage is provided by microSD support and 32 GB of internal storage. Now that sounds great, but I feel that the limited max 32 GB microSD slot could be a nuisance, given the high quality camera that is just begging to be used. The phone also runs Android Lollipop 5.0.
Just how good the camera is remains to be seen. We couldn’t get our hands on a Vibe Shot to properly test out its camera, but it’s certainly up against some stiff competition, such as the recently revealed Sony Xperia Z5. The ace it seems to have up its sleeve is affordability, as the Vibe Shot is considerably cheaper than any competitors with such a strong camera. European and North American availability is uncertain at this point, but we’ll keep you updated.