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Hands on: Lenovo ZUK Z2 Pro

By Liu Hongzuo - 30 Jun 2016

Hands on: Lenovo ZUK Z2 Pro

The last time we heard about Lenovo's flagship phone - the Lenovo ZUK Z2 Pro - was two months ago, back when the phone was first announced. We were drawn to its use of the Snapdragon 820 processor, at an asking price far below the typical thousand-dollar mark for phones with the same SoC.

Having set foot at MWC Shanghai 2016, we chanced upon the Lenovo smartphone booth, and had the opportunity to explore the phone a little further. Here's what we've gathered from our quick trial via a demo unit.

For aesthetics, the phone features a 3D glass rear and 2.5D glass front panel. The ZUK Z2 Pro's body sits inside a 4.6mm aluminium frame with chamfered edges. The display is a 5.2-inch Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 pixels resolution) Super AMOLED screen, with a pixel density of 424 PPI. It is capable of a wide range of brightness, going as dim as 1 nit brightness for night-reading to 500 nits maximum brightness for usage under direct sunlight. Besides its high degree of brightness manipulation, it has a viewing angle of 178-degrees.

The Lenovo ZUK Z2 Pro had physical dimensions measuring 145.4 x 70.5 x 4.6 ~ 7.45mm, and it weighs 145g. Given its size, weight, and build, the ZUK Z2 Pro felt light and nimble in hand, and it had a satisfactory grip.

True to its launch back in May 2016, the Lenovo ZUK Z2 Pro uses a Snapdragon 820 processor, clocked at 2.15GHz. The unit we tried was a 128GB model (UFS 2.0 storage), which comes with 6GB on-board RAM (LPDDR4). It wasn't immediately apparent if 6GB RAM made all the difference in speed, but the Lenovo ZUK Z2 Pro felt great to use. It was speedy at switching between its pre-installed apps, and there was no lag, which was a pleasant experience for a display unit.

The phone uses Android 6.0 OS Marshmallow for its base operating system, but the interface is Lenovo's proprietary ZUI 2.0 OS. The UI felt attractive, simple, and clean. Battery capacity is at 3,100mAh, with Qualcomm's Quick Charge 3.0 supported.

The phone uses a 13-megapixel rear camera module by Samsung, with photosites at 1.34µm. It has an aperture of f/1.8, and it features OIS (optical image stabilization). The front camera is a 8-megapixel shooter with 1.4µm photosites, with an aperture of f/2.0. Both front and back cameras produced pleasing images, but we couldn't tell more without closer inspection of the results on a computer monitor. The front camera's built-in beauty mode felt comprehensive - you could have it patch up a flaw or two, or have a full-blown edited selfie at the snap of the shutter.

Since the phone we had was a public display piece at MWC Shanghai 2016, we weren't able to test its U-Touch 2.0 fingerprint sensor, which was incorporated into the Home button. However, there was a touch more information about the sensor's features. It reiterated the wet fingerprint unlock feature, and its 0.1 second unlock timing. The fingerprint sensor can also work with third-party in-app transactions methods, although the examples given were China-centric (Alipay, WeChat, JDpay). The phone does not come with NFC, so cashless transactions like Android Pay wouldn't work on this phone.

According to the specification sheet on display at its booth, the Lenovo ZUK Z2 Pro uses a USB 3.1 Type-C connection port for charging and transferring of files. You're not just getting a reversible USB port on this phone - it also comes with the high data transfer speeds of USB 3.1. The smartphone comes with Bluetooth 4.1 for your short-distance device pairing support.

The oxygen saturation sensor is below the rear camera.

The Lenovo ZUK Z2 Pro also came with fitness-related features. The back of the device has an optical heart rate sensor that also measures oxygen saturation, and you can add your present heart rate to your selfies. The device also tracks uphill movements and running cadence, which is a little more detailed that simply having a total number of steps.

We were impressed at what Lenovo was able to pull out of their pockets. It feels like the phone is enough to rival top Chinese smartphones, like the Huawei P9. However, its ability to shine is limited to the Mainland, since the Lenovo ZUK Z2 Pro is still not coming to Singapore. The 128GB model is available at 2,699 RMB (~S$561.29), and the phone comes in two colors - Titanium Black and Porcelain White.

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