LeTV / LeEco Le 1s First Week Review

With the arrival of the LeTV / LeEco Le 1s sometime in January, the standards for budget smartphones have changed radically.

What we are looking at is quite possibly the best budget smartphone so far to ever be released. What makes the Le 1s so special, such that the phone manufacturers ran out of stock in the first 15 minutes of their first three flash sales on Flipkart?

After spending my first week with the phone, I believe that I may be able to answer that question.

LeEco has held nothing back in the manufacturing of the Le 1s, ranging from a beautiful and sleek full metal unibody to a mirror coated fingerprint sensor with a staggering recognition time of 0.1 seconds, the Le 1s has everything you'd expect from a top-of-the-line flagship smartphone.

Although it may appear that some of the design and software are similar to Apple, who doesn't like Apple's aesthetics, right?

The Le 1s sports a MediaTek Helio X10 chipset, giving the phone an extremely powerful 64 bit octacore processor that can clock upto 2.2 GHz alongside 3 GB of RAM to provide smooth transition between applications and a snappy gamer experience.

The Le 1s has three touch buttons on the bottom metal of the phone, not on the screen.

The camera might be a bit of a let down after all those impressive specs, although it's a 13 MP snapper in the rear, and 5 MP in the front. The main reason for this is the unsatisfactory photos the Le 1s takes in low light due to its tiny flash. Daylight photos are crisp and clear though and the camera's auto focus speed is alright.

As for video recording, the Le 1s can record videos in upto 4K video quality and even record in slow-mo to playback at 4 times or 2 times slower real time speed.

In terms of connectivity, the phone supports all Wi-Fi bands and has a dual sim option with 4G/LTE support on both the sims.

One slot is a micro-sim slot and the other is a nano-sim slot.

The Le 1s offers regular security options plus its super fast Fingerprint sensor, which can also be used to make quick payments with the help of certain apps.

The phone also has an IR Blaster (InfraRed Blaster) located at the top edge of the phone, right next to its headphone jack.

The phone does appear to heat up occasionally, but that''s probably the consequence of the full metal body and the super fast processor that the Le 1s boasts of. Also, the heating doesn't go to uncomfortable levels and will seem fine once you get used to it.

The Le 1s has two speakers on the bottom side of the phone, where the charging port is located, and the audio quality is high and pleasing to the ear. so far, there have been no complaints about the speakers.

The 32 GB storage that the Le 1s offers is sadly not expandable,

but this does not pose much of a problem as most phones of today still offer the standard 16 GB storage, and 32 GB should last you pretty long.

The Le 1s houses a massive 3000 mAh Li-Po battery (for a phone) which powers its 5.5 inch FHD screen (1080x1920) with a Pixel Density of 403 PPI, which displays some pretty impressive colors, even in bright sunlight. 

Li-Po stands for Lithium Polymer, a type of battery not very different from the standard Li-Ion (Lithium Ion) batteries found in most devices. Li-Po batteries can't store as much charge as a Li-ion battery, but their upside is that they don't degrade in performance like Li-ion batteries do. Moreover, 3000 mAh is more than you'll ever need with today's applications, and the phone worked just fine for me two days straight with varied usage.

The Le 1s' charger has the new standard USB Type-C cable on the phone end that, along with its Quick Charger, supports faster charging, and soon enough, phone-to-phone transfer over a wire.

The other end of the cable is a rather unusual, modified USB Type-A port, that works such that you can attach it in to the adapter without worrying about which side is up, just like the Type-C port. This makes charging your phone less of a hassle and shows that LeTV / LeEco really did think of the little things.

Based on my experience, the Le 1s charges about 2 percent every minute if you're not using it while it charges, and can thus charge from an empty to a full battery in less than an hour, and will easily last for more than a day. Seeing as battery life is something we consider no matter how good the phone, the Le 1s sure doesn't let down in that field.

Besides all that, the phone supports Bluetooth 4.1 and A-GPS, all must haves. What the Le 1s does NOT have is support for FM Radio, rather shocking , to be honest, but not much of a problem. I don't use the Radio anyway. Move on.

With that, we pretty much clear up all the technical aspects of the Le 1s, and the bottom line is that is is pretty much the Best Budget Smartphone ever released, and is a must buy if you are looking for  a premium phone with budget pricing.

Thanks for reading my review, and don't forget to share.

-The Guy With Random Stuff