ZUK an unusual brand name, many might not have even heard about it even often. ZUK is a Chinese internet smartphone company and now it has been backed by LENOVO. The word Lenovo had made it interesting to take a look on.

ZUK Z1  made it entry in India on 10th May which was announced long back in September 2015 in China. It has followed an aggressive pricing of Rs. 13,499. This smartphone is available on its flash sale through (exclusively) Amazon India on May 19 at 2 pm whose registration starts from Tuesday.

Lenovo ZUK Z1 is notably launched in the line of Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (priced at Rs. 11,999) and LeEco Le 1s (priced at Rs. 9999). ZUK Z1 comes as a Handy device with neat design and specifications slightly exceeding its price from budget but still offers a good package of features. Let us wait for its flash sale to see how much it has succeeded in attracting its customers.  

What we feel is this device is so similar to OnePlus 1 in terms of hardware and performance, but at aggressive pricing of 13,499 and mammoth battery of 41 mAh, it clearly overshadow all smartphone under 15K segment. Stay tuned with us we will soon brig out detail review of this device on our youtube channel : video.tecphlie.in

Register for ZUK Z1 on amazon here : http://goo.gl/LWxGx1

New Delhi, Dec, 30: Letv’s first Le Meetup in Delhi was a resounding success with active participation of Superfans, tech enthusiasts, bloggers and influencers. At the Meetup Letv presented several videos to the audience to introduce them to the company, its unique ecosystem and also the products in its portfolio. Following this the participants were given a hands-on experience of the superphones prior to their official launch in the Indian market.

Le Meetup proved to be a great encounter for Superfans and the bloggers’ community, giving them an opportunity to preview Le Future as envisioned by Letv’s ecosystem. There was a lively exchange of information and valuable feedback that made the whole session extremely engaging. Commented one of the SuperFans present at the event

 “It was really exciting to be part of this event that gave us a preview of what Letv has in store for India. We also appreciate that the company representatives chose to interact with us personally which will certainly strengthen our bonds with the brand.” The Meetup had an exclusive Q&A session and an open dialogue between fans, bloggers, Youtubers, and Le staff. As the closing note, Ivan Wang, Associate Director, Digital Marketing said “We are truly overwhelmed by the response we received to our Le Meetup in Delhi.

 We recognize that our fans and followers are vital and hence we have ensured that our comment response rate is 98% and response time is no more than three minutes. This is a new benchmark in the industry and has been widely acknowledged by our fans . Every feedback matters and we will very closely consider them, he concluded.

Letv shared its outlook for India as a key market, which along with the US is part of its global expansion plan. According top priority to this market, the company intends to match the product launches in India with that of global launches. Towards close of the session, details of a preview event on Jan 5 were revealed, where the company is expected make more confirmed announcements on its main launch date.

The next Le Meetup will be held in Delhi on January 9th 2016, followed by one in Hyderabad.

I have been fortunate enough to be using the 6.33 inch LeTV Le Max phablet for while now, so what is my verdict? Find out in my LeTV Le Max review.

The LeTV range of phones all have a similar, distinct, look and design to them.All the way up to the huge Le Max, each model looks very similar from the front and sides. Right away you know you have a LeTV phone in front of you as soon as you see it. The design language with narrow bezels, black screen border and minimalistic upper and lower chin areas.

Of course in the case of the LeTV Le Max, everything is super sized to make way for the huge 6.33 inch display. Large 6-inch+ displays were everywhere a few years back, and after a short break away from the marekt they are making their way back. Compared to large screen phablets of yesteryear, new generation models have super high resolution 2K screens to make viewing content pure joy. With a 2560 x 1440 resolution you are looking at a pixel density of 464ppi, more than a 5.5-inch FHD phone.

While the large screen makes the phone great for content, it also means that the physical dimensions of the device are massive. The Le Max measures in a 167.1 x 83.5 x 8.95mm at a weight of 204g. That’s much bigger and heavier than a lot of phones, but due to the size of the device it feels quite light-weight in the hand.

The thick 8.95mm body means that there is plenty of room for dual speakers, USB Type C, dual SIM tray, IR blaster, power button, volume rocker, and notification switch around the sides of the phone, but it also means it is quite (literally) a handful to hold. Although LeTV have made design changes to make things easier (moving the power button to the middle of the phone for example) you are never going to feel comfortable using the LeMax one-handed unless you have huge Basketball Player hands.

Flip the Le Max over and we see more of the alloy unibody design. Unibody construction means a phone can be more solid, lighter and thinner than a traditionally built phone which can mean a larger battery, but in the case of the Le Max we have just a 3400mAh cell inside. For the Le Max to be so big and have such a small battery is a surprise, and we can only assume LeTV opted for this to keep the weight of the phone down. Externally the rear of the Le Max it is clear to see the iPhone 6 Plus provided a little inspiration. We can also see the LeTV logo, fingerprint scanner, dual tone LED flash and lens for the 21 mega-pixel F2.0 Sony IMX230 rear camera. Speaking of the camera, the lens protrudes slightly making the LeMax even thicker.

In terms of build quality and overall look, the LeTV Le Max is a stunning example of a flagship Chinese phablet, however it is just to damn big! I can get on board with the 6.33-inch display, but why do we need a 8.95mm thick phone when such a small battery has been used? And why was it not possible to make the rear camera fit flush with the body?

With an overall width of 83.5mm and a thickness of nearly 9mm, the Le Max isn’t only just too big for most people to hold comfortably but it is also quite tricky to find a pocket where you can easily stow it. While it does fit in a jeans pocket (just) it is much better to keep the phone in your bag, but then it’s not convenient to get at while walking around town. 

In my opinion I don’t think LeTV have designed this as a phone made to be used outside as a main device. I feel that they have designed this to be a content viewing product that also happens to have call features. This would explain why they felt they don’t need to make it so compact and also helps to explain the small battery as you will never be too far from a mains socket.
 

Stunning! The display is stunning! It’s clear to me that LeTV have designed the Le Max for content consumption and while it is hard to justify a 2K panel to everyone, it’s hard not to be impressed by the beauty of this screen.

The clarity, speed and colour reproduction of the 6.33-inch panel is fantastic. Playing games and watching movies is a visual feast! Having a panel of this size is immersive, you can enjoy fine details and clarity that you just can’t experience on other phones. Like many other phones of this year, the Le Max does have black borders around the main touch area. They measure just 1.6mm, and don’t detract from the design. 

It's all about the screen, the screen, no bezel

A gigantic, 6.33-inch phone with stellar, flagship-grade hardware, it is what the company calls a 'bezel-less' smartphone. 'Bezel-less', of course, is a slight exaggeration (not unlike 'Retina' screen, and other fancy marketing names), but the LeTV Max does not kid around when it comes to that tiny border on the sides of the screen. It's indeed one of the thinnest bezels on a smartphone so far - we don't have the data to measure all, but LeTV claims it is 'the narrowest' in the world, measuring at just 1.6mm.

LeTV also explains that designing such a thin bezel was no trivial task, requiring engineers to do extra work on the edge to have uniform color. Apart from plain looking cool, a super narrow bezel like the one on the LeTV Max makes it easier to perform side swipes. This also allows the phone to have a whopping 80.3% of its front side occupied by the screen, a very practical utilization of space. 

The elephant in the room is, of course, the gigantic 6.33-inch screen size. Isn't that just too big? It might not be for everyone, but if you've held the Nexus 6, the LeTV Max is not much different in size. The exact dimensions are 167.1mm of height and 83.5mm of width, which is basically on par with the 83mm width of the Nexus 6, but noticeably more than the 77.8mm width of the iPhone 6 Plus. The LeTV's back features a slight curve a la HTC One series, with the phone reaching a razor-thin 4.8mm at its thinnest point around the sides and 8.95mm at its thickest in the middle.

NTSC color gamut offers wider range of colors

What's notable about the display is that it offers different color profiles, so that you can choose whether you want natural-looking colors, or if you want unrealistic, but eye-popping, oversaturated tonalities. This is a feature we've seen mostly on AMOLED screens, and it's a welcome addition for color and photo enthusiasts who are often offered one option that is not perfectly well calibrated. LeTV has chosen to stick with the NTSC color gamut, and the display covers 90% of it. Keep in mind that NTSC is a color gamut covering wider spectrum of colors, very similar to Adobe RGB, and also, quite different from the earlier and more universally accepted sRGB. The screen istelf is an LCD panel made by Sharp, with a Quad HD (1440 x 2560-pixel) resolution, resulting in pixel density of 464ppi. Finally, the screen also supports a dynamic adjustment feature, adapting to different lighting conditions and helping with its energy efficiency.

Under the hood: Le high performance, 'Le Hi-Fi'

Under the hood, the LeTV Max runs on the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core system chip (built on a 20nm node) with four Cortex A57 high-performance cores running at up to 2GHz, and four Cortex A53 cores clocked at up to 1.5GHz. We've seen some serious issues with overheating on this chip, and we're looking forward to see how LeTV has dealt with those.

The LeTV Max is also one of the first phones to ship with 4GB of RAM. It's using the fastest LPDDR4 type of memory as well.

Then, you also have the hilariously named 'Le HI-FI', which stands for some very serious audio processing that delivers high quality output via that 3.5mm headset jack, be it to an external set of speakers or headphones.

Good audio is a multi-tier process starting at the music files, dependent on the audio processor, tuning system, and at the end the playback equipment. That's where LeTV's ecosystem comes to play, as the company delivers high-quality song files and the actual hardware (in China).

The LeTV-HQ7A chip is the chip that does all the heavy music lifting in the LeTV Max, and it's accompanied by a low-dropout linear LDO regulator that improves power supply stability, and reduces background noise and distortion issues. The phone also supports both 44.1KHz and 48KHz sampling rates via a double-watch crystal system, so that you don't have any artifacts like distortion for files converted between the two sampling rates. We're including the official audio stats right below for the pros to decipher.

First with Sony's ground-breaking IMX230 sensor: super fast focusing

The other first that the LeTV Max scores is with the Sony IMX230 image sensor. A 21-megapixel 1/2.4" sensor with 1.12 micron pixels, what's most notable about it is its 192-point auto-focus system (versus 172-point AF on earlier sensors) with on-board image plane phase detection pixels that makes acquiring focus extremely quick and accurate, and allows tracking focus of moving objects. While preceding sensors drop the effective resolution in HDR capture, the Sony IMX230 also manages to keep all the detail of its 21-megapixel sensor intact for HDR shots.

The Sony Exmor RS IMX230 is also a stacked chip, with a new signal processor, a layer of back-illuminated pixels, and it is this type of construction that allows Sony to keep the vertical size of such large sensors so tiny, while others struggle with bulkier sensors of smaller size and featuring less magepixels.

The new IMX230 is also - quite impressively - capable of capturing live 4K HDR, but we're yet to see whether the LeTV Max will support that particular function. Regular 4K at 30 fps will be supported, as well as 1080p at 60 fps, and 720p at 120 fps.

The optics on top of the IMX230 consist of a 6-element f/2.0 aperture lens, and there is a dual-LED flash for more accurate colors for flash-on shots. The whole camera module also supports optical image stabilization,

The LeTV trio of new phones is the first to feature the brand new USB Type-C connector. Long in the works, USB Type-C is fully backward compatible down to USB 2.0, and it's a side-agnostic connector, meaning that you can plug it either way and it will just work due to the symmetrical pin-out setup.

Keep in mind that USB Type-C only refers to the connector type, and not the speed and performance of the actual connection. A USB Type-C could support USB 3.1 speeds, but it could also support USB 2.0. The LeTV Max and the rest of LeTV phones - unfortunately for some - support USB 2.0, so as cool as the new connector is, keep in mind that it does not automatically translate into any increase in transfer speeds.

LeTV Le Max Review – PerformanceThe LeTV Le Maxi is a powerhouse. The phone uses a Snapdragon 810 chipset, with Adreno 430 GPU and 4GB RAM for astonishing gaming performance. Those specs are similar to the OnePlus 2, so it comes as no surprise that it’s a great performer. Performance is just something you don’t need to worry about on the Le Max, this phablet will handle anything you throw at it. If you are a heavy gamer of hardcore titles then this is the set up for you. An amazing screen, and killer performance.

LeTV Le Max Review – HardwareLeTV made sure the LeMax was a feature packed device and have loaded it with a ton of hardware items that will aid your content consumption and improve the experience. As the phone is meant for movies and gaming the minimum amount of storage is 32GB, there is also a 64GB version available too and even a massive 128GB version. With that 2560 x 1440 display and support for 4K wireless HDMI, you are going to want the most storage available too you so you can load up on ultra high-definition content.

Plug in earphones and you will get goose bumps! The audio is addictive! Audio is another area that LeTV have taken very seriously. I have already been impressed by the audio on the LeTV Le 1 but the Le Max takes it to another level. The LeMax features “Le Hifi” and dedicated LeTV-HQ7A chip and low-dropout linear regulator. Basically all this does is reduce background noise and distortion leaving you to concentrate on your music/movie.

Music through the external speakers is incredible! This is simply the best phone I have ever used for playing music through the built-in speakers. Plug in earphones and you will get goosebumps! The audio is addictive! For this alone I don’t want to send the Le Max back.

A fingerprint scanner on the rear of the all metal phone keeps your data safe and secure and as you would expect it works flawlessly. Speed of recognition and unlock is uber fast, especially as this is a single touch unlock feature, meaning one touch will wake and unlock the phone (other device require the phone to be woken then unlocked making it a two-step process).

Now, let’s focus on the Elephant in the room, just how good is that 3400mAh battery? In all honesty I was expecting it to be terrible. A powerful chip, a lot of RAM, and huge high-resolution display seems like a recipe for battery disaster.

As the Le Max is designed for content consumption I tested the phone playing music videos from YouTube over WIFI through headphones. with screen brightness at half. With this as the main process and email and social apps running in the background I was getting just over 4 hours of screen on time. This is indoor use with WIFI only.

The rear camera on the Le Max had me really excited. The sensor is a Sony IMX 230 21 mega-pixel camera with an F2.0 aperture.

LeTV Le Max Review – Specifications

Model: LeTV Max

Sim Card: • Dual Standby , MicroSIM + NanoSIM

Color: Silver | Golden

Capacity RAM: 4GB LPDDR4 RAM

ROM: 32GB|64GB |128GB eMMC5.0

Multi-Languages English,Chinese

Chipset CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 Octa-core

G64 4×A57+4×A53

System EUI base on Android Lollipop

Screen Display Size:6.33inch IPS Screen

Resolution: 2560*1440

Contrast :1300

Tonal range: 90%

Technology:464 ppi pixel density

Camera Rear Camera: 21MP camera f/2.0, Sony Sensor IMX230

5312*3984@24fps,autofocus, dual-LED (dual tone) flash

Front Camera: 4MP front camera with large 2-micron pixels

Video Capture: Ultra High-Definition video,720P@120fps,1080P@60fps, 4K@30fps

Others: Angle 81°

Network and Wireless Connectivity 4G: FDD – LTE 1800/2100/2600MHz 3G: WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100MHz 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz

WIFI :802.11ac/a/b/g/n 2.4GHz and 5GHz Dual Bands

support APT-X Techonology,Wi-Fi hot ,Wi-Fi Display,WLAN direct,DLAN Direct

GPS:GPS/AGPS/GLONASS/Beidou

Bluetooth: V4.1

Support NFC

Battery capacity and life Non-removable 3400mAh lithium-ion battery

Standby Time: About 2~3 days

Others: USB2.0,Type-C

3.5 mm headphone jack

MHL 2.0 Wireless HDMI

Sensor Gyro, Light sensor , Gravity, Proximity, Compass, Hall sensors, Barometer

Hi-Fi System ESS

Multi-media Video: H.265(HEVC),H.264,H.263,MPEG-4,MPEG-2,VP9,VP8 MP4,3GP,3GP2,MKV,AVI,ASF,Xvid,FLV,Ts,Webm

Audio: AAC/AAC+/eAAC+,MP3,AMR,MIDI,PCM,OGG,FLAC,AC3/EAC3,DTS-HD AAC,MP3,WAV,AMR,FLAC,MIDI,OGG

Others:Dolby Audio,DTS Headphone:X™,LeHiFi Technology

Size Dimensions: 167.1 x 83.5 x 8.95mm

Net Weight: 204g

What I love about the LeTV Le Max is the beautiful display, wonderful all alloy build, insane performance and audio features. What I don’t like is the rear camera lens, and the physical size of the device. I am 100% sure the LeTV could have made the Max thinner and more comfortable to handle, it’s not like they need the bulky body for a massive battery, and why they have made the camera protrude I just don’t know. If you love music, video and gaming then the Le Max is still a really amazing prospect, the audio alone is so mind-blowing that I would buy the phone for myself if it wasn’t for one simple fact.

Although I still use my OnePlus 2 as a daily driver, I am not at all impressed with the audio on it, so if the Le max can deliver the same performance and audio as the Le Max I might make the switch.

• Design – 9.5/10

• Hardware - 9/10

• Battery - 8/10

• Camera - 9/10

• Value - 9/10

Overall=9.4/10