Lenovo K6 Power first impressions: A potentially competitive smartphone worth considering

Lenovo has progressed quite well in the Indian smartphone market ever since it entered in 2013. After taking over Motorola, the company's sales figures increased massively. Today the company is one of the biggest smartphone brands in India. Till date Flipkart claims to have sold more than 13 million Lenovo/Moto products in the country.The company launched a new high-capacity battery equipped smartphone in the country yesterday called the K6 Power. On paper it sounds a lot like a smartphone that I reviewed a few months back, in fact it even looks very similar. Here is what I think about the new smartphone.Build and DesignLike I said, it reminds me of a very similar phone that was launched by another Chinese vendor. I am talking about the Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime. For a Rs 9,000 device, it really impressed me. Now Lenovo has launched something very similar. Of course, it is an upgrade to the Vibe K5 series, the K6 Power comes with a metal unibody design just like it's predecessor.Now the power button and volume rocker keys sit on the right edge side while the dual-SIM tray is located on the left. The micro USB port and the 3.5 mm headphone jack are placed on the top. At the back is the camera, a fingerprint scanner and a pair of stereo speakers. Up front is a 5-inch display with capacitive Android navigation keys and the front camera, earpiece and some sensors placed on either sides of it.The overall build quality feels sturdy and the finish feels quite premium for a sub Rs 10,000 smartphone. Despite the metal build, it felt quite light. It measures in 141.9 x 70.3 x 9.3 mm and weighs 145 grams. Lenovo is offering the smartphone in three colour options - Silver, Gold and Space Grey.DisplayLenovo has used a 5-inch full HD resolution IPS LCD display. That kind of resolution makes it sharp and it has a pixel density of 441 ppi. It looked pretty good and I was impressed with the vieweing angles as well. Since I've been comparing the K6 Power to the Redmi 3S Prime, I'd like to mention that the display is definitely better thanks to its higher resolution and a slightly better brightness capability.Lenovo says that thanks to the higher resolution display, one can use this smartphone with the company's VR headset and along with Theatremax technology can experience immersive VR.Chipset, RAM and StorageThe hardware powering the smartphone includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octa-core chipset clocked at 1.4GHz along with an Adreno 505 GPU. While the smartphone was announced globally in two variants, India gets the 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage version. It also comes with a memory card expansion slot (hybrid SIM slot) to further expand the storage. As for the 2GB/16 GB variant, Lenovo said that it wont be bringing that in anytime in the future.SoftwareThe K6 Power runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Lenovo usually has a skin on top called Vibe UI, but this time the company has renamed it to Pure UI which is now trimmed up to look a lot closer to stock Android. It did indeed feel very stock and the UI felt pretty smooth.The company has added some useful features like the ability to lock apps with your fingerprint or a password and run two versions of the same app with separate accounts, say Whatsapp or Facebook.CameraThe primary camera is a 13MP IMX258 Sony sensor along with phase detection auto-focus and an LED flash. On the front there is an 8MP camera to take your selfies. The rear camera offers features like a manual mode, HDR, Panorama, slow-mo mode, time lapse and so on. Pictures seemed to be pretty decent and the overall camera speed felt good for something under Rs 10,000. Of course, I need to thoroughly test it out to come to any results.Battery and ConnectivityThe connectivity options include 4G LTE (with VoLTE support), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, FM Radio and a micro-USB port with OTG and reverse charge support. It comes with a hybrid SIM card slot (micro SIM + nano SIM). The battery is rated at 4,000mAh which is again very similar to the Redmi 3S Prime. According to the company, it offers a 27-day standby time.ConclusionFor a Rs 9,999 smartphone, the Lenovo K6 Power seems like an interesting option to look out for. While Xiaomi's Redmi 3S Prime already took over the under Rs 10,000 segment a few months ago, Lenovo could be late to give it's fellow Chinese vendor competition. While I still have to thoroughly test the K6 Power, I have to say that Lenovo is offering a neat looking phone with decent specs. Do check the site for the full review soon.