Lenovo S580 Review


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Lenovo launched the S580 handset from its S series last month in India for Rs. 8,999. The budget smartphone was launched exclusively on Snapdeal. Lenovo S580 comes pre-installed with Lenovo’s proprietary DOit apps for seamless data sharing, security and syncing and other features. Let’s take a detailed look of the phone in this review.

Unboxing

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Check out the unboxing of the Lenovo S580 here.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpO9ch9vAnU

Video Review

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed7S6hjI4aE

Display, Hardware and Design

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The Lenovo S580 sports a 5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD IPS display. It has a bright display even on minimum brightness and it will be a boon during watching videos and playing games. It even comes with good viewing angles. However, the screen is easily reflected in sunlight that reduces visibility. The phone is sleek, light weight and fits easily in one hand. It is 8.1 mm thick and weighs 129 grams. Moving on, it has a curved edges round the corners and the bezels are just about perfect for the 5 inch screen size. The phone is made of plastic but has a strong build.

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At the front the phone has a 2MP front facing camera along with earpiece and Lenovo branding at the center. It also has the usual set of proximity and ambient light sensors.

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The phone has three capacitive buttons for menu, home and back below the display on the bezel.

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The volume rockers and the power switch lock buttons are present on the right side of the phone and there are no buttons on the left side and a primary microphone is present at the bottom.

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The top of the phone had 3.5mm audio jack and a micro USB port.

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The plastic back cover of the phone is removable, has a smooth matte finish and does not show any fingerprint smudges. At the back it has an 8-megapixel auto focus rear camera with single LED flash. Loudspeaker grills are present on the right side next to camera and the Lenovo branding is seen at the center.

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Under the back cover, the Lenovo S580 has two SIM card slots of which one supports 3G and other one only 2G. It must be noted that the phone does not support micro or nano SIM cards and is keeping it old school with standard SIM cards. Next to the SIM cards is a slot for micro SD card slot. The Lenovo S580 has a 2150mAh removable battery.

Camera

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Lenovo S580 has an 8MP auto-focus rear camera with LED flash. The phone takes decent photos but does not have a HDR mode which is mostly seen on phones these days. The close up shots turned out great and especially the ones in the daylight. The night shots on the other hand come out as grainy. Lenovo S580’s camera has the usual features like auto focus, face detection, geotaggin, white balance setting, ISO setting and others. Here are the camera samples, click on the images for full resolution images.

Daylight

camera sample 1

 

 

camera sample 2

Night

camera sample 3

camera sample 4

camera sample 5

camera sample 6

Video

The Lenovo S580 only supports 720p video and not 1080p, which is restricted by the processor . Here is a video sample

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE5lHS3fRek

Software

The Lenovo S580 runs on Android 4.3 Jelly bean and has Lenovo’s UI on the top. The UI is colorful and has its own flair. Lenovo has promised it to upgrade it to Android 4.4 (KitKat) in future. A lot of pre-installed apps are present on the phone like txtr ebooks for reading ebooks, Navigate which is similar to Maps and recently launched Guvera music streaming service.

Home Screen and Notification Center

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The home screen can be customized as per your choice and offers time, weather and other details. Also the notification center has a nice layout and uses different icons for each action. Users can change audio profiles from the notification center which is a handy feature also screen timeout can be adjusted from the notification panel itself.

Apps and Widgets

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The apps on the phone resemble to iPhones apps that are big and rounded at the edges. Similar to any Android phones users can add widgets and multiple screens as per their requirement. One of the unique features of the Lenovo S580 is the DOit suite of apps such as SHAREit, SYNCit and SECUREit that are aimed at easy sharing, syncing, protecting, and managing of information.

As the name suggests the SHAREit app allows users to share files and apps to five people simultaneously without using Bluetooth, WiFi or data connection. The SYNCit app offers users a quick way of backing up their contact information, SMS messages, and call logs. Lastly, SECUREit has data-protection software installed to help protect against viruses, spam, and malware. These apps are a value addition to the otherwise basic mobile handset.

Music and Radio

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The audio listening experience on the phone is pretty decent and offers good quality music via earphones as well as loudspeakers. Users will have to use default Play Music to play audio files. The radio functionality is also good and you can add a number of radio stations as favorite.

Storage

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Out of 1GB RAM, 428MB is free when some apps are running and users get about 7.83GB of usable storage out of the 8GB internal storage.

Support for SD Card

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You can set the external memory card as default write disk or move apps to the SD card. The call quality of the phone is also good and the outgoing and incoming voice during a conversation was loud and clear.

Performance and Benchmarks

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The Lenovo S580 is powered by quad-core Snapdragon 200 Processor with four ARM Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.19 GHz per core and has Adreno 302 GPU. It has a 1GB RAM and 8 GB internal storage. The phone offers smooth performance and did not lag at any point of time during our testing period.

Lenovo S580 Quadrant Benchmark

Lenovo S580 Linpack Multi-Thread

Check out the complete set of the benchmarks here.

Gaming on the Lenovo S580 is also a fun and the bright display enhances the experience and the graphics also look eye appealing. We tried games like Asphalt 8, Riptide 2 and Dead Trigger 2 on the phone that performed well and did not suffer any hangs or lags at the time of testing, but the graphics is just average. The phone scored 3 stars in our gaming review. Check out the video review to know more about the gaming performance of the smartphone in detail.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4_ALLn2srI

Lenovo S580 supports connectivity options like 3G HSPA+, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS. The phone did perform well on a WiFi as well as a data connection.

Battery Life

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The phone’s 2150mAh battery has pretty good life which lasts throughout a day or around 13 to 14 hours on a single charge from medium to high usage. Also, the phone’s battery does not drain easily when it is kept idle.

Lenovo S580 One Charge Rating

It achieved a One Charge Rating of 7 hours and 58 minutes in our battery test. You can check out the complete set of battery test results here.

Conclusion

The Lenovo S580 is a decent phone and definitely offers good features for the price. The 5 inch display along with the Doit Suite apps are a welcome addition to the phone. However, it would have been better if the phone would run at least Android 4.4 KitKat if not Android 5.0 Lollipop as Jelly Bean OS takes it a couple of steps back.

Pros

  • Good build quality
  • Decent screen
  • Smooth performance

Cons

  • Older Android version
  • Average camera

Author: Sneha Bokil

Sneha Bokil is a tech enthusiast and is currently using OnePlus 3T but she still treasures her Nokia N70 (M). You can follow her on Twitter @snehabokil and on Google+