Lenovo S880 Hands-on


By now, you must have seen our hands on of the Lenovo S560 and K860 from the Chennai Lenovo event. Now we bring you the hands on of the Lenovo S880. The S880 is another 5 incher in Lenovo’s new portfolio for India and it aims to bring the large screen to an affordable price while definitely having some compromises. We went hands on with it, lets talk about the device then!

The S880 has a 5-inch (800 x 480 pixels) capacitive touch screen TFT display. The display resolution of 800×480 for a 5 inch screen is underwhelming and this is one big compromise Lenovo had to have for the affordability factor. On the inside, it is powered by a 1 GHz MTK 6575 processor with a Power VR SGX531 GPU. We didn’t have much time to gauge the performance but generally it felt adequate, but not as smooth as we would have liked them to be, in our very short hands on time.

With respect to design, we feel that this is the best designed Lenovo phone of the bunch that was on display. There are no hardware buttons on front which is covered by glass on the whole. The borders and the sides are made of high quality plastic and felt good in the hands. Similar to their other phones, there is a glossy plastic(instead of chrome) sandwiched in the middle and the buttons felt decent.

Interestingly, it has dual front firing stereo speakers for loud audio output and a Smart sound feature that adjusts the volume automatically for noisy or quiet environment. There are the usual assortment of sensors at the top, along with the Lenovo logo.

Connectivity wise, it has Dual SIM (GSM + GSM) support with Dual Standby. Other connectivity features include, 3G (HSDPA: 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA: 5.76Mbps), WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and aGPS. It has 512MB RAM, 4GB internal memory, expandable memory up to 32GB with microSD and 2250 mAh battery. Again, like we repeatedly say, Lenovo has put heavy-duty batteries on all of its new phones, and it is a welcome “feature”.

There is a VGA front-facing camera for video calling and there is the ear piece grill of course.

It has a 5 Megapixel auto focus camera at the back. The back, as you can see, is textured for better grip, and we did notice the lack of flash here, again, a cost compromise, we would assume.

The phone runs on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) with Lenovo’s custom skin on top. Like the K860, the S880 has software Android shortcut buttons that are rendered on the display itself.

The volume rocker resides on the right side of the phone, in tandem with the plastic strip in the middle.

There is a micro USB slot and a 3.5mm audio jack at the top. The phone also has FM Radio with built-in Antenna and FM Transmitter.

And lastly, the Lenovo S880 comes in Black and White colours and is priced at Rs. 18,999. Check out our other Hands on posts of the new Lenovo devices until we bring you more on this one!

Srivatsan contributed to this report.


Author: Bharadwaj Chandramouli

Bharadwaj is a content creator who has been obsessed with technology since the early days of smartphones. He loves talking about tech, is a fan of good design and photography. You can follow him on Twitter @gadgetbuff_ to know what he's upto!