The LeEco Le S3 X626 (4GB/64GB)
(Voor de Nederlandse Review Inclusief aanbieding, kun je hier kijken)
Before we go in to the details of the review, I think it might me useful to specify there are 3 different versions available of the Le S3. Two of them are packing 3 GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage and a 16 megapixel rear camera. One of them is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 Quadcore processor the other by a MediaTek Helio X20 Decacore processor. And then there is the third, awesome edition that was sent to us. This version, that is only available in the Force Golden colour sports 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of ROM storage, and it uses the same 21.2 megapixel rear camera also found in the LeEco Le Max2. Now, let’s take a closer look at this impressive phone:
If there ever was one company that understood the slogan “Less is More” then its probably LeEco. Simplicity and minimalistic approach are the first things that come to mind and that begins with the very box the device comes in. It’s a simple white box, just carrying the LeEco Logo. On the backside there’s a little sticker in the left lower corner, showing us the specifications, type number and IMEI-number. Inside the box there of course is the device itself, and in separate compartments we find USB-C cable, Quick charger and of course the leaflets no one ever reads and the simtray-tool. They also included the 3.5mm-to-usb-C-connector so you can use any old headset on the LeEco Le S3 that has gotten rid of the 3,5 mm jack completely. But I will elaborate on that later. So, like said simplicity at its best. Now lets take a closer look at the device itself:
Design and Screen.
Even though Apple and Umidigi keep shouting they were inspired by the Bauhaus concept of minimalism, all it takes is having one look at the LeEco Le S3 Pro to see that they have perfected the minimalism-concept. The phones design is an homage to symmetry. And it doesn’t really matter from which side you look at the phone. The upper bezel and the devices chin are exactly equally big which gives the phone a great feeling of balance in your hand, even the circular openings next to the ear speaker, which are housing the front camera and the proximity sensor are equally big and placed within identical distance to the speaker. Everything is designed really well. Just like the fact that at first glance it looks like there’s no home- and/or navigation buttons, until you start to use the device, and the softtouch buttons light up behind the metal looking chin. The notification LED is “hidden” in the same way. The 5.5 inch 1920 x 1080 FHD screen is basically edge to edge (if we not count the black edge that surrounds the screen once it’s turned on, which are quiet easy to get used to and in fact didn’t bother me at all. What I really appreciate in every phone I test is when the manufacturer actually has put in some extra effort to give the screen an oleophobic layer to ward of those pesky fingerprints. I was quite happy to discover the Le S3 was equipped with that. This adds to the premium user-experience. Another design decision was to leave out the 3.5 mm headphone jack and to be honest, even that was nothing that bothered me at all. We ALL know it’s not smart to use your phone during charging, so I don’t see the problem. On top of that LeEco did include a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter in the box, so you can just keep using your favourite headphones. Since my favourite set of headphones is Bluetooth-based I didn’t experience any problems at all.
HARDWARE & SOFTWARE
Like said, there are several versions of the Le S3. The model that was reviewed by me was the one packing the Mediatek X20 decacore chipset, combined with 4GB of RAM and a whopping 64GB internal storage (which is nice since the Le S3 doesn’t support the use of a micro SD card). The Mediatek X20 processor is very powerful and operates smoothly at the clocked speed of 2.3 Ghz. GPU is provided by a Mali T880 which makes gaming and other graphical experiences quiet smooth and fluent. The fingerprint scanner that is mounted on the back of the device works like a charm and unlocks the phone straight out of lock mode in under 0.2 seconds every single time. The speaker sound that is enhanced with Dolby DTS makes listening to music a pleasant experience, even if you chose not use your headphones. Just looking at the hardware of the device, I can seriously say it is a great device and it does, in no way give you the typical 120 dollar device experience.
But... then there’s the software. And that is exactly the point of focus that made this device only reach second place in my Top 3. Even though I do not agree with the majority of me reviewing peers, I think the LeEco EUI operating system is a rather intelligent addition to Android. Or rather, it could have been. Sure it’s definitely better than Samsungs Touchwiz that fills your device with unwanted bloatware you’re unable to remove, and its surely not as ‘bulky’ as HTC’s Sense. It is clear, easy to use and relatively customizable. In fact my first reaction was: “Why would anyone complain about this, this is perfect”. And it was. That is, until my battery had died and after charging the phone, I decided to turn on the device again. Nothing happened and the screen stayed black. After getting over what felt like a near-death-experience, I remembered there was a hard reset option pushing volume down and the power button at the same time and holding for 5 or more seconds. And that worked. The device came back to live and it worked like a charm again. Now this problem with not liking to go to sleep, or rather, difficulties waking up repeated itself several times. Several of my friends that also use this device reported the same problem. Now I do admit it was the ONLY problem whatsoever that I encountered with the Le S3 but for me it was just enough to not nominate this device for the 1st place in my Top 3. The rest of the software (the EUI) looks fantastic and works flawless. It might take some getting used to, since they changed the location of your open apps and toggles but since they changed in a way that does make (some) sense I didn’t have difficulties adapting.
CAMERA
Then there is the camera. Important to notice there are also two versions of that available there’s a model sporting an 16 MP back shooter and a 8 MP selfies-cam, and there’s the model I got, sporting no less than a 21MP back camera. And I think it’s fair to say, as far as budget phones go, this is one of the best smartphone camera’s out there. Not only does it work very fluently and fast but it reproduces great pictures, with a decent dynamic range and great colours. The one thing I did notice is that it reproduces colours that are very realistic. The LeEco Le S3 takes amazing pictures and isn’t afraid of darkness, cloudy days or even movement. The same is true for the 8MP front camera. I’ve made videos and took pictures with it that looked better than some devices main camera to be honest. There are many settings, like a pro setting that gives you complete control over the settings and there is a slow motion option that makes nice video’s.
There’s a set of real life filters to use, and beautification software for your selfies. Now once you’re my age, you give up every illusion that even software will make you look good, but I’m sure there are some end users that might find it useful ;)
So that sounds like a pretty perfect camera than doesn’t it? Yes. However (o, come on you ALL knew a however was on its way right?) there were two tiny things that annoyed me. One is the fact that the camera didn’t always deal with direct sunlight in a fashion that made me happy, sometimes big rays of light that the bare didn’t register appeared in the pictures. Like said, that was only happening when working in direct sunlight, and living in the Netherlands or the UK for that matters, the risk of having a lot of direct sunlight is rather minimal. Seriously though, it was no big deal once I learned that changing the phone angle just a wee bit would sort it out. However the nightshots, slow motion and overall fantastic picture quality will let you get over that relatively fast.
Now the thing on the LeEco Le S3 that is definitely MORE than fast is the quick charge they build for their battery. I have truly never seen a phone that charged faster and yet was able to actually hold the charge just as long any other device. In somewhat around an hour the 3000 mAh battery was completely charged, which is really great. Sometimes I noticed I forgot to charge the phone at night, so I put it on the charger while drinking my coffee and get ready which usually takes 20-30 minutes. The result was that I could fully use the phone for the rest of the day. Really convenient.
So yeah, the LeEco Le S3 did perform really really well. In fact I dare to say it still is one of THE BEST budgetphones out there And I would absolutely recommend it as an option for you if you want to order a new daily driver.
(Voor de Nederlandse Review Inclusief aanbieding, kun je hier kijken)
Before we go in to the details of the review, I think it might me useful to specify there are 3 different versions available of the Le S3. Two of them are packing 3 GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage and a 16 megapixel rear camera. One of them is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 Quadcore processor the other by a MediaTek Helio X20 Decacore processor. And then there is the third, awesome edition that was sent to us. This version, that is only available in the Force Golden colour sports 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of ROM storage, and it uses the same 21.2 megapixel rear camera also found in the LeEco Le Max2. Now, let’s take a closer look at this impressive phone:
Design and Screen.
Even though Apple and Umidigi keep shouting they were inspired by the Bauhaus concept of minimalism, all it takes is having one look at the LeEco Le S3 Pro to see that they have perfected the minimalism-concept. The phones design is an homage to symmetry. And it doesn’t really matter from which side you look at the phone. The upper bezel and the devices chin are exactly equally big which gives the phone a great feeling of balance in your hand, even the circular openings next to the ear speaker, which are housing the front camera and the proximity sensor are equally big and placed within identical distance to the speaker. Everything is designed really well. Just like the fact that at first glance it looks like there’s no home- and/or navigation buttons, until you start to use the device, and the softtouch buttons light up behind the metal looking chin. The notification LED is “hidden” in the same way. The 5.5 inch 1920 x 1080 FHD screen is basically edge to edge (if we not count the black edge that surrounds the screen once it’s turned on, which are quiet easy to get used to and in fact didn’t bother me at all. What I really appreciate in every phone I test is when the manufacturer actually has put in some extra effort to give the screen an oleophobic layer to ward of those pesky fingerprints. I was quite happy to discover the Le S3 was equipped with that. This adds to the premium user-experience. Another design decision was to leave out the 3.5 mm headphone jack and to be honest, even that was nothing that bothered me at all. We ALL know it’s not smart to use your phone during charging, so I don’t see the problem. On top of that LeEco did include a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter in the box, so you can just keep using your favourite headphones. Since my favourite set of headphones is Bluetooth-based I didn’t experience any problems at all.
HARDWARE & SOFTWARE
Like said, there are several versions of the Le S3. The model that was reviewed by me was the one packing the Mediatek X20 decacore chipset, combined with 4GB of RAM and a whopping 64GB internal storage (which is nice since the Le S3 doesn’t support the use of a micro SD card). The Mediatek X20 processor is very powerful and operates smoothly at the clocked speed of 2.3 Ghz. GPU is provided by a Mali T880 which makes gaming and other graphical experiences quiet smooth and fluent. The fingerprint scanner that is mounted on the back of the device works like a charm and unlocks the phone straight out of lock mode in under 0.2 seconds every single time. The speaker sound that is enhanced with Dolby DTS makes listening to music a pleasant experience, even if you chose not use your headphones. Just looking at the hardware of the device, I can seriously say it is a great device and it does, in no way give you the typical 120 dollar device experience.But... then there’s the software. And that is exactly the point of focus that made this device only reach second place in my Top 3. Even though I do not agree with the majority of me reviewing peers, I think the LeEco EUI operating system is a rather intelligent addition to Android. Or rather, it could have been. Sure it’s definitely better than Samsungs Touchwiz that fills your device with unwanted bloatware you’re unable to remove, and its surely not as ‘bulky’ as HTC’s Sense. It is clear, easy to use and relatively customizable. In fact my first reaction was: “Why would anyone complain about this, this is perfect”. And it was. That is, until my battery had died and after charging the phone, I decided to turn on the device again. Nothing happened and the screen stayed black. After getting over what felt like a near-death-experience, I remembered there was a hard reset option pushing volume down and the power button at the same time and holding for 5 or more seconds. And that worked. The device came back to live and it worked like a charm again. Now this problem with not liking to go to sleep, or rather, difficulties waking up repeated itself several times. Several of my friends that also use this device reported the same problem. Now I do admit it was the ONLY problem whatsoever that I encountered with the Le S3 but for me it was just enough to not nominate this device for the 1st place in my Top 3. The rest of the software (the EUI) looks fantastic and works flawless. It might take some getting used to, since they changed the location of your open apps and toggles but since they changed in a way that does make (some) sense I didn’t have difficulties adapting.
CAMERA
Then there is the camera. Important to notice there are also two versions of that available there’s a model sporting an 16 MP back shooter and a 8 MP selfies-cam, and there’s the model I got, sporting no less than a 21MP back camera. And I think it’s fair to say, as far as budget phones go, this is one of the best smartphone camera’s out there. Not only does it work very fluently and fast but it reproduces great pictures, with a decent dynamic range and great colours. The one thing I did notice is that it reproduces colours that are very realistic. The LeEco Le S3 takes amazing pictures and isn’t afraid of darkness, cloudy days or even movement. The same is true for the 8MP front camera. I’ve made videos and took pictures with it that looked better than some devices main camera to be honest. There are many settings, like a pro setting that gives you complete control over the settings and there is a slow motion option that makes nice video’s.There’s a set of real life filters to use, and beautification software for your selfies. Now once you’re my age, you give up every illusion that even software will make you look good, but I’m sure there are some end users that might find it useful ;)
So that sounds like a pretty perfect camera than doesn’t it? Yes. However (o, come on you ALL knew a however was on its way right?) there were two tiny things that annoyed me. One is the fact that the camera didn’t always deal with direct sunlight in a fashion that made me happy, sometimes big rays of light that the bare didn’t register appeared in the pictures. Like said, that was only happening when working in direct sunlight, and living in the Netherlands or the UK for that matters, the risk of having a lot of direct sunlight is rather minimal. Seriously though, it was no big deal once I learned that changing the phone angle just a wee bit would sort it out. However the nightshots, slow motion and overall fantastic picture quality will let you get over that relatively fast.
Now the thing on the LeEco Le S3 that is definitely MORE than fast is the quick charge they build for their battery. I have truly never seen a phone that charged faster and yet was able to actually hold the charge just as long any other device. In somewhat around an hour the 3000 mAh battery was completely charged, which is really great. Sometimes I noticed I forgot to charge the phone at night, so I put it on the charger while drinking my coffee and get ready which usually takes 20-30 minutes. The result was that I could fully use the phone for the rest of the day. Really convenient.
So yeah, the LeEco Le S3 did perform really really well. In fact I dare to say it still is one of THE BEST budgetphones out there And I would absolutely recommend it as an option for you if you want to order a new daily driver.
Reacties
Een reactie posten