Lenovo P2 smartphone, high-capacity battery and AMOLED display

Not long ago, I published a review of the interesting Thor Plus from Vernee. After reading it, one of my readers became interested in the phone and also asked about another, very similar model: the Lenovo P2. After reading up on this smartphone, I was surprised by two things: how I had never noticed it before, and how closely its main advertised features matched those of the Vernee.
So I ordered one, and during testing I never once regretted taking a closer look at it.


Of course, I’ll mention the Thor Plus during the review. For now, here are the main features Vernee advertised:
1. Large-capacity battery
2. 5.5-inch AMOLED display (the store listing didn’t mention this at all)
3. An "E-ink" function—or, more precisely, the ability to force the smartphone into power-saving mode with the press of a button.

Even before I planned to order the phone, I had a feeling that Vernee’s engineers had simply seen the Lenovo P2 and decided to release an "economy" version of it. The P2 is by no means a new device; it’s been in production for about a year, so there’s already plenty of user feedback. That said, this is more about the "localized" version, since the "Chinese" one has a few differences. For example, the thread about this phone on the 4pda forum is already 729 pages long.

First, the specifications.
Color — Gold/Gray
Processor — Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 (MSM8953), 2 GHz, 8 Cortex-A53 cores, 14 nm
GPU — Adreno 506
Operating system — Android 6.0 (7.0 after the update)
Memory — 4 GB RAM, 64 GB flash storage.
Display — 5.5-inch AMOLED, 1920x1080 resolution
Network types — CDMA, FDD-LTE, GSM, TD-SCDMA, TDD-LTE, WCDMA
CDMA: CDMA 1X/EVDO, CDMA 2000
2G: GSM 1800 MHz, GSM 1900 MHz, GSM 850 MHz, GSM 900 MHz
3G: WCDMA B1 2100 MHz / B2 1900 MHz / B5 850 MHz / B8 900 MHz
TD-SCDMA: TD-SCDMA B34/B39
4G: FDD B1 2100 MHz, B3 1800 MHz, B4 1700 MHz, B7 2600 MHz, B8 900 MHz; TDD B38 2600 MHz / B39 1900 MHz / B40 2300 MHz
Wireless interfaces — 802.11b/g/n/ac (2.4 and 5 GHz), Bluetooth 4.1
GPSA / GPS
Memory card slot — MicroSD
SIM card type — 2 nano SIM cards (hybrid slot)
Audio output/microphone — 3.5 mm jack.
Front camera — 5 MP
Main camera — 13 MP
Sensors: accelerometer, ambient light sensor, gyroscope, magnetometer, NFC
Battery — 5100 mAh
Dimensions — 153x76x8.2 mm
Weight — 179 g

Differences between the global and Chinese versions: the Chinese version lacks band B20, but has 64 GB of flash storage instead of 32 GB. Personally, I value the extra 64 GB more than the missing B20 band, especially since it’s useless where I live anyway.

Compared with the Vernee, this phone also has an AMOLED display, but with a resolution of 1920x1080 rather than 1280x720. The battery is 5100 mAh versus 5800 mAh in the Vernee. To extend battery life, there’s a power-saving mode, though without the "special effects" of a black-and-white image that imitates an E-ink screen.
The phone is similar to the Vernee in size, but it’s a little thinner and lighter. I’ll get into that in more detail during the review.

The first thing you see after opening the mailing bag is a fairly large box bearing the manufacturer’s name. Since this phone is intended for the Chinese market, most of the text is in Chinese characters.
Everything inside is packed quite neatly. I’d seen something similar when unboxing a Coolpad smartphone.


The manual and charger are packed separately.


The package includes:
1. Lenovo P2 smartphone
2. Charger
3. USB-to-microUSB cable
4. USB-to-microUSB OTG adapter
5. SIM eject tool
6. Manual and warranty booklet


1. Along with the manual, there was something like a warranty booklet, though I doubt it’s valid here.
2. As you can imagine, the manual is also entirely in Chinese. It does have illustrations, though, and there’s also a Russian version available as a PDF.
3, 4. As expected, the charger doesn’t have a European plug. It provides 5.2 V-2 A, 7 V-2 A, 9 V-2 A, and 12 V-2 A output, and complies with the MTK Pump Express Plus 24 W standard. It’s unusual to see an output voltage of 5.2 V instead of 5 V.
5. The charging cable looks completely ordinary, perhaps a little softer than usual.
6. The SIM eject tool is self-explanatory, but seeing an OTG adapter included is quite unusual. It’s made with a distinctive rubber casing and a "cap." The "cap" lets you prop the phone up on a table with that end raised, though I’m not sure what for yet.


There were protective shipping films on the front and back. Without them, the phone looks like any other: an ordinary black rectangle.


There’s a single control button at the bottom. In fact, it’s multifunctional and supports at least four types of input: a short or long touch, and a short or long press. So I disabled the on-screen "buttons" right away and simply forgot about them. On the first day, controlling the phone with a single button felt unusual, but I can say with complete confidence that it’s genuinely convenient.
The button also incorporates a fingerprint sensor. Recognition is excellent: in my tests it got 10 out of 10, sometimes 9 out of 10. The sensor also supports gesture controls, but that’s a bit much for me; pressing the button is enough.

The top has a 5 MP front-facing camera, a proximity sensor, the earpiece and a notification LED.


The glass curves around the edges, which can make it difficult to apply a screen protector. Some units also had a slight bend caused by the screws inside the case being tightened too much; this can be fixed by taking the phone apart.
The phone has been on the market for a while, so screen protectors and cases are readily available.
There’s a single main speaker on the right. I have no complaints about its volume or sound quality.


The right side has the usual three buttons: power and volume controls.
At the top are a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a microphone hole for the noise-cancellation system. When recording video, this microphone handles the left channel, while the earpiece microphone handles the right.


The SIM and memory card tray is on the left side of the case, with a switch below it for enabling power-saving mode. It wasn’t until I’d used the phone that I realized a switch is more convenient than a button. With my Vernee, I sometimes pressed the button by accident; that can’t happen here. The switch is a little stiff, but not too much.


The phone comes in two colors: gold and gray. I chose the gray version when ordering, as it’s more classic—and I simply like this color better.
The back cover is aluminum, with decorative milling around the perimeter (which often got in the way when taking photos). There are plastic inserts at the top and bottom, presumably covering the antennas.


The camera sits quite far down in the case, which deserves a special thanks to the manufacturer: it’s not easy to scratch the lens. At least you can put the phone down on a table with the camera facing down without worrying about it.
"The flash" combines warm and cool LEDs. It’s only an average flashlight, but more than adequate for something like climbing a dark staircase.


Yes, the bane of many modern phones: a hybrid SIM slot. Without any fiddling, you can install either 2 SIM cards or 1 SIM card plus a memory card. Since I plan to use the phone with two SIM cards, its 64 GB of flash storage helps make up for the lack of a dedicated memory card slot. The tray is metal and fits very snugly. Interestingly, my test SIM card, cut down to nano size, only just fits, even though it went in easily in my previous phones.


The phone is extremely unphotogenic. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get any decent photos. So I took a second set of photos as well, in more natural light, though on an overcast day.






You can see more clearly here that the glass is curved.


This photo shows the actual color of the phone’s back cover more accurately.





Since I’ll be comparing it with the Samsung S8, here are a few photos of them side by side.



This smartphone has a 5.5-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. Pixel density is 401 ppi. It has automatic brightness adjustment and a choice of color display modes (more on that later).
Personally, I think the display looks very good. Subjectively, it’s not as bright as the Vernee’s, but it’s still easy to read even in sunlight.
Viewing angles are excellent, too. In my Vernee review, I mentioned a slight unwanted tint on white backgrounds when viewed from certain angles. The same effect is present here, but only at a very steep angle, almost edge-on.


At first, you might think there’s unwanted light bleed. There isn’t; it’s a quirk of the "gallery", which displays photos with a gray border. I know some users ended up installing alternative apps, but I'm fine with it as is for now.


This time I figured it would be better to compare it with models that are at least somewhat similar, so here's a group photo featuring:
1. Samsung S8
2. Lenovo P2
3. Vernee Thor plus
4. Coolpad Max A8

Screen size: 5.8-5.5-5.5-5.5
Resolution: 2960x1440 - 1920x1080 - 1280x720 - 1920x1080.
Panel type: sAMOLED - AMOLED - sAMOLED (claimed) - IPS

Brightness is set to 100% on all of them.



You can see that even a relatively decent IPS panel clearly falls short. It's also noticeable that the Vernee's screen is brighter and has more vivid colors, while the phone under review looks more like the Samsung.



The phone under review has two color profiles: standard and more saturated. The standard mode is shown at the top, with increased saturation at the bottom. Personally, though, I can barely see any difference.


Interface and software features.

The home screen's color scheme is reminiscent of the smartphone's packaging. A number of apps come preinstalled, including a browser, Play Store, YouTube, and so on. Since it has a magnetometer, there's a compass too, and as a nice bonus, they even included a manual.


There's a lot of photos, so the rest are under the spoiler.


By the way, about the manual: I think this was a really thoughtful touch. It describes both individual apps and the smartphone's settings as a whole, and it's in Russian, even though the phone was originally intended for the Chinese market.



Software

The operating system and preinstalled apps take up 12 GB, which seems like quite a lot to me. For example, my Doogee has only 8 GB of storage, and there's still room for apps. I think a pretty substantial chunk is taken up by those manuals in different languages.
It came with Android 6.0.1 installed, which is also the version listed on the store page.


As soon as I checked for updates, three came through one after another. The first was just a regular update, then there was one over a gigabyte in size, followed by another small one.


After the third update, the phone settled down and told me that was it. So it's now running Android 7.0.


I browsed through the themes and immediately installed one I liked better. I'm not really into bright, rainbow colors; I prefer darker ones. No additional apps were installed, and everything else stayed as it was before the updates.


There aren't that many themes. As far as I understand, you can download more, but the ones already there were enough for me.


There aren't many options for customizing the theme and animations, but I think there's enough for the average user.


In addition to the standard display settings, there are two color balance options: one aims for more natural colors, while the other looks nicer.
Night mode changes the color scheme, giving the image a pronounced yellow tint. The idea is to reduce eye strain.


As I already mentioned, the smartphone has just one physical button; the rest are on-screen buttons, and you can swap their positions. It came with the "inconvenient" layout enabled, so I first switched to the normal one, then disabled the keyboard altogether—and I haven't regretted it once.
You can also enable gesture controls using the fingerprint scanner here.


The notification LED can display events in four different colors, but after reading 4pda, I found out that you can set custom colors if you want.
You can also choose what appears in the notification panel here. By the way, the battery percentage is shown inside the battery icon itself. This saves space, but I think people with poor eyesight won't like it, since the numbers are small. I'm nearsighted, so I prefer this to having the numbers next to the icon.


The power manager is a little different from the ones I've seen before. For example, it shows energy consumption for each app, but there’s no familiar battery discharge graph—or I just couldn’t find it.


You can create a separate virtual "safe zone"; personally, I think that’s unnecessary.


There are also plenty of smartphone control settings. I can’t say I’ll use even half of them, but turning on the flashlight by holding the Home button might come in handy, as could the quick camera launch. There’s also a high-sensitivity touchscreen mode, for example, to make the phone easier to use in winter while wearing gloves. In my case, the feature is completely unnecessary, since I never wear gloves anyway.


There are various ways to enable different quick-launch modes, including quick launch of VR mode. By the way, the installed processor supports Full HD video at 60 fps.
What’s really nice is the proper localization. Instead of a bunch of unfamiliar settings in English, everything is not only translated into Russian but also comes with instructions in the form of text and pictures. The phone is simply a pleasure to use.


An app for quickly sharing files between two devices. I didn’t quite figure it out, so I can’t say anything specific about it.


With all these settings, I almost forgot about NFC. I can’t do a full test, but it reads a standard 125 kHz card without any problems. I might try emulating my work key fob, which I use to get into the office.


Since it has a magnetometer, it also has a compass, and it works quite well. There’s protection against accidental touches.
While I was busy with other things, another update came through—the latest one as of now.


You can choose how to control the quick functions. I immediately set the flashlight to turn on when I hold the button; a red bar appears at the top to turn it off. It’s not quite the same as on my Doogee, but it’s still pretty convenient.



Tests.
CPU-Z reported the same information listed in the smartphone’s specifications: an octa-core processor running at 2 GHz with an integrated Adreno 506 GPU. Root access is unavailable. I might look into how to unlock it, although I don’t even know why I’d need to yet :)


Presumably because Root access is locked, I can’t get complete information about the smartphone using the Device info app. The camera manufacturer also remains unknown.




Tests

It’s honestly hard for me to judge its performance—whether it’s a lot or a little—since it’s more than enough for what I do. So I’ll just give you the test results.
I can only compare them with devices I’ve already reviewed, such as the UMI Plus E (Helio P20) and Coolpad Max A8 (Snapdragon 617).
In AnTuTu 5.x, the score fell just short of the Helio P20 (50563) and was noticeably higher than the Snapdragon 617’s (33747).
The results in version 6.x (6.2) were similar: a little slower than the Helio P20 (61488) and noticeably faster than the Snapdragon 617 (43358).

The touchscreen supports up to 10 simultaneous touches. It worked without any problems, but the phone has a dead zone about 1–2 mm wide at the very bottom of the display. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t read the 4pda forum. It’s a software issue, not a hardware one.


Geekbench gave a slightly different picture. The single-core result was about the same as in AnTuTu, but the multi-core score was a little higher than the Helio P20’s and noticeably higher—twice as high—as the Snapdragon 617’s.


The 3DMark and PCMark results were also fairly good, but the Epic Citadel test I’m used to wouldn’t run, constantly returning an error. Other users did manage to run it, though, and got around 59.5 in the High Quality test,


The Bonsai benchmark score was also higher than the Snapdragon 617’s.


The built-in flash storage is very fast: 200 MB/s read and 150 MB/s write. That was already obvious when installing apps.



In addition to the basic set of sensors, it also has a gyroscope and a magnetometer.


A little about GPS navigation. In urban conditions, the phone found quite a lot of satellites. This is probably a record for my reviews so far.


The test track was about average, though the direction of the error differed depending on which way I was moving. That’s why the track is shown to the left and right of the road; the actual track was essentially somewhere between the two shown here.



The phone has a dual-band Wi-Fi module. My connection speed was only 72 Mbps on 2.4 GHz, compared with 433 Mbps on 5 GHz. However, the 2.4 GHz band here is much "noisier" than 5 GHz. In everyday use, I’d describe the connection stability and signal retention as excellent, or close to it. In places where my Doogee barely works, the phone under review held the connection rock-solid and provided a comfortable user experience.


Speed test on the 2.4 GHz band, in a typical three-room apartment with reinforced concrete walls and lots of access points nearby. At the farthest point (12 m from the router), the speed was about 6 Mbps, rising to 45–50 Mbps as I got closer to the router.


On the 5 GHz band, the connection doesn’t hold at the farthest point. But move the phone even slightly out of the reinforced concrete’s "shadow" and you immediately get a fairly stable 6–7 Mbps. Two meters from the router, the speed rises to almost 200 Mbps.


Besides its high-capacity battery, the phone has a battery saver mode. Vernee has a very similar mode, but with the "special effect" of a black-and-white display. Here the display stays in color, and the mode also shows an estimated runtime when enabled (not shown in the screenshot because the phone was charging). Unfortunately, this mode severely limits the phone’s functionality, effectively turning it into a basic "dumbphone".
By the way, there are two charging modes: normal and fast. Switching to the second mode is indicated by a two-lightning-bolt icon on the battery symbol. Since the phone can get quite hot in this mode, it only activates when the phone is idle or in power-saving mode.


The phone can charge fairly quickly, but the charging speed depends directly on the battery temperature.
When you connect the phone to a charger, it will most likely start charging at 12 V and about 1.8 A. More precisely, it starts at 5 V, then goes to 7, 9, and 12 V, but as the temperature rises, it may drop from 12 V to 9 V.
For the test, I started charging the phone from completely discharged while it was switched off.
10 minutes — 15%
20 minutes — 28%
40 minutes — 50%
1 hour — 73%
1 hour 30 minutes — 92%
2 hours — 100%

As you can see, the phone really does charge quickly to 50–70%, but charging slows down after that, and it took a full half hour to gain the last 8%. Overall, that’s perfectly reasonable: if you’re short on time and need a charge, it will take on as much energy as possible; leave it plugged in longer and the current will drop as the phone charges fully.


By the way, when the phone is fully switched off and connected to a charger, it enters a separate operating mode. The screen shows the time and charging indicator, as well as an on-screen power button. A little unusual. But before this mode starts, it first displays: Bootmode is "charger".


The smartphone surprised me with its battery life. Below are the results at 100% screen brightness, with automatic brightness disabled. Almost 14 hours.
By the way, I ended up using it only occasionally for about a week, and even then it still had 20% charge left, despite Wi-Fi and NFC being enabled. That was after I’d spent several days testing and photographing it—in other words, using it almost normally.


As another test, I played a Full HD movie. For some reason, it says “Unable to play video,” but the video plays anyway.
The test started at 18:37 and ended at 19:37 the next day, so the phone played video for 25 hours. I don’t know how many phones can do that, but it’s a record in my experience so far.



Next on my list was disassembly and a battery capacity test. Above, I mentioned that some users had trouble attaching a screen protector (film protectors work fine) because the screen wasn’t flat. They solved this by loosening the screws under the plastic covers. The covers are very easy to remove: you just need a regular razor blade and something flat but sturdy, though a card will do just fine.
Insert the sharp edge of the blade between the case and the plastic insert, on the flat side near the end of the insert. Slowly lift the insert and slide something sturdier underneath, then peel it off slowly. The insert is flexible, so there’s no need to rush; it all comes off without any problems.


Interestingly, the screws at the bottom are white, while the ones at the top are black. Just in case, I marked one of the covers with a marker, although they look identical.


I’m not quite sure what these screws are for, since the front section with the display stays firmly in place even without them. After removing the display, I even had to turn the phone on to make sure it hadn’t been damaged.
Since I was planning to test it, I had fully discharged the phone beforehand.


All the Chinese phones I’d taken apart before had a somewhat different design. The front was a module, and there was usually nothing on the chassis. Here it’s almost the opposite: everything is packed into the chassis, and only the display panel with the touchscreen comes off. By the way, since the panel is OLED, it’s very thin. That’s what made it possible to fit a fairly high-capacity battery while keeping the phone slim.


But then I hit a snag: I just couldn’t remove the heat-spreading plate. It seemed to be stuck somewhere near the headphone jack, and since I don’t have much experience taking smartphones apart, I decided not to force it. I tried every option I could think of, but in the end I couldn’t get it off.
By the way, although this smartphone has been in production for a long time, its battery is fairly new.


The phone has two cameras: a 5 MP front camera and a 13 MP rear camera. Overall, the cameras are probably mid-range, but the manufacturer has added quite a few software options for working with photos.
Along with the standard modes, there’s backlight compensation, a virtual level, and the option to draw guide lines on the screen.
I think there was also an image stabilization option, but I couldn’t find it later. It may have been removed in one of the updates. When I tried it, though, I didn’t notice any difference.


There’s an automatic “virtual assistant” that identifies the scene and gives it a score from 0 to 100% to help you choose the right shooting angle.


There’s also an advanced menu. In addition to fast, slow-motion, and panoramic shooting, you can manually select the operating modes.
For example, you can focus manually and set the exposure time (I managed to get a 1-second exposure, although the display showed up to 2/3).
In video mode, you can switch on the light separately, which can also be handy.


By the way, about video recording: the maximum resolution is 4K at 30 fps. I didn’t notice any problems while recording, but I immediately noticed the stereo sound.
Video is recorded at 40 Mbps, which is pretty good for a smartphone.


And of course, a few camera tests.
First I tried macro mode, but the results weren’t great. The minimum distance was about 4 cm, but after trying to shoot from farther away, I realized there wasn’t much difference. In the end, I just took the shot from far enough away to fit everything in the frame.
Autofocus works well, but even a slight shake of my hands blurred the image.


And of course, a comparison with the Samsung S8. Since the photos are large both in file size and dimensions, the original comparison images are available via links on Google Drive and Yandex Disk

It’s hard to say anything definitive about photo quality. The camera behaves differently in different scenes. Color reproduction is roughly similar to the Samsung; sharpness varies, but in my opinion it’s not all that much worse than the S8. You also have to take the price range of the devices into account—the price difference is 2–3 times.






And of course, an evening (or rather, nighttime) photo. Here Lenovo clearly lost to Samsung.



So, what can we conclude?
First, here are what I consider the positive aspects of this smartphone:
NFC,
AMOLED display
Large-capacity battery
Low power consumption
Battery saver mode
4K video recording with stereo sound
Good Wi-Fi performance
Reliable fingerprint scanner
Convenient software with plenty of settings.
64 GB of fast flash storage
Fast charger.



There are some drawbacks, too. I noticed some myself, while I learned about the others after reading the thread on 4pda:
The front glass may be uneven because the mounting screws are overtightened, which can be a problem if you use a screen protector.
Although GPS can see plenty of satellites (it even gets a fix indoors), its accuracy is nothing to write home about.
The SIM card in the first slot may become disabled after a reboot. I can confirm this happened to me a couple of times after a software update.
Clicks during dialing. This happens rarely; it never happened to me, so it probably depends on the carrier.
Some users had problems with the SIM card making contact, and ended up putting a piece of paper underneath it. I have the opposite problem: the card is very tight to insert.

At the same time, on the 4pda forum, the defects section has only 4 pages out of 729 pages in the main discussion, which seems pretty good to me.

As I wrote at the very beginning, this model most likely served as the prototype for the Vernee Thor Plus: its developers took the essentials from the P2—AMOLED, a large-capacity battery, and a power-saving mode—then added an MTK processor, packed it all into a neat little case, and released their own "budget" version.

Overall, I think this phone is a good fit for people who don't like running from outlet to outlet or trying to see anything on an LCD screen washed out by the sun, while still wanting comfortable controls and plenty of functionality.

With the Bfriday245 coupon, the price will be $179.99, which seems very reasonable to me for a phone like this.

That's probably it—well, almost. I have a small question.