Le Max: Yet another Chinese phone on the block?

Available at Rs 32,999, Rs 36,999 and a steep Rs 69,999 for different variants, the pricing is surely going to throw a spanner in the sales of a Chinese phone that looks promising.

As India sees LeEco (formerly known as LeTv) make its India entry, the trend of Chinese manufacturers making a beeline for the lucrative Indian market continues. The latest company is not just a smart phone manufacturer, but has a bevy of consumer technology products.

For the time being, the company seems to be quite content by not going smart phone heavy with its releases. The Le Max is a flagship offering from the company, and apart from a huge display, the multimedia content on offer from the company seems to be its huge USP.

Will LeEco prove itself worthy enough to gain a foothold in the already fierce Indian market, or will it prove to be yet another Chinese manufacturer with a penchant for 'high on specs, low on price' as its calling card? We had to take a closer look.

Build

Hold this phone in your hand, and you realise it is really not meant to be used in a casual fashion. The design is pretty much what we have expected to get from candy bar types, and Le Max is not trying to buck the trend either. The phone measures 167.1 × 83.5 × 8.95 mm in dimensions, and weighs a solid 204 gms. Anybody with small hands should be ready to cradle this device properly to prolong its life.

To LeEco's credit, the phone feels solid, thanks to the unibody design. The aluminium frame tries to lend as much aesthetics as possible, and the inspiration from HTC is hard to ignore. The plastic inserts on the back especially are a dead giveaway. Le Eco tried to get some contrast going here, but many would have preferred lighter inserts.

Take a closer look, and the beautiful looking chamfered edges reminds one of the Apple way of designing things. So it seems that the phone attempts to combine the popular schemes from two acclaimed manufacturers, and the result is not bad by any stretch of imagination.

In fact, the Le Max is a good looking phone, and with the amount of heft it carries, it is a significant achievement. The phone has a tendency to pick up dirt easily, so the bundled case is a good inclusion.

As for the button placement, at the top one finds the 3.5 mm audio jack along with infra red port. The phone has on to its right side, the power button and the dual SIM card tray. The left side is populated with the volume rocker as well as the two-way slider button for prioritising the notifications.

The bottom edge plays host to the USB Type-C port and the speaker grills. Le Max included the left grille for symmetricity it seems, as the sound output is only via the right grille.

There is a cut out on the right of the phone for the Wireless HDMI, and a finger print scanner at the back which are indicative of a feature packed device we have here.

Display

Anybody who is in the mood of a generous dose of a hefty display, should be happy with what the Le Max is offering. The 6.33-inch QHD display has a 1440 x 2560 p display. Though the pixel density feels less at 464 ppi, it is certainly good in its own right. Gorilla glass protection has been roped in, which seemed as an obvious thing for this beast.

Le Max has preset profiles which users can change according to their taste. Depending upon the need, one can use modes like natural, soft, vivid, and get maximum out of this massive screen. One thing of note here is that the display is very reflective. So, even though the brightness levels are good, the outdoor usage is not really a charming experience.

Thankfully, the good viewing angles ensure that users can tilt the screen to ward off the glossy effects from time to time.

Hardware

The Le Max comes with a Snapdragon 810 chipset (clocked at 2.0 Ghz), and has been beefed up to match its appearance. Presence of Adreno 430 along with massive 4 GB RAM certainly makes up for good numbers.

The omission of a microSD card slot stings. A phone with massive potential for media consumption shouldn't have skimped on that feature. As per Le Eco, this has been done to keep the company's data safe from getting pirated.

Thankfully, the onboard storage is 64 GB and this should prove to be good enough for most users. However, heavy data consumption from LeEco's servers can change this perception.

Connectivity

The phone has been stacked with latest connectivity options. A 4G/LTE enabled dual SIM device, the Le Max provides other options like WiFi 802.11 (ac/a/b/g/n), Bluetooth (ver 4.0), and USB OTG as well.

There are options like GPS navigation assistance, IR blaster, NFC which boosts the credentials. But the company has gone a step ahead and included features like MHL, Miracast and even Wireless HDMI to ease the process of data consumption. Users will definitely not feel shortchanged vis a vis the feature list.

Operating system

The phone comes with a custom skin eUI, and has Android Lollipop (5.0.2) as the base OS.

Keeping in mind the huge screen, the touchpad for unlocking the device can be made to appear according to user preference. It can be situated towards left, or right, or even at the centre.

Diving into the OS, there should be no surprises for the missing app drawer. This has been established as a given with the Chinese manufacturers. The OS provides the users with the app permissions, which should be a good precursor for the Android M based upgrade. The absence of large amount of bloatware was a relief.

There is the LeCloud option as well, allowing cloud storage for the users to back up data from calendar, notes, browser etc. The Remote Control app sets the device up as a universal remote. The option to adjust the dpi was nice to see.

Interestingly, the notification panel do not give too many customisation options to users. The user will have to use the control panel route for getting access to controls like brightness, apps, volume controls etc.

Thankfully, users can change the theme on the phone, and LeEco has provided three themes readily. Users can, of course, download more. The decision to omit customisation of fonts or icons was perplexing and again played spoilsport.

Overall, OS was fluid, and has few enhancements for users to indulge into. More could have been done, but thankfully it is not a heavy skin. The major attraction remains the media content LeEco plans to provide. LeEco has entered into a partnership with content provider Eros. The downloaded content from LeEco servers will be stored on the device memory itself.

Performance

The power-packed phone that Le Max is, performance was expected to be lag free, and the phone did not disappoint. The phone breezed through the usual procedures like firing up and exiting the apps, playing HD heavy content, switching between the apps, or the usual transition effects etc. The games went about fluidly and there were no instances of frame drops. Asphalt 8 appeared nothing short of impressive on the huge screen.

The fingerprint scanner at the back was a hit and a miss case. Personally speaking, the recessed scanner may be a bit too deep seated. LeEco did miss the trick here.

The phone did get a bit warm, but the levels never breached alarming levels. The audio from the mono speaker was loud and clear, but cranking up the level to the maximum yielded distortion. Users will be impressed with the audio quality via headphones, and since the content consumption is one of the key here, Le Max has a good thing going with its Hi-Fi enhancement. Presence of Dolby standards should make the potential users feel confident.

Camera

Le Max has been richly rendered in this department too. The 21 MP rear camera comes with the Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) advantage. The front camera is 4 MP.

The rear camera pulls off some very impressive pictures. The details were there, and so were the accurate colour reproduction. What was surprising was that the clicks from artificially lit conditions carried good details as well. The camera is not perfect, as the colours may come a bit off with tricky outdoor situations. HDR comes to the rescue to certain degree only. Panorama mode proved adequate with the results, and the Sony IMX230 sensor impressed throughout with all the details laid out neatly.

The app looks clean, and a bit too clean for our liking. The settings had been buried deep inside, and looking at the cumbersome process, a pro mode for shooting would have been good.

The video shooting modes are available instantly, but not the granular controls.

The phone comes with the ability to shoot 4K videos, and the OIS really comes into play here. Good detailed videos which were stable and packed with good quality audio bodes well for this powerful device. Autofocus may start acting up intermittently, but this has been observed in other smartphones as well.

The front camera has a wide angle lens included, allowing for a better field for the selfie lovers. The beauty mode has been included, and the results were more than acceptable for sharing on the social media websites.

Battery

Powering up a huge QHD screen is not a menial task. Having said that, the non removable 3400 mAh battery seemed a bit less on horsepower. The battery pack is good enough to make the phone last just through the day. This was mostly on a moderate to heavy usage pattern. There are the advantages like battery saving mode, the support for quick charging to allow the users taking of the phone back on road quickly, but the battery lacking the punch does not go unnoticed.

The bundled charger makes the phone go from zero to about 25 per cent in half an hour, but the downside of a huge QHD screen will come back to bite the users.

Verdict

LeEco's Le Max is an impressive phone. The huge screen, armed to its teeth with features, good built quality and with scope of providing scores of multimedia content, the deal sounds fantastic on paper. They are already in the process of establishing a good network of after sales service as well.

The pricing is surely going to throw a spanner into the company's plans. The fixed storage capacity phone is being offered for Rs 32,999 for the 64 GB silver variant and the gold variant costing Rs 36,999. The 128 GB version is priced at a steep Rs 69,999 (limited edition phone that comes with pink sapphire-display). These are quite significant numbers, and it is difficult to see how consumers even with sweet tooth for multimedia content will flock to LeEco's stall.

To add to the company's problems, Indian market is one of the hotly contested one. There are other options with similar specs and lower prices on offer. Something like the stellar LG G4, Samsung Galaxy S6, and Moto X Style are not only reputed, but also have proven after sales network to boot. All these hints at chances of LeEco bringing in price cut sooner than expected.