Lenovo has been releasing smartphones at fairly regular intervals and it is ably supported by Moto phones as well. But apart from the Moto phones, there is another segment of phones from Lenovo called ZUK. Unlike the Lenovo phones which come with the VibeUI interface, devices powered by ZUK come with a vanilla Android OS which has been a differentiating factor. While the first phone was launched earlier this year in the form of ZUK Z1, Lenovo has decided to go with its own brand name for the second version – thereby calling it Lenovo Z2 Plus, but there is a ‘Powered by ZUK’ branding on the box which sets this phone apart from the Vibe series of smartphones.
So let’s look at this phone which brings the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset in the sub-Rs 20,000 price range.
Build and Design: 7 / 10
Lenovo Z2 Plus (7)
First things first, the Lenovo Z2 Plus is not going to win any awards for its thickness. At 8.49mm it is relatively thicker than its peers and after snapping on the stealth cover, it looks even more thicker. It doesn’t weigh much at 149 grams thankfully. There’s a glossy black glass back and the frame is made of fibreglass. From a distance it does resemble a black iPhone 5s, if you excuse the rectangular home button.
Thanks to the 5-inch form factor, the phone fits well in the hand and there is a chamfering around the edges which does not leave any sharp edges. The rear side makes the phone a tad bit slippery to grip, thanks to the glossy surface. There is a physical button which also functions as a fingerprint scanner on the front. The button/scanner can do multiple functions which we will elaborate in the Software section.
Lenovo Z2 Plus (5)
The volume rocker and power/standby buttons are present above the dual SIM card tray on the right hand side, and look a bit too plasticky. Top and left hand edges are clean. At the bottom edge, you have the 3.5mm audio jack, microphone, USB Type C port for charging and data transfer and the mono speaker.
The design is functional and nothing that will make the Lenovo Z2 Plus stand out among the crowd. Build quality is relatively sturdy as well, but the rear glossy cover is a dust magnet.
Features: 8 / 10
Lenovo Z2 Plus (1)
Lenovo Z2 Plus packs in a lot of goodies. For starters, there’s the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset. This is for all purposes, the flagship SoC (yes, we know the Snapdragon 821 is also out). The Snapdragon 820 SoC comes with a quad core Kyro CPU clocked at 2.15GHz with Adreno 530 graphics solution. It is paired with 4GB of DDR4 RAM and 64GB of storage out of which around 58.7GB is available to the user.
There is no provision to expand the storage by adding in a microSD card. For storage, Lenovo Z2 Plus uses a SanDisk i7232 smartSLC storage which basically has a small portion of the storage with SLC memory which is faster than traditional flash storage.
Lenovo Z2 Plus (3)
It runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and is quite close to stock version. There are a few custom apps though on the Lenovo Z2 Plus. But unlike the ZUK Z1, there is no CyanogenMod OS on top of Android. It has a 5-inch FullHD display.
The Lenovo Z2 Plus comes with a dual nano SIM configuration which can take in two 4G SIM cards and also has support for 4G+, VoLTE. It supports Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS, there’s a USB Type C port for data transfer, NFC, FM Radio is not supported, which may be a bummer.