What’s with these big smartphones? I mean, evolution is one thing but maybe companies should take into consideration the fact that our hands aren’t going to evolve at the rate at which these smartphone screens are! However, despite all the small-hand-big-screen awkwardness there’s no denying there’s a market for 5-inch-plus smartphones. Take the new Lenovo S920 for example. It exists somewhere in the middle ground between big and massive with its 5.3-inch screen. That screens in this range are now becoming common is evident by the fact that it’s hard to tell this one apart from most others similarly sized. The phone looks pretty massive, but then that’s to be expected. Lenovo’s maximised the real estate by using virtual buttons on the lowest part of the fascia on the smartphone, leaving ample space for whatever it is you want to indulge in on the homescreen.

Now, like a bunch of similar big-screen phone the Lenovo S920 also comes with dual-SIM capability. The back panel is removable, so no issues there. However, keep in mind that it only supports a single 3G-enabled SIM card. The other SIM card has to be a regular 2G one – making it clear that this was meant for use during travel or accessing the Web through either your official or personal number only. We had no problems with voice calls – conversations were almost always clear and there were no dropped calls either.

Performance

Under the hood is a 1.2 GHz quad core processor which is of Cortex A7 architecture. It is a Mediatek unit, the likes found on most budget quad core devices out there. Complementing the processor is a 1GB RAM and an internal storage capacity of 4GB which can be expanded further with the help of a memory card by another 32GB. It’s a pity though that by default you get a measly 1.4 GB of user-accessible space to store videos or music. Hence, you will definitely have to invest in an external memory card.

On our standard benchmarking test, the handset scored around 3,720 points, just a tad bit lower than the likes of the Panasonic P51 as well as the Samsung Galaxy Grand Duos. During the week or so when we used it, the device never froze on us, despite a bit of multi-tasking.

Multimedia

The device gets an 8-megapixel camera at the back which was as good as most of the budget 8-megapixel snappers out there. In decent light, the pictures turned out fine but the camera doesn’t handle low-light images too well. Also, in some conditions the images turned out a lot more grainy than we’d expect them to be. The front camera unit is a 2-megapixel unit which is the usual fare.

We loaded some music and videos on to the unit and while the display took care of the video quality quite well, the audio levels were a bit disappointing. You would definitely need speakers even if it’s just two people listening to music on it or watching a video.

It runs on the latest version of Android, 4.2.1 Jelly Bean which is slowly becoming a standard with Lenovo's custom UI on top.

The smartphone has a 2,250 mAh battery which seems just fine considering that it has a pretty big screen to power. It easily gave us company for an entire day, with the occasional indulgence in web browsing and multimedia streaming.

Verdict

The Lenovo S920 is built fairly well. It offers massive virtual real estate, for those looking specifically for it, at a pretty affordable price range. Like a bunch of similarly-priced smartphones in the market, it does a bunch of things moderately well but doesn’t really stand out exceptionally in one single aspect.

Rs 21,399

Love – Big screen, decent battery life

Hate – Proprietary user interface, volume levels

mahananda.bohidar@thehindu.co.in

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