Lenovo Vibe Shot: First Impressions

The Lenovo Vibe Shot is coming to India soon, and while the company hasn’t announced pricing and availability details yet, it did showcase the device in Delhi recently. Lenovo’s main focus with this phone is the 16MP camera on the back, which the company is trying to sell the device on., and having seen it first hand, Lenovo isn’t wrong.

But first, let’s take you through the specifications. The Lenovo Vibe Shot runs on a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octa-core SoC, along with 2GB of RAM. It has a 16MP camera on the back and an 8MP front snapper. This is accompanied by a 5-inch 1080p display and Android Lollipop out of the box.

Yes, the Snapdragon 615 is a bit disappointing, but with the right pricing Lenovo can still make it work. At the Delhi showcase, Lenovo encouraged us to spend some time shooting images with the phone and see what we thought of the camera, which usually means that the company is really confident about the camera performance.

Well, on first impressions, the 16MP rear camera on the Vibe Shot is formidable indeed. On first impressions, the Vibe Shot’s camera is quite capable. Specifications wise, it is a 16-megapixel CMOS BSI sensor. The camera features a 6-element lens with f/2.2 aperture, ISO range of 100-1600, and a triple-LED flash. On the phone’s own display, images look quite sharp, and colours, accurate. There are also plenty of manual controls for more avid mobile photographers. Perhaps, to reinforce the fact that this is a camera centric phone, Lenovo has added two physical buttons just for the camera. There’s a hardware button that takes the camera from the auto to pro modes, while another hardware button can be used to click images.

The phone does take a little bit of time to process images, but considering the quality, we could let that pass. The Vibe Shot’s camera allows you to control aperture, shutter speed, white balance, ISO and focus, which is quite ample. There’s a Lumia-like slider, which shows the image change in real time as you move the slider from one end to the other. This makes it much easier to use the Pro mode.

We tried shooting in bright sunlight with lots of shadows, and the Vibe Shot seemed to deal with them admirably. While we can’t show you the images at the moment, owing to an embargo, the Vibe Shot’s camera algorithm seems to be really advanced, perhaps even as good as the ZTE Nubia Z9 Mini, which is saying something. Even on Auto mode, the camera takes really good images, dealing with light and shadows correctly.

Of course, we can’t confirm all of this without taking the Vibe Shot through our test processes, but on first impressions we’re impressed. If Lenovo chooses a sub-20k pricing for the phone, it may make a lot of sense for camera lovers. On top of that, the phone is really well-built, with a seamless full metal body that looks and feels really good.

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Prasid Banerjee

Trying to explain technology to my parents. Failing miserably. View Full Profile