Hands-on the Lenovo K900 Intel Clover Trail+ 5.5" Phone

The Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 was one of the first big surprises of CES, after Lenovo had already announced all the products that they would be showing off this year prior to the start of the show. However, the reason for this was because Lenovo couldn’t reveal the K900 until Intel officially announced the CPU powering the K900, the Clover Trail+ dual-core Atom Z2580, at their CES 2013 press event.

The K900 is gorgeous piece of industrial design, having a refined and elegant look, with lots of clean lines and brushed metal. We have already written about it a couple of times, and also reported on the first benchmarks for the Z2580 CPU in the K900 (which are unsurprisingly stellar), but just to recap, the K900 features a 5.5” Full HD 1080p IPS display, 2Gb of RAM, a f1.8 13MP Camera with Sony’s new Exmor RS BSI sensor (the same one as the Xperia Z), in a beautiful 6.9mm thick body, and will run an unspecified version of Android at launch.

 

The K900’s back is made from stainless steel, rather than the more common aluminum, with the top and bottom being moulded polycarbonate for better reception. The front uses Gorilla Glass 2, and features a very minimal bezel, and the whole phone weighs only 162g. Lenovo was showing it off at CES in four different colour combinations – overall silver/brush steel, almost brown gunmetal, silver with a machined ‘diamond’ pattern on the back, and what we thought was a pretty garish brass/dark gold finish.

We did get a chance to get a demonstration of the K900 on video at CES, which you can check out below. Unfortunately, the Lenovo representative showing it to us was adamant that he couldn’t turn it on to show us the OS in action, which would be understandable for a pre-release device…if Lenovo didn’t then turn around and show some other sites the K900’s software in action! Oh well, what can you do? Those other videos, like these ones from our friends at Slashgear, show that the K900’s present at CES were running a lightly-skinned version of Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, though the OS version is likely to change when the phone is launched later this year.

Sadly the K900 does not support LTE, so it probably won’t be coming to North America anytime soon. It is scheduled to launch in China this April, and in Lenovo’s other phone markets (India, Russia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines) soon after. No pricing was announced at the show.

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  • robochump
    Borrowed design ideas from iPhone 5 no doubt but I am still not sure about smart phone with over 5" displays. I for one refuse to carry a man bag to hold my smart phone...lol.
    Reply
  • WithoutWeakness
    robochumpBorrowed design ideas from iPhone 5 no doubt but I am still not sure about smart phone with over 5" displays. I for one refuse to carry a man bag to hold my smart phone...lol.Do you wear pants? Do those have pockets? This will fit (as long as you don't wear skinny jeans with little sissy girl pockets).

    I'm not sure if I like the look or not. The silver one is the only one I would want. Hopefully the stainless steel doesn't add too much weight, though it surely adds some rigidity. 6.9mm is pretty thin for a phone this large.
    Reply
  • ohim
    Oh great one there robochump, thinking again that Apple invented shapes and surfaces. Sad part is that they don`t even show it working in the guy`s hands ... the rest are just words in the air.
    Reply
  • house70
    Nice industrial look. I believe Android Central had a little review of the unit. Would be interested in battery capacity/life.
    SS much better than aluminum, esp. given the weak backside of iPhone5, that bends like a limp noodle.
    Reply
  • ojas
    Well, this is what the 1C/2T Lexington Z2420 looks like (performance wise)...

    http://www.techweez.com/2013/01/24/intel-zeeya-beach-yolo-review/
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/6696/intel-introduces-the-safaricom-yolo-based-on-z2420-lexington-smartphone-platform

    Lexington's a under-clocked Medfield, btw. The K900 should see around a 1.5x increase, i guess...
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    good camera, good screen, and a great CPU....
    But it will have a junk GPU (something all intel phones suffer from), and that metal back means that it most likely will not support NFC or wireless charging... 2 things that I will require of all my future phones.

    I would really love to see the next gen Atom phones come with some serious graphics hardware, and a WP variant would be welcome as well!
    Reply
  • K2N hater
    Hope it comes with at least 2GB RAM and thumb drive support so I can install Win8 onto it lol
    Reply
  • DavidC1
    CaedenV:

    No, it might actually have a DECENT GPU, being Clover Trail+. The Z2580 is a dual core Atom with PowerVR SGX544MP2 running at 533MHz.

    Ojas: The Lenovo K900 27,000 in Antutu. That's almost 2.5x the score of the Lexington device.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    CaedenVgood camera, good screen, and a great CPU....But it will have a junk GPU (something all intel phones suffer from), and that metal back means that it most likely will not support NFC or wireless charging... 2 things that I will require of all my future phones.I would really love to see the next gen Atom phones come with some serious graphics hardware, and a WP variant would be welcome as well!
    Everything that I've read about the dual-core mobile Atom models pointed towards excellent GPUs, very unlike their previous single core *brothers*. That includes info from sites such as Anand and if you want, I could look for some links.
    Reply
  • GoranAnicic
    Lenovo K900 from yesterday can be purchased in Serbia:
    http://www.androidrevija.com/lenovo-smart-telefoni-od-sinoc-u-prodaji-u-win-win-prodavnicama/
    Reply