Lenovo and Huawei are two major Chinese smartphone makers who are competing for market share in China, as well as globally. Both companies try to gain that market share mainly through budget devices, but they also try to increase their profits with higher-end models.
The two companies announced today two new devices, each costing less than $200. Lenovo announced the K3 Note for roughly $145 USD (899 Yuan), while Huawei launched the Honor 4X for around $169 USD (INR 10,499).
The Lenovo K3 Note (Chinese) comes with rather premium specs, such as a 5.5" 1080p IPS display, 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage, and an octa-core Mediatek MT6752 SoC clocked at 1.7 GHz, which is based on Cortex-A53 CPU cores and a high-end Mali-T760 GPU.
The device also packs a 13 MP rear camera, a 5 MP front-camera, microSD and dual-SIM support, and a big 3,000 mAh battery, which is also something usually seen on higher-end devices. The phone runs Android 5.0, with Lenovo's own Vibe UI 2.5 on top of it.
For now, the device will only be available in China and will work with China Unicom and China Mobile's LTE networks. It will arrive on April 1 in both yellow and white color options.
Huawei's budget competitor, the Honor 4X, which is slightly more expensive, comes with a lower-end 1.2 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 410 chip with an Adreno 306 GPU. It also has a 5.5" IPS display (although just 720p), 2 GB of RAM, only 8 GB of internal storage, microSD and dual-SIM support, a 13 MP rear camera and a 5 MP front-camera. It also has a 3,000 mAh battery, just like the Lenovo K3 Note. Unfortunately, it only comes with Android 4.4 out of the box, which is a step back from the K3 Note's Android 5.0.
Along with the Honor 4X, Huawei launched a higher-end model today, called the Honor 6 Plus, which also has a 5.5" 1080p screen, dual 8 MP rear cameras, an 8 MP front-camera for selfies, an octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 925 SoC based on a big.Little CPU with four Cortex-A7 cores and four Cortex-A15 cores, and a Mali-T628MP6 GPU. Other specs include 3 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage, microSD support, and a 3,600 mAh battery. The device also runs Android 4.4 KitKat, with the Emotion UI 3.0 on top of it. This device is more expensive, selling for NR 26,499 (about $425 USD).
Both of Huawei's phones are available today for pre-order on the hihonor.in site, and the company will start shipping them in April. So far, the devices have only been announced for India.
Neither Lenovo nor Huawei seem to stray too far from home, as they usually prefer to sell in Asian markets or emerging markets where budget phones are more valued by most customers. Their brands are also not as well recognized as strong brands in western countries, which is also one of the reasons why Lenovo has bought Motorola.
Motorola is a well-recognized brand in the U.S., and it provides the company an opening into that market. So far, Motorola's lower-end phones have done relatively well there, but Lenovo still has to work on making Motorola phones more competitive at the high-end.
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