A Look at LeEco LePro 3 Phone

One of the biggest industries in the world is telecommunications. The sale of cellphones has been growing by leaps and bounds. Or maybe, it just seems that way because there are a lot of new brands on the market. One of the smaller manufacturers is LeEco. They recently released their LePro3. This is a quick look at the mid-priced LePro3.

Retailing at $400 the LePro3 seems promising with all that it offers, and it is set to touch ground in US stores soon. It has impressive tech specifications like a 5.5-inch 1080p display with a Snapdragon 821 processor which makes is super fast. There are only a few phones currently available with this chipset which makes the LePro3 one of the fastest phones available.

Powered by Snapdragon 821

Performance-wise, it edged out its competitors on common tasks like quitting apps, launching the camera, using the keyboard, and others. There were no noticeable problems and there were no lags, crashing, or stuttering. The phone is covered all over with aluminum and it has a fingerprint scanner at the back of locking the phone, making payments and logging on to applications. The phone is powered by a 4400 mAh battery that lasts up to 16hrs which are quite impressive. You may need the long battery life because it makes for good company to its video capabilities. With that long battery life, you can binge watch for a very long time.

No Audio Jack

The LePro3 may be impressive on its own. However, to truly make its mark in the US market, it has to be able to compete with similar phones in its league. It is well made, built solid with a unibody construction and a brush metal finish. It does not look cheap and it sure does weigh significantly. Also noticeable on the exterior of the phone is the absence of the audio jack following suit with Apple iPhone 7 and Motorola Moto Z. This leaves you with less options when listening to music. You can either use a dongle for the USB-C port available or a Bluetooth headset.

Camera Issues

For an up and coming phone like LePro3, it does not provide anything that makes it stand out among those in the $400 price point like the OnePlus 3 and Motorola Moto Z Play. Its onboard camera is very functional for your casual photo needs. It provides good steady shots, and allows for 4K recording, slow motion, and burst mode. In a well-lit environment, it captures crisp images with accurate color.

What is a letdown with the camera is the low-light shots come out blurry and much grainier than its competition? It also struggles to capture subjects in motion. The 16-megapixel camera does well with outdoor shots but both back and front camera becomes overly aggressive with noise reduction. If your hands are not as steady, you will experience more blurred photos.

In cameras, image noise is usually the result of low-light ISO settings. For digital sensors, if the light is too low, the image grains become noticeable. These are artifacts which appear due to lack of adequate light.

Android Marshmallow and the EUI

The LePro3 is a fairly decent phone within the price range and it does seem to be on par with everything else. The phone runs on an Android Marshmallow. Like the other Android phone makers, it has its own user interface, the Ecosystem User Interface. The phone aspires to be a lot of things but the EUI still has a lot to work on. Navigating with Android at times can be messy, but navigating around the EUI is plain maddening. It is a complete paradigm shift when it comes to interacting with your phone and a lot of unlearning has to be done before you can smoothly go through the features.

The user interface is seldom a deal breaker when choosing a phone. However, if the user is not comfortable with the UI, it becomes an annoyance. There are some Android UI which does not allow hiding icons. Other UIs make it hard to save multiple icons in a folder on the desktop. There are even some UIs where it is hard to get to the clock settings. Individual UIs are proprietary products of each manufacturer. It is a stamp on the design of the product. A carefully planned UI should allow for quick access to the most popular or the most used icons.

Summary

The phone has the promise of becoming an amazing device with all that it is packed with and the price makes it a very tempting buy, but there are some draw backs that need to be addressed first if LeEco plans to make it big in the US market. The user interface is bordering on annoying with pushy requests for information and permission on apps that they have no business in. It can become creepy and suspicious after a while. LeEco may be on to something with their ecosystem, but it is safe to say that they jumped the gun pretty early.

It is acknowledged in the cellphone industry that a lot of the manufacturers lose money. There was even a time that some of the new releases were racing to the bottom of the price range. They were hoping to sell more if they were cheap enough. However, being cheap also means that the company might be losing money with every sale. The price point is a constant compromise and balancing act. Usually, the balance is not reached, as evidenced by the many cell phone companies which do not make any money.