I am not one for fancy phones but it was hard to deny that my 2012 Sony Xperia Acro S (first water- and dustproof smartphone in the market) which was also briefly Sony's flagship phone, had by 2018 just become... well, old and outdated. Obsolete. It didn't help that I also dropped that phone about 4219 times within that time.
I'm just surprised that phone actually lasted so long and served me well.
I hated the idea of buying a brand new iPhone or investing too much money into a phone that I am very likely to lose quite soon. I did a bit of research and took advantage of 2017's Christmas sales and got my hands on...
...LeEco Le S3 X626 the 89$ Chinese phone
This 89$ costing piece of absolutely unknown art came with the following specs:
- 5.5 inch Full HD Screen, 1080P, 1920 x 1080 pixels
- Deca Core 2.3 GHz CPU Helio X20
- 21mp rear camera, 8mp front camera
- Fingerprint scanner and much more
So, it sounded good.
Going into the deal I had very low expectations as LeEco was actually already gone bankrupt prior this sale. Never a good sign.
Also, everybody has heard myths how non-durable Chinese phones are (which is ironic considering all your high end flagship phones come from China anyway) and how cheap this phone was made me set very, very low expectations.
So how was it?
I was shocked. Once I received the package and booted up my phone it instantly froze and required a reboot. That can't be good.
Funnily enough, this was the only time in the following 6 month time frame the phone froze or rebooted by itself. The phone's specs are legit. These are specs of a 500$ phone and the whole phone feels and looks very, very solid. It's a good looking phone with very sturdy design.
Pros
- Good design (not very original tho)
- Very fast
- Can handle all games
- Doesn't explode
- Fingerprint scanner is very comfortable and accurate (couldn't even imagine manually unlocking phone screens anymore)
Criticism
- Android 6.0 and no support as the company went bankrupt
- The camera, despite being 21mp, could be better. But it's not bad.
Main takeaway
Remove branding and marketing fees and you can actually get an insanely good phone for a very cheap price.
This phone has a 4.89/5 rating based on 1470 customer reviews and for a good reason. I also rate it 5/5 and I still use it on every-day basis. Do I expect it to last 6 years like my last phone? Well, no. But within 6 month's it's already made it worth it's price and I'm happy for any additional day it lasts but I have no plans whatsoever in replacing this phone.
Image source: bankrupted LETV images off ebay.com