Hands on with the Lenovo A7000
Lenovo’s latest mid-range smartphone is the first to pack Dolby Atmos sound. My phone is barely a phone at all – the majority of the time that I’m using it, I’m listening to music, watching videos or reading comics. The Lenovo A7000 is a phone that could very well be ideal for anyone like me.
The A7000 is powered by a 1.5GHz octa-core MediaTek processor and has a large 5.5-inch 720p IPS capacitive display with good viewing angles. Video box ticked. The Android 5.0 Lollipop UI also looked crisp on it. Reading box ticked. If you play games on your phone, the A7000’s 2GB of RAM should be able to handle most mobile games too.
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The A7000 has an 8-megapixel main camera with LED flash and a 2-megapixel camera on the front. It only has 8GB of built-in memory, but it can be expanded up to 32GB using the microSD slot.
So what about that headlining audio feature? Dolby Atmos is the company's latest big surround sound tech. Forget boring old stereo, hearing things panning from left to right, or even sounds popping up behind you – that’s child’s play. Listening through the A7000, Dolby Atmos lets you hear the direction and height of noises.
The demo video I watched on the device showed a rainforest and it was immense. Listening to the audio, I could hear the birds behind me and it was as if the rain falling on the canopy was directly above my head.
Early Verdict
I was initially skeptical of the surround sonics, but the result is genuinely impressive. Considering this is the first phone to feature Dolby Atmos sound, the A7000 is coming to market with one very strong feature to help it stand out from the mid-range crowd.
The Lenovo A7000 is available from March 2015, priced at $169 USD.
