A few days ago we saw Gionee produce a tiny 5.5mm smartphone with a fairly large 2300 mAh battery. The responses were fairly clear: "we don"t want a thinner smartphone, we want a smartphone with a bigger battery," and it seems like Lenovo heard you loud and clear.
Announced at the Mobile World Congress, the Lenovo S860 carries a giant 4000 mAh battery that promises 24 hours of talk time on 3G, or 43 hours of talk time on 2G. For comparison, the Apple iPhone 5S battery is only 1440 mAh, and the Samsung Galaxy S4 battery is 2600 mAh, making the S860 battery 177% larger than the iPhone 5S battery, and 54% larger than the Galaxy S4 battery.
The Android 4.2.2 smartphone carries some pretty decent specs too, including a 5.3 inch 720p IPS display, 1.3ghz quad-core Mediatek MT6582 processor, 16GB of storage, and 2GB of RAM. Although it has an 8 MP rear camera, unfortunately it only has a 1.6 MP front camera. Although the phone lacks 4G LTE connectivity, it is a dual-sim phone-- this means that you are able to have two separate SIM cards in the phone at once.
The most impressive aspect of the phone, besides the battery, might be the brushed metal battery cover.
..but don"t get too excited. This all comes at a cost. Remember, the deal was that you would be willing to give up the thinness of the Gionee in exchange for a bigger battery, right? Well the Lenovo S860 is a whopping 10.3mm thick, and weighs in at a massive 190g (0.42lbs).
If that has you disappointed, well, the price might cheer you up: the Lenovo S860 will be available for purchase in June for only $350. This is almost half of what the Motorola Droid Maxx, another phone with a focus on battery life, was originally priced at.
But, before you get too excited again, the phone will only be available in Asia, Eastern Europe, and select countries in the Middle East and Africa-- Lenovo doesn"t sell phones in the US or Western Europe. So if you"re interested, you might have to import it from another country, unfortunately.
Source: CNET | Images via CNET