Skip to main content

LeEco wants to woo Americans with the affordable, feature-packed Le S3

LeEco, the Chinese electronics behemoth formerly known as Letv, is making a gigantic push into the U.S. market. On Wednesday, it announced a bevy of products including TVs, a virtual reality headset, and more, but two of its biggest reveals were smartphones. One is the high-end Le Pro 3, the company’s new top-of-the-line handset. The other was the decidedly lower-end Le S3, the more affordable of the two options.

The Le S3 appears cut from the same cloth as the company’s Le 2, which launched in China earlier this year. It features a similar “ultra light” metal body and a 5.5-inch Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) display shielded by Gorilla Glass. Under the hood, though, is a different story. While the Le 2 packs a 10-core Mediatek processor, the Le S3 sports Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 652 processor and 3GB RAM.

The Le S3 also boasts a bevy of other differentiating features, too, including a 16-megapixel rear camera that’s capable of capturing 4K and slow-motion video. Rounding out that hardware is an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, a fingerprint sensor, a 3,000mAh battery, and a loudspeaker with Dolby audio optimizations. The Le S3 has 32GB of internal storage, which LeEco said is enough to store 40 minutes of 4K video or 8,000 of your favorite songs.

LeEco S3

Hardware’s only half the battle, though, and LeEco wasted no time highlighting the little tweaks and touches it’s added to the Android 6.0 Marshmallow experience.

One of the highlights is Float, a feature that automatically shrinks playing videos to a little window when interruptions like text messages, social media updates, or phone calls come in. There’s Le, LeEco’s hub of original television and movie content, and LeView, a video discovery app that surfaces new content based on your viewing habits and history. Finally, there’s Live, an app that showcases live-streams in a three-by-three mosaic.

The Le S3 ships with benefits afforded by LeEco’s EcoPass subscription service, too. You get unlimited video and photo uploads and 5TB of general purpose cloud storage, plus unlimited access to FanDor movies. And LeEco’s throwing in an extended two-year warranty.

The Le S3 is available in rose gold, gold, and gray, and goes on sale later this year. It will cost $250 through LeEco’s new online retail portal, LeMall.

Editors' Recommendations

Kyle Wiggers
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kyle Wiggers is a writer, Web designer, and podcaster with an acute interest in all things tech. When not reviewing gadgets…
LeEco is reportedly planning massive layoffs to its U.S. workforce
LeEco Vizio announcement

It looks like LeEco's big bet on expansion into the U.S. may not have paid off in quite the manner the company expected. The Chinese firm is reportedly prepping for a massive round of layoffs on Tuesday, May 23, according to a report from CNBC.

The report notes that only 60 percent of the company's U.S. workforce will be left after the round of cuts. According to CNBC's source, its current U.S. workforce sits in at over 500 employees. The report also cites an email calling employees to a "Town Hall" meeting that is supposed to occur at its locations in San Diego, San Jose, and Santa Monica, all in California, and that all employees are being told to attend unless they have pre-approved time off.

Read more
LeEco’s $2 billion acquisition of Vizio has officially been called off
Vizio M-Series 65-inch review

Last year, LeEco -- also known as the "Netflix of China" -- announced it planned to acquire American TV manufacturer Vizio in a $2 billion deal. Since the initial announcement, the deal has run into trouble with Chinese regulators and now the companies announced that "regulatory headwinds" have caused them to cancel the deal.

"Under the new agreement, LeEco and Vizio will continue to explore opportunities to incorporate the Le app and content within the Vizio connected CE platform, and engage in a collaborative partnership to leverage LeEco’s EUI (Ecosystem User Interface) platform, along with the brand’s exclusive content and distribution channels, to bring Vizio products to the China market," the two companies announced on Monday.

Read more
Samsung’s ‘Value Pack’ update brings goodies to Gear S3 smartwatch users
Samsung Gear S3 Frontier review

Samsung has unveiled a "Comprehensive Value Pack" update to its Gear S3 and S2 smartwatches that introduces a host of interface enhancements and tweaks to Samsung Health, Reminders, and various other apps and functions. Users can download the update now through the Samsung Gear app, though most of the additions are limited to the Gear S3.

Health seems to be the primary focus of this release, as Samsung has revised the user experience on Gear S3 with new, colorful line and bar graphs for heart rate monitoring, a stretching guide, and the ability to auto-locate and record paths on a map while running. You can also now sync pace-setting targets with the Samsung Health app on your phone.

Read more