Mobile World Congress is right around the corner, and if Lenovo India’s recent tweet means anything, it’s that the company has a metal-clad smartphone up its sleeve.
According to the tweet, Lenovo promises a “gorgeous new device” that will “deliver the knockout punch.” From the looks of the tweet, the smartphone in question is most likely the Lemon 3, a smartphone that Lenovo launched in China in January. As such, Lenovo’s announcement during MWC could be a global variant of the Lemon 3.
A gorgeous new device has been engineered from scratch to deliver the #Knockout punch. Brace yourselves. pic.twitter.com/PKwuxkaJEg
— Lenovo India (@Lenovo_in) February 12, 2016
If our assumption is correct, the “knockout” that Lenovo refers to could be the price tag, since the Lemon 3 currently retails for around $100, putting the smartphone in direct competition with the current smartphone juggernaut in China: Xiaomi. Specifically (and at least in the Chinese market), the Lemon 3 is meant to go toe-to-toe with the Xiaomi Redmi 3, which goes for around the same price and also launched in China in January.
For $100, you actually get rather impressive hardware from the Lemon 3, which packs a 5-inch, 1,920 x 1,080 resolution display, a 13-megapixel camera on the back, a 5-megapixel camera on the front, and dual rear-facing stereo speakers. Taking a peek under the hood reveals an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 chipset, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage, which is expandable through the MicroSD card slot. Finally, the 2,750mAh battery promises a full day of use and then some.
To clarify, the Lemon 3 is not the innovative, attractive smartphone Lenovo chief executive Yuanqing Yang boasted about last month. That handset, which will be released this July, will be the first Motorola smartphone to retire the Motorola branding in favor of Moto by Lenovo.