The Lenovo K9 is one of those phones which look more expensive than they are. Sporting a glass sandwich design, the device is also very slim, with a waistline measuring 8mm. The downside of using glass on the back panel is that it’s a magnet for smudges and fingerprints, not to mention being very slippery. Lenovo has thoughtfully included a TPU case in the box, which ruins the aesthetics of the device, but gets the job done. A feature I appreciated on the K9 was the use of a USB Type-C port – a rarity on budget smartphones, especially at this price. The SIM card tray offers a hybrid-SIM setup, and accepts a pair of nano-SIMs. The fingerprint sensor is located on the back panel, but Lenovo may as well have placed it on the front, given the huge bezels that surround the display.
The Lenovo K9 features identical dual cameras on the front and rear. You get a 13MP primary sensor coupled with a 5MP depth sensor. Both the cameras are accompanied by LED flash. Thanks to the depth sensor, you get a bokeh mode on both the front and rear shooters. Images shot in daylight are crisp with natural colours, and the cameras do a decent job of detecting edges in portrait mode.
Selfies turn out detailed in ample lighting, but I found the bokeh slider struggles a bit more with the front cameras as compared to the rear. Unfortunately, what lets down the cameras is not the image quality itself, but the camera app. It’s very slow – there’s noticeable lag when the viewfinder is open, and there’s a short delay after you press the shutter button as well. Opening up the camera after previous usage often showed me the last image on the viewfinder, with the phone taking a couple of seconds to reset the scene.
The Lenovo K9 runs Android 8.1 Oreo in a mostly stock avatar. You do get a bunch of games pre-loaded, as well as UC Browser, but these can be uninstalled. In the settings, you can enable gestures like double tap to wake, and drawing various letters to open different apps. There’s also a three-finger swipe to take a screenshot. Lenovo also seems to have made some other modifications to the software, including for some reason leaving just a single wallpaper on the device.
The Lenovo K9 is powered by a MediaTek Helio P22 processor, paired with 3GB of RAM. There’s 32GB of storage available, out of which around 24GB is available out of the box. In my day-to-day usage, I found the performance to be less than satisfactory.
The battery on the Lenovo K9 is a 3, 000mAh unit. I managed about 4-5 hours of screen time on the device, which was sufficient to last me through the entire day. In our video loop battery drain test, the K9 lasted 11 hours and 4 minutes. Recharging it completely using the supplied charger took a little over 2 hours.
Pros:-
Premium design really good
Decent cameras ok
USB Type-C port
Cons:-
Performance is sub-par
Camera app is slow
No dedicated microSD card slot
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