Lenovo created quite a hype when they teased the renders of their upcoming Z5 smartphone. The device caught the eye of the public because its renders showed an all-screen setup. Sadly, that was false hope as the phone was revealed to have a notch. The Lenovo Z5 is still not a shabby looking device. It has an almost bezel-less display and a colorful yet very shiny back panel at an affordable price. You can but it here in the Philippines through Lazada via Cash On Delivery.

Display and Design
Lenovo Z5 uses a 6.2 inch Full HD Plus LCD Display with the notch. It comes with a DCI-P3 wide color gamut and is known as the ‘Full-Color Screen. The somewhat unfamiliar resolution of 1080 x 2246 comes about through 18:7:9 aspect ratio. The display is a bit wider or longer than a normal 16:9 Full HD Display. The display is bright, with a good contrast and a very strong black point for a smartphone of this class. Lenovo uses rather softer colors and seems to have adopted the display for that. Photos and pictures are pleasantly strong.
The front and back panels of the Lenovo Z5 adopt the Corning Gorilla Glass material. It is smooth and bright, reflecting the shadow of buildings and flowers. The middle metal frame comes with a curved transition. Actually, the phone comes with a small body, which is easy to hold in hands.

Performance
The Lenovo Z5 is equipped with a Snapdragon 636 chip, which has appeared on various models such as the Meizu E3 and Xiaomi Redmi Note 5. This SoC is known as the youth version of the much-popular Snapdragon 660. The only difference is the clock speed. The SND660’s highest frequency is 2.2GHz, while this parameter for the SND636 is 1.8GHz. The other parameters of these two chips are roughly the same.
The Snapdragon 636 chip uses a 14nm process node, a Kryo 260 CPU, and an Adreno 509 GPU. In addition, there are 14 digital components such as Qualcomm Spectra 160 ISP, Hexagon 680 DSP, and X12 LTE baseband.
What’s more important, the Snapdragon 636 comes with the same Kryo 260 core architecture as the Snapdragon 660, and its CPU core architecture is leading the 62X and other 63X series. There are four cores clocked at 1.8GHz and four other cores running at 1.6GHz. That’s why the CPU performance is about 40% higher than the Snapdragon 630.
The graphics have been improved as well. In the Snapdragon 636, it was using an Adreno 508 GPU. Now it uses an Adreno 509 GPU. The performance was improved by 10%.
Camera
The Lenovo Z5 is packed with a 16MP + 8MP rear dual-camera supporting AI. The main camera uses OV16885 with a f/2.0 aperture, 16MP resolution, 1/3.06” sensor size, and 1um pixel size, while the sub-camera is Hi-Hoc, with 1/4 inch sensor size, 1.12um pixel size. It is responsible for portraits and not involved in imaging. In the front, the phone carries an OV8856, with an 8MP resolution, ¼” sensor size, and 1.12um pixel size.
Thanks to the morhpo and rainbow soft algorithm, the Lenovo Z5 can restore even the backlit part of the shade, without losing details. This is somewhat unexpected.
Battery
To test the 3300mAh battery of the Lenovo Z5, we used PCMark. The brightness was set at 100%, while the volume was at 80%. According to the benchmark, it showed about 6 hours. Of course, it doesn’t mean the requirements for the 1-day use.
At the same time, the Lenovo Z5 was tested for video playback. The brightness was at 53%, while the volume at 20%. After one hour of test, the power dropped from 96% to 86%. Thus, in 60 minutes, the phone consumes 10% when playing videos. In other words, it can provide up to 10 hours of video playback.
For the game testing, we used PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. When the test started, the remaining power was 79%. After half an hour, it reduced to 70%. Thus, the battery consumes 9% in 30 minutes. You can play games for 6 hours.
Full Specifications:
- Android 8.0 Oreo, ZUI 4.0
- Dual nano SIM, Dual Standby
- 6.2-inch FHD+ IPS display, 2280 x 1080 resolution, ~401ppi
- 19:9 aspect ratio, Corning Gorilla Glass
- 1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 octa-core processor
- Adreno 509 GPU
- 6GB RAM
- 64GB / 128GB internal storage
- 8-megapixel front camera
- 16-megapixel + 8-megapixel dual rear cameras, PDAF, LED flash
- Fingerprint scanner
- HSPA+, 4G LTE
- WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band
- Bluetooth 5.0
- GPS, A-GPS
- USB Type-C
- 3,300mAh non-removable battery















