Chinese multinational PC and smartphone giant Lenovo has just launched its mid-range phablet, the K3 Note in India for a price of Rs. 9,999 ($160). The smartphone will be sold exclusively on Flipkart, as are most of Lenovo’s latest releases in India, like the wildly successful A6000, A6000+ and A7000. The K3 Note will also follow the ‘flash sales’ model, just like Lenovo’s aforementioned phones, and registrations for the first round of sales will open at 2 PM Indian Standard Time on Thursday. The smartphone is being offered in three colors by Lenovo – White, Black and Yellow. The company meanwhile, already has a mid-range phablet in the market – the A7000 – which is currently priced at Rs. 8,999 ($145) and comes with slightly lower hardware specs than the device which has just been launched.
Coming to the hardware specifications of the K3 Note, the smartphone features a 5.5-inch Full HD 1080p display with a 178-degree viewing angle and 400 nits brightness. The device is powered by MediaTek’s MT6752 SoC with an octa-core CPU clocked at a maximum of 1.7 GHz, and a Mali-T760 GPU. The device comes with 2 GB RAM and 16 GB internal storage, which is expandable by up to 32 GB via a microSD card. The device carries a 13 megapixel primary camera on the rear with a dual-tone LED flash and a 5 megapixel selfie-cam on the front. Connectivity options on the phone include 4G LTE, 3G HSPA+, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS. The device packs a 3000 mAh battery and comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box, with Lenovo’s proprietary Vibe UI laid on top.
The mid-range market in India has been heating up ever since the entry of Xiaomi, OnePlus and ASUS last year. While multinational giants like Samsung, Sony, LG and HTC continue to largely ignore the mid-range, Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, OnePlus, Lenovo, and Taiwanese ones like ASUS are stepping in to fill an important gap, which represents an ever-growing segment in the country’s burgeoning smartphone market. It remains to be seen how well this latest entrant does in the market, but if Lenovo’s recent success is anything to go by, the brand recognition and goodwill Lenovo enjoys through years of selling quality laptops and desktops, might just help the K3 Note continue the legacy of the A6000+ and A7000.