Several renders of a LeEco-made device said to be called the Le X surfaced online on Thursday, having originally emerged on China’s social media platform Weibo. The images that can be seen below suggest that the struggling tech giant is looking to get back into the smartphone market after almost a year of absence, with its last commercialized device being the Le Pro 3 AI Edition released last April. While a number of previous leaks suggested the company has still been developing handsets over the last year, no new mobile announcements have yet been issued from its Beijing headquarters.
The overall look of the supposed Le X indicates LeEco has been following the latest industry trends in 2017 and opted to design a smartphone with minimal bezels and an elongated display panel featuring an aspect ratio of 18:9, i.e. 2:1. This particular aesthetic has been popularized by a number of original equipment manufacturers last year, allowing consumers to purchase phablets with a lot of screen real estate that are still slim enough to be used in a single hand. The newly leaked Le X appears to accommodate a dual-camera setup on its top bezel and lacks a physical home key, though it also doesn’t have a fingerprint reader on its back panel. While in-screen fingerprint sensors are expected to become one of the defining characteristics of Android flagships in the immediate future, LeEco isn’t expected to be among their first adopters due to the problematic state of its finances that prompted the company to cut costs and likely wouldn’t allow for expensive licensing or cutting-edge R&D in the near term.
The Le X also boasts a dual-camera setup consisting of two vertically arranged sensors centered near the top of its rear panel, with the system being accompanied by what appears to be a dual-LED (dual-tone) flash unit. The overall design of the handset is indicative of a product meant to compete in the upper mid-range segment of the market, though it remains to be seen whether LeEco truly has such a handset in the works. The company restarted some of its consumer electronics projects late last year by launching ten new TVs in China and is expected to follow up on that move in the coming months if it manages to settle its crippling debt.
