We go hands-on with the Lenovo S90!

Today, Lenovo launched their premium, mid-end smartphone, the S90, in the Philippines. The S90 has a lot of things going for it – aluminum design, 64-bit processor, LTE – but possesses a
design that bears more than a passing resemblance to Apple’s own iPhone 6. Today we’re going to take a closer look at it and compare it to Cupertino’s offering and see if it’s really an all-
original smartphone that deserves your money or simply a phone that’s taken its inspiration a little bit too far.

Lenovo S90 specs

• 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snadragon 410 quad-core processor
• Adreno 306 GPU
• 2GB of RAM
• 5-inch HD Super AMOLED display, 1280 x 720 resolution
• 32GB of storage
• 13-megapixel rear camera
• 8-megapixel front camera
• 3G, LTE
• WiFi, Dual-SIM, GPS, A-GPS, NFC
• Android 4.4 KitKat
• 2,300mAh battery

 Initial impressions: Separated at birth from the iPhone 6?

We’re not going to sugar-coat this at all: the S90 looks a lot like the iPhone 6. When it was initially launched in China last year, even the promotional material that accompanied it on Lenovo’s own website was patterned after Apple’s own site.

Which is a shame, because the phone, as blatantly iPhone-ish as it is, actually looks great. While we can argue about inspiration all day long, it doesn’t take away from the fact that the phone is built rather well. It’s not a cheap clone – the aluminum body looks great in person, and overall construction quality is top notch. You can take liberal inspirations with design, but making it look and feel good is a another matter entirely.

There are some key differences to both the S90 though. The button placement is different, with all the physical buttons shifted on the right side of the phone, with the SIM tray residing on the left side. The camera sits flush against the aluminum body instead of sticking out a few mm. There’s a flash that accompanies the front facing camera as well, for better selfies.

The 5-inch, HD display uses a Super AMOLED panel, which is particularly nice to look at. Super AMOLED panels have great picture quality and color reproduction, though some say they suffer a bit from over-saturated colors. Super AMOLED panels also consume less energy, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Snapdragon 410 processor (which isn’t a power hungry processor to begin with) fares along with the 2,300mAh battery

Speaking of processor, the S90 runs Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410 processor along with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. There’s a number of connectivity options, as well as LTE. The hardware of the S90 puts it squarely in the mid-range territory, and Lenovo is marketing the phone as a device for people who put a premium on style.

The S90 is now available in stores.