At the Mobile World Congress, Lenovo has announced a pair of new phones. The first, the Vibe Shot, is a slim phone that has pretensions to be a camera; the second is the A7000, apparently the world's first smartphone to come with Dolby Atmos.
The Lenovo Vibe Shot, pictured above, looks rather more like a point-and-shoot than a phone. Just 7.3 millimeters thick and with an aluminium frame, Gorilla Glass covers the phone front and back. The front is graced with a 5-inch full HD display, while the back boasts, according to Engadget, "a 16-megapixel camera with a six-piece modular lens, a low-light back-illuminated sensor, a tricolor flash, optical image stabilization and a "photo luminosity" feature that adjusts the image's overall clarity and color based on surrounding light."
Phew. There's also an infrared focus (apparently allowing faster tap-to-focus), a physical shutter button, volume rocker doing double duty as a zoom control, and choice of Pro or Smart modes—where Smart is automatic and Pro gives you some control over settings like ISO and white balance. Elsewhere on the phone, there's an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 32GB of storage plus (with microSD slot for up to 128GB cards), WiFi, LTE and dual SIM capabilities, and a Android 5.0 Lollipop install.
The other phone, the A7000, which Lenovo claims to be the world's first smartphone to come with Dolby Atmos. It's already featured in tablets, of course, and you'd need headphones to get the most of it—but it's nice to see the feature appearing in smartphones too. The phone itself features a 5.5-inch 720p display, MediaTek True8Core processor with LTE, dual SIM card slot and Android 5.0 Lollipop.
The Vibe Shot will be available in white, red or grey options for $350 in June; the A7000 will be available in black or white for $170 from next month. However, given Lenovo's track record, it's not clear either will be easily available in the U.S.. [Engadget]