Lenovo Announces New PHAB and PHAB PLUS Phablets

Today Lenovo has made a number of announcements relating to their mobile device business. We’ve seen two new low end tablets, and a very strange but also very interesting high end Android tablet using an Intel Airmont SoC. While their tablets fill in the spaces for very large screens, the new Lenovo PHAB and Lenovo PHAB PLUS are positioned to sell to buyers looking for something larger than 6″ but not quite at the size of the 8, 9, and 10″ tablets on the market. Below you can view all the known specifications for Lenovo’s new PHAB phablets.

Both the Lenovo PHAB and the Lenovo PHAB PLUS are quite large devices. I was under the impression that once you got to 7″ you started calling your device a tablet, but with the PHAB including cellular capabilities it looks like Lenovo has decided to brand it as a phablet despite its size. It’s also interesting to note that unlike Apple and Samsung’s naming scheme, the “plus” in PHAB PLUS doesn’t mean that the display is bigger; in fact it is actually slightly smaller.

The Lenovo PHAB is obviously the low end model out of these two devices. Its 7″ display has a resolution of only 1280×720, which is quite low for a 7″ device, although there’s not much more than one can expect at $179. Lenovo doesn’t specify exactly what the SoC is, but from it being a 64bit Snapdragon quad core in a low-end device with 1GB of RAM it’s pretty safe to assume that it’s the 1.2GHz implementation of Snapdragon 410, which has four Cortex A53 cores.

As for the designs of these two phablets, the normal Lenovo PHAB has a polycarbonate shell which comes in black, white, red, and blue. Unfortunately I wasn’t provided with images of it. As for the PHAB Plus, it has a metal unibody and comes in either platinum (silver) or gunmetal (grey) finishes.

Like the tablets that Lenovo has also launched today, there’s no exact date for when the Lenovo PHAB and PHAB PLUS will be made available. Lenovo states that they will be available during this year’s winter holiday season, with the PHAB priced at $179 and the PHAB PLUS priced at $299.

Lenovo Launches Three New VIBE Smartphones

Lenovo has been making quite a number of announcements at IFA this year. We’ve seen a unique high end Android tablet, low end Android tablets, and really big phablets. Their last announcement relating to mobile is the launch of 3 new smartphones under the Lenovo VIBE brand. You can check out the specs for Lenovo’s new smartphones in the chart below.

It’s difficult to figure out where some of these smartphones fit in the grand scheme of things. The Vibe P1 looks like Lenovo’s phone for those interested in a large but not 6.8″ PHAB large smartphone, while the VIBE S1 is a mid/high device and the P1m is the more low end device of the three. Both the P1 and P1m are characterized by very large batteries, while  the Vibe S1 has a more typical 2500mAh battery.

The internal hardware of the three VIBE smartphones varies greatly. The VIBE S1 and P1m use MediaTek SoCs, while the P1 opts for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 615. The P1 also sports 802.11ac WiFi, while the other two devices are limited to 802.11n. All of them have support for dual SIMs, which is something of a necessity for phones aimed at markets in Asia.

It’s not likely that these smartphones will make their way to North American markets, but it’s always interesting to see what kind of devices get sold in different markets. Like all of Lenovo’s launches today, the VIBE S1, P1, and P1m will be going on sale this holiday season.