To be honest, we are not surprised at all by the announcement that the company is launching the new product in the US before its home market. LeEco may change this in the future after receiving feedback from US customers, but for now, in the initial phase, the company will only launch its tested devices.
If you’re in India or any other country where the Le Max 2 (Review) is available, the Le Pro 3 will look like a very familiar smartphone. In a way, it’s pretty much the same as the Le Max 2 except for a few changes. The phone has been made more stylish and gets rounded edges on the front and back. The aluminium case has a slight texture to improve grip and the round home button has been replaced with a ‘Le’ logo.
The buttons are well placed and are easy to operate. The special thing is that it is very easy to use the phone with one hand. Like other phones launched recently by Leico, Le Pro 3 also does not have a 3.5mm headphone jack. Instead, you will get a USB Type-C adapter in the box, which will allow you to use regular earphones. This phone comes with the company’s CDLA standard support and the company will also provide CDLA earphones in the box.
The phone with a 5.5-inch display was quite impressive in our brief interaction. The screen resolution is full HD which minimizes blurring of images and text. The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 821 processor which is one of the best processors available in the market right now. The Le Pro 3 also has stereo speakers but they are placed at the bottom and hence do not give a true stereo effect. The phone is available in a single variant of 4GB RAM and 64GB storage.
Le Pro 3 has EUI 5.8 skin which is based on Android Marshmallow. The toggle switch provided in India has been introduced in America with a different design. Apart from this, all other functions are the same. There are also streaming services like Le View and Live through which users will be able to get a list of live TV channels and videos from the web. The performance of this phone with a powerful processor was excellent. This device has a 16 megapixel rear and 8 megapixel front camera.
It was difficult to judge the quality of the photos at the launch event as everything looked good on the high-resolution display. The camera also has features like panorama, 4K video recording and slow-motion.
LeEco will start selling its flagship phone in the US from November 2 and it will be available exclusively at the company’s LeMall store for $399 (about Rs 26,700). Under the UP2U rebate program, its price comes down to $299 but it is still more expensive than the Le Max 2 smartphone. As far as the availability of this phone in India is concerned, the company has not yet given any information about it.
The Le Pro 3 is a very impressive Android smartphone at this price point. All things considered, LeEco is initially trying to attract US consumers to its content services. Phones are just a small part of the company’s many ambitious projects. We will soon find out how much Americans appreciate an unknown company in a competitive and crowded market.