Lenovo P2 review: Charge & Go

Telephony and loudspeaker

The Lenovo P2 is offered as a dual-SIM device in most markets. It's a nice touch that you can set different ringtones and message tones for each SIM. You can pick the preferred card for calling, texting and data.

The dialer and call log • Contacts • A contact • More options • Call/message blocklist

The dialer is split into several tabs. It supports Yellow pages integration, but it has been moved into the More tab (this feature performs a search for local businesses and is probably best geared for the Chinese/HK market). You have a Call log that can be filtered by received/missed/outgoing calls, but not by SIM card.

You guessed it, the More tab holds a few additional features. There are call and message blocking options (blacklist/whitelist by phone number). You can also enable Automatic call recording (it starts as the call connects), but keep in mind this feature isn't legal in some regions of the world.

The Lenovo P2 managed to score a respectable "Very Good" mark in our loudspeaker test. The audio quality is very good, too, with deep bass, crisp and rich sound no matter the occasion. It's one of the better single-speaker setups we've encountered lately.

Gallery

As already mentioned, Lenovo is no longer relying on custom app solutions for the better part of its multimedia needs. That being said, the default gallery is Google Photos. The latter has really come a long way, not just as an access point to your online albums.

Pinch zoom changes the size of thumbnails, but the search field is pure sci-fi - type in the name of a place, person or just name an object (e.g. 'swimming pool', or 'note', or 'bottle') and it sifts through years of photos in a moment. That is some next level neural network computational power right in your hands and free of charge. Better yet, the more photos you accumulate over time, the smarter Google's search gets. Searching by location and date is also available but that goes without saying.

Google Photos • Amazing search • The assistant

The assistant continues the AI tricks by automatically creating panoramas and slideshows (complete with maps of your travels), it even processes certain photos with more skill than your average Joe - it straightens them, adjusts levels, it may decide to make them black & white and so on.

All of these auto features can be triggered manually, of course. From the editing you can hit Auto to fix the colors and contrast, you can auto-level a photo or just add filters.

Manual editing options

Video player

Interestingly enough, Lenovo has bundled its own video player with the P2. However, it doesn't have a shortcut in the app locker. You have to attempt to open a video to see it suggested in the supported apps list. In terms of functionality, it is really basic, but it does seem to offer better video decoder support than Google Photos.

Basic video player from Google Photos

Despite that, the video player isn't really any better than Google Photos in the features department, so a third-party solution is probably a good idea if you would like to watch a lot of video.

Google Play Music and FM Radio

Play Music works as a generic music player, but it's also a streaming app. Google boasts 50,000 tracks and if you're worried about data usage, you can just make your favorite albums available offline. Still, if you prefer your own music library, then Play Music will assist you in loading tracks from your computer or a USB drive if you happen to have one.

Google Play Music is built around music streaming

The FM radio is a nice touch. Sure, you can stream with Play Music, but FM broadcasting is free and available at places where there might not be data connection. The Radio app can record radio broadcasts, but lacks RDS (the feature that displays the station name and other info).

FM radio app with broadcast recording, without RDS

Audio output is loud and clear

The Lenovo P2 output with an active external amplifier was as clean as you’d expect from a smartphone in 2017. Where the smartphone overdeliver though is loudness - the P2 certainly was one of the louder devices we’ve tested and not just in its price group.

Plugging in a pair of headphones did minor damage to stereo quality but that was about it. The overall output was still excellently clean and with the volume levels maintained it was a strong showing indeed.

Lenovo P2 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.