Lenovo A820: the €103 phone taking on the mid-range

Lenovo A820: four cores for €103, no flash

A Chinese-brand handset with a quad-core processor, 1 GB of RAM and dual SIM for just over a hundred euros. It sounds like forum fantasy, but it was pitched as the ultimate ultra-budget phone: the Lenovo A820, an Android 4.1 device with an MTK6589 CPU at 1.2 GHz and a 4.5-inch IPS display that could be ordered from Asian sellers for around €103, shipping included, compared with the €180 it cost on Amazon through a third party.

The idea was simple: give up the front camera, the flash and the notification LED in exchange for a price that put the European mid-range to shame. The PowerVR SGX 544MP1 GPU, from the same family as the Galaxy S4's but with a single core instead of three, and a 960 x 540 resolution completed a spec sheet that sparked as much enthusiasm as suspicion.

What the Lenovo A820 includes for €103

The list of specs justified the interest: 1 GB of RAM, 4 GB of ROM, an 8-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and an F2.0 aperture, GPS, WiFi, an FM radio that worked without headphones and a 2000 mAh battery. All in 145 grams and less than ten millimetres thick. Dual SIM, with W+G and G+G combinations, was an extra that in the Spanish market came at a premium.

The drawbacks were clear from the start. No flash meant night photos were out of the question. No notification LED meant relying on third-party apps to make up for it. And the language: English and Chinese out of the box, though some sellers shipped it in Spanish.

GPS and ROMs: where the savings take their toll

The user experience wasn't as smooth as the spec sheet suggested. A buyer who had it for a month noted that the phone ran fluidly with good signal, but that some GPS tracking apps, such as Endomondo, didn't measure properly. The problem, he pointed out, was common to all devices with that processor, and he hoped developers would fix it in later versions. Runtastic and Sygic worked fine.

The other side of the savings was dependence on the community. The phone had plenty of people behind it on technical forums keeping ROMs updated and troubleshooting issues. Anyone unwilling to tinker with their phone was better off looking elsewhere. The warranty, moreover, meant dealing with Asian sellers or paying Amazon's €180.

Customs, delivery times and the risk of cheap shipping

According to one user, standard airmail shipping, via China Post or Singapur Post, took about twenty days and rarely went through customs. Express shipments, on the other hand, tended to get intercepted. The advice was clear: choose slow shipping and wait a month.

Some took the safe route and paid more on Amazon after seeing problems with Chinese stores. Others dismissed the product outright: a device with 256 MB of RAM and a weak processor, they argued, couldn't compare with the Chinese quad-cores that were starting to arrive for €80 or €90. The price-to-performance range was shifting fast.

The €99 alternative with a Spanish warranty

Against the imported Lenovo came the Huawei Ascend Y300, at €99 on Yoigo prepaid, with Gorilla Glass 2, a dual core at 1 GHz, a 5-megapixel camera with flash and a bootloader unlockable by the manufacturer itself. It could be unlocked for €3.5. The comparison was inevitable: less processor, but a warranty in Spain and no customs surprises.

The debate drifted towards other models: the Lenovo A830 with front camera and flash for €150, the Wiko Cink Five with a 5-inch screen at €199, or even a BlackBerry Z10 for €140 obtained through an acquaintance. Each option moved the boundary between price, risk and antiestéticatures.

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The question hanging in the air was the usual one: how much of those savings get paid back in time, tinkering and uncertainty. The full calculation, with real delivery times, customs and hours of setup, was never quite settled.