# I'm going to buy a lenovo lemon



## fractionMan (Oct 5, 2015)

It's £100 4G phablet from a reliable manufacturer.  Hopefully I'll get the version that isn't full of Chinese crapware (there are two rom versions or something).  Seems a bargain!

Review: Lenovo K3 Note review 2GB MT6752 Lenovo K50 review Lemon Note








Wish me luck.

Lenovo K3 Note k50 - t5 Phablet
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00WR1NOEY/ref=ask_ql_qh_dp_hza


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## editor (Oct 6, 2015)

Looks a bit of a bargain for £100 to me!


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## fractionMan (Oct 6, 2015)

Wow, that's a GREAT review. 

94/100


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## Pgd (Oct 8, 2015)

[moved to "recommend me a new(cheapish) mobile phone" thread]


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## fractionMan (Oct 8, 2015)

It said it would be here by now.  It's not.


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## Throbbing Angel (Oct 12, 2015)

fractionMan said:


> Wow, that's a GREAT review.
> 
> 94/100



It is a good review - makes me wonder if I should get one....




fractionMan said:


> It said it would be here by now.  It's not.



Sorry to hear that - you'll have to keep us updated when in arrives


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## UnderAnOpenSky (Oct 12, 2015)

Impressive they can make something like that so cheap. And the yellow is quite funky!


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## Throbbing Angel (Oct 12, 2015)

innit


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## Manter (Oct 12, 2015)

Unfortunate name


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## fractionMan (Oct 12, 2015)

Throbbing Angel said:


> It is a good review - makes me wonder if I should get one....
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It's on its way apparently.  Hopefully tomorrow!


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## gosub (Oct 13, 2015)

Manter said:


> Unfortunate name


Agreed. was at kempton one boxing day with family, brother bet on a horse called furry lemon. he couldn't understand why we all took the piss(still do) when it came in last


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## salem (Oct 13, 2015)

That looks great. I haven't seen any Lenovo phones over here but met a Russian girl a year or two back and she had one and for the price it seemed really well made.

Hopefully one of the tech sites will pic over it with a fine tooth comb to make sure there isn't anything untoward on it mind.


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## Paul peace (Oct 13, 2015)

I bought a Lenovo computer last January.
I sold the piece of shit before March was out.
It is truly the worst lump of junk I've ever been stupid enough to buy.


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## existentialist (Oct 13, 2015)

Paul peace said:


> I bought a Lenovo computer last January.
> I sold the piece of shit before March was out.
> It is truly the worst lump of junk I've ever been stupid enough to buy.


I've never bought anything other than Lenovo laptops, and always been pleased with them. A charity I work for/am on the committee of needed some new PCs, and I got good prices on 2 Lenovo desktops which are impeccable.

What on earth was wrong with the one you got?


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## pinkmonkey (Oct 13, 2015)

I've a yoga 2 pro, for over a year now, its great!


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## Paul peace (Oct 13, 2015)

existentialist said:


> I've never bought anything other than Lenovo laptops, and always been pleased with them. A charity I work for/am on the committee of needed some new PCs, and I got good prices on 2 Lenovo desktops which are impeccable.
> 
> What on earth was wrong with the one you got?



Full of junkware
Hung every chance it got
Wouldn't run powerpoint properly, commonly refusing to change slides.
It was an AMD chip, not Intel, so that could say something.


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## existentialist (Oct 13, 2015)

Paul peace said:


> Full of junkware
> Hung every chance it got
> Wouldn't run powerpoint properly, commonly refusing to change slides.
> It was an AMD chip, not Intel, so that could say something.


Seems odd to me. There's a fair bit of nonsense on there - all the Lenovo "look after your system" stuff, but nothing ridiculously untoward.

I really don't think the processor chip would be anything to do with it in the normal run of things - sounds like perhaps you got a dodgy one.

But then...Powerpoint


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## Paul peace (Oct 13, 2015)

I love powerpoint.
It's an amazingly useful platform to show text, pictures, audio and video - everything I need to use for work.
I've made presentations for every lesson - the kids love them, and they get the job done with spectacular success.


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## emanymton (Oct 13, 2015)

existentialist said:


> I've never bought anything other than Lenovo laptops, and always been pleased with them. A charity I work for/am on the committee of needed some new PCs, and I got good prices on 2 Lenovo desktops which are impeccable.
> 
> What on earth was wrong with the one you got?


I got one in December and am pretty happy with it. Yeah there was a lot of junk on it but less than some.


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## Cid (Oct 13, 2015)

existentialist said:


> Seems odd to me. There's a fair bit of nonsense on there - all the Lenovo "look after your system" stuff, but nothing ridiculously untoward.
> 
> I really don't think the processor chip would be anything to do with it in the normal run of things - sounds like perhaps you got a dodgy one.
> 
> But then...Powerpoint



Mine just decided to die. I mean I managed to restore it, but not before the faff of taking it apart to rescue the HD with my main PC. Also it's a touchscreen and that's replete with bugs. And the battery is shit (despite its battery saver mode). Plenty of others have similar problems judging by the googling I did when working out what went wrong. Only a couple of years old too. Won't be buying from them again, hell I'll probably get a Mac.


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## 5t3IIa (Oct 13, 2015)

pinkmonkey said:


> I've a yoga 2 pro, for over a year now, its great!


I have one of these (I think) - I like it a lot. It's red. I wanted an orange one but it was more expensive  Might go for yellow now


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## existentialist (Oct 13, 2015)

Cid said:


> Mine just decided to die. I mean I managed to restore it, but not before the faff of taking it apart to rescue the HD with my main PC. Also it's a touchscreen and that's replete with bugs. And the battery is shit (despite its battery saver mode). Plenty of others have similar problems judging by the googling I did when working out what went wrong. Only a couple of years old too. Won't be buying from them again, hell I'll probably get a Mac.


It probably helps that I am tending to buy low-spec units that aren't bleeding edge. I did have an X41 Thinkpad (not sure if it had become Lenovo by then though) which went 10 years before the backlight failed. If I could get that fixed, I'd carry on using it...


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## UnderAnOpenSky (Oct 13, 2015)

I got an old think pad of eBay for not much last year as I mostly use a desktop at home, so only use a laptop occasionally. It's bomb proof as you'd expect a machine aimed at buisness to be as the retail price is quite high new. My gf has a consumer grade model and it feels a very different beast.


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## quiquaquo (Oct 14, 2015)

Global Stoner said:


> I got an old think pad of eBay for not much last year as I mostly use a desktop at home, so only use a laptop occasionally. It's bomb proof as you'd expect a machine aimed at buisness to be as the retail price is quite high new. My gf has a consumer grade model and it feels a very different beast.



There's certainly a huge difference between the Thinkpads of a few years ago and their consumer aimed brethren. The ability to swap hard drives in a few seconds, push the (16:10) screen back flat and the best laptop keyboard ever made make them great to this day. I'm a massive fan.


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## UnderAnOpenSky (Oct 14, 2015)

quiquaquo said:


> There's certainly a huge difference between the Thinkpads of a few years ago and their consumer aimed brethren. The ability to swap hard drives in a few seconds, push the (16:10) screen back flat and the best laptop keyboard ever made make them great to this day. I'm a massive fan.



If I had the money I'd certainly buy a newer one. At some point I'm going to fit an old SVD I have as it's boot drive and replace the DVD with a mechanical. Not many machines you can do that with!


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## fractionMan (Oct 15, 2015)

It's arrived!

All the paperwork is in Chinese 

...but the interface is flawless english.  Phew!

Doesn't appear to be full of bloatware either.  I'm going to double check but I think it's a hit!


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## fractionMan (Oct 15, 2015)

Ok, it does have some crapware.

AVG reports these:
KKBrowser (which I can't remove)
Theme centre (which I can't remove)

However, I did manage to stop them firing up when I turn the phone on (settings->apps->all apps->scroll to bottom and clean "start on startup" or something)

Before that, everytime I turned it on, a popup appeared asking for my consent to serve me adverts 

But now, it seems fine.  Also downloaded chrome and moved their (unremovable) browser somewhere else.  Nice feel, lovely screen. 10 mins work.


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## UnderAnOpenSky (Oct 15, 2015)

Intrested in your experiences. The Note 2 I've given my girlfriend keeps getting network errors. If I can't sort it, then this may be a contender. 

Have you been able to find things like cases for it?


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## 5t3IIa (Oct 15, 2015)

fractionMan said:


> Ok, it does have some crapware.
> 
> AVG reports these:
> KKBrowser (which I can't remove)
> ...


And it's a nice jolly sunshiney yellow?


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## fractionMan (Oct 15, 2015)

5t3IIa said:


> And it's a nice jolly sunshiney yellow?



It's LOVELY.


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## fractionMan (Oct 15, 2015)

Global Stoner said:


> Intrested in your experiences. The Note 2 I've given my girlfriend keeps getting network errors. If I can't sort it, then this may be a contender.
> 
> Have you been able to find things like cases for it?



I thought it was coming with a case, but no.  I imagine something will fit it.


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## 5t3IIa (Oct 15, 2015)

fractionMan said:


> It's LOVELY.


Oh good 

How big is it? Like, large phone size? Scale pic?


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## 5t3IIa (Oct 15, 2015)

fractionMan said:


> I thought it was coming with a case, but no.  I imagine something will fit it.


The amazon page you linked in the OP has a 'Often bought with' link to a case.


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## fractionMan (Oct 15, 2015)

Updated Gmail, which updated the play store.  Everything ok so far.  I'm going to try and use google docs and see how it copes.


5t3IIa said:


> Oh good
> 
> How big is it? Like, large phone size? Scale pic?



It's bigger than my old sony and bigger than an Iphone5.  It's not giant though.  It's fairly thin and light.


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## 5t3IIa (Oct 15, 2015)

fractionMan said:


> Updated Gmail, which updated the play store.  Everything ok so far.  I'm going to try and use google docs and see how it copes.
> 
> 
> It's bigger than my old sony and bigger than an Iphone5.  It's not giant though.  It's fairly thin and light.



Cheers re: size. I have an ooooold kindle that doesn't have the capacity to be read in the dark so looking for something but the Lemon sounds a bit small


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## fractionMan (Oct 15, 2015)

5t3IIa said:


> Cheers re: size. I have an ooooold kindle that doesn't have the capacity to be read in the dark so looking for something but the Lemon sounds a bit small



It's 5.5" screen I think.  Big for a phone, small for a tablet.


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## fractionMan (Oct 15, 2015)

Phone is now lovely.

Switched to google clock, google keyboard and google chrome.
Moved about 8 icons into a little folder called 'crap'
Prevented KKBrowser from starting when the phone started.

And now I seem to have a lovely, light, thin, big, crisp screened phone that performs at least as well as my sony experia Z whatever did.  Lovely!


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## fractionMan (Oct 15, 2015)

Also switched to google camera.  There was an add-on in the installed camera that started showing full screen adverts!


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## two sheds (Oct 15, 2015)

quiquaquo said:


> There's certainly a huge difference between the Thinkpads of a few years ago and their consumer aimed brethren. The ability to swap hard drives in a few seconds, push the (16:10) screen back flat and the best laptop keyboard ever made make them great to this day. I'm a massive fan.



Is that IBM Thinkpads = four legs good, Lenovo Thinkpads = two legs bad?


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## ohmyliver (Oct 16, 2015)

is it possible to root it, and stick vanilla Android on it, or Cyrogen Mod on it.


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## fractionMan (Oct 16, 2015)

ohmyliver said:


> is it possible to root it, and stick vanilla Android on it, or Cyrogen Mod on it.



yup, but I can't be bothered unless I absolutely have to. I think (fingers crossed) I've cleaned it out enough without having to do so.

I went to get myself a screen protector today and they guy was amazed at the phone for that price.  He didn't have an exact fit, but found a fairly close match so now I've got a pretty good screen protector too (with no bubbles, yay!)


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## fractionMan (Dec 2, 2015)

Finally got sick of the chinese crapware showing me adverts.  Found myself a really simple root guide.  It's part of a larger guide on how to backup and install a new rom, but just installing something called kingroot is enough to remove all the crap.

It's really easy.  Download a file, put it on your phone.  Install the app using the phone file browser and it's rooted.





ohmyliver said:


> is it possible to root it, and stick vanilla Android on it, or Cyrogen Mod on it.


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## ViolentPanda (Dec 2, 2015)

two sheds said:


> Is that IBM Thinkpads = four legs good, Lenovo Thinkpads = two legs bad?



Lenovo broadened out the range, which was good, but some of the new lines didn't have quite the same degree of robustness as the earlier products, which was bad.


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## fractionMan (Dec 2, 2015)

Now I've rooted it with king root (which took ten minutes and no tech knowhow) it's behaving much better.  Back to being the bargain it should of been.  Kingroot makes it really easy to just delete all the crap lenovo put on - puts it in a list called 'bloatware' and lets you delete the lot in seconds.

Who knows, I may feel the need to put a different ROM on, but I doubt it.  It works great.


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## fractionMan (Dec 16, 2015)

You can buy them bloatware free in the uk now for around 130 quid.  
Lenovo K3 Note K50 5.5" Android DUAL SIM Smartphone Mobile Octa Core 2GB RAM 4G


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## gentlegreen (Dec 21, 2015)

Only 32GB SD card and possibly dodgy 4G ?
It has all the sensors for VR though that Vodafone have value-engineered out of the Ultra ... I think I'll be sending that straight back to Amazon and hold fire for a while ...

Sound quality is important for me too as I use my ZTE Skate as a mobile player and the speaker at night.


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## UnderAnOpenSky (Dec 21, 2015)

2gb or RAM and a 5.5 inch screen. Sounds fair for the price.

It's got and SD slot has it not?


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## gentlegreen (Dec 21, 2015)

only 32GB though - the Vodafone ZTE will take 128GB


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## yardbird (Dec 23, 2015)

I'm going to get one.
This is really taking the plunge for me. Never had a smartphone and I'm an older one who will be back here to ask for help.
But it is Yellow.


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## fractionMan (Dec 23, 2015)

yardbird said:


> I'm going to get one.
> This is really taking the plunge for me. Never had a smartphone and I'm an older one who will be back here to ask for help.
> But it is Yellow.



Get the one I posted from ebay, it'll save you the hassle of removing all the crap yourself.


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## gentlegreen (Dec 23, 2015)

If only it had more storage.
Along with the enhanced sound it would be the right choice for me.

I'm sending the ZTE back to Amazon - somewhat disconcerting as the only available collection point is a teeny SPAR supermarket so I will wait until Monday so it isn't hanging around in the shop for several days.


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