Leagoo M8 Pro

This is Leagoo M8 Pro - stylish phone with dual camera, made in China. It has a decent spec of 4 processor (they usually say "Quad-Core"), 16GB of ROM and 2GB of RAM and it has dual camera with LED flash,  comes with Gorilla glass for a little bit of durability, made and assembled in China and it works like many other typical Android touch screen phone but most of all the price is only MYR 270.00 (about USD63.00 / EUR 55.00 / 7,083 Yen)

I personally think that this is one of the best budget Android phone I've ever encountered in recent years. As a side note, previously I was using Lenovo A889 and Lenovo A806 - pretty happy with them but it's normal nowadays after about 2-3 years, you dropped your phone one too many times, the screen broke, the body dented and eventually the performance is not so good anymore and it's time to change - technology stuff nowadays... nothing last forever like those Sanyo brand rice cooker from the 1980's era right?

I ordered this from an online shop, Lazada (www.lazada.com.my). The seller is actually from China, the spec and the price suits me pretty well, after waiting for exactly 2 weeks (14 calendar days) the item arrived in perfect packaging and perfect condition.

This is the box:

Out of the box, you will get all these - I'm glad with the fact that they also gave a headset, the previous 2 Lenovo that I bought didn't give me that:

The phone, the headset, the USB cable and charger...

Eventually I also bought this leather cover separately but they arrive at the same day - this is so that if I dropped the phone in the future, the risk of damages (broken/dented) wont be so bad - hopefully!!!

For those of you who concerned so much about the full technical spec, well this is it:

2G Network = GSM 850 , 900 , 1800 , 1900 MHz
3G Network = W-CDMA 850 , 900 , 1900 , 2100 MHz
4G Network = LTE
SIM = Micro-SIM, Dual SIM

BODY
Dimensions: 79.8 x 154.5 x 8.8 mmWeight:
Input type: Touch dependent

DISPLAY
Display size: 5.7 inches, 720 x 1280 pixels, (~258 ppi)
Display type: IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Multitouch: Yes
Protection: 2.5D curved glass screen, Scratch resistant,Gorilla Glass 4

SOUND
Sound: Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
Loud speaker: Yes
Headset jack: Yes

MEMORY
Memory card: MicroSD, microSDHC
Memory internal: 16GB ROM, 2GB RAM

CONNECTIVITY
GPRS: Yes
EDGE: Yes
Bluetooth: 4.0
USB: 2.0, Micro USB
WLAN: b, g, n, Hotspot

CAMERA
Rear camera: Dual Lens 4160 x 3120 pixels,12.98 MP
Front camera: 3264 x 2448 pixels,7.99 MP
Camera flash: Single LED Flash
Camera video: Yes, 30 fps
Camera feature: Autofocus, Continuous shooting, Digital zoom, Geotagging, Panorama, HDR, Touch focus, Face detection, White balance settings, ISO settings, Exposure compensation, Self-timer, Scene mode

OS = Android 6.0 Marshmallow (with Freeme OS 6.0 customization)



MOTHERBOARD
Chipset: MediaTek MT6580
CPU: ARM Cortex-A7, 1.3 GHz, cores: 4
GPU: ARM Mali-400 MP2
Sensors: Proximity, Light, Accelerometer, Fingerprint

OTHERS:
Radio: Yes
GPS:GPS, A-GPS

BATTERY = 3500 mAh, Li-Ion,Removable


OK, this is the phone again, it looks so chic and rather girlish and I like it...

The usual volume and power button at the side here:

The "dual camera" and the single LED flash and the finger print reader at the back - yes, a finger print reader for such a cheap phone - amazing isn't it?

The usual headset jack at the top:

The Mini USB charger and data cable port at the bottom:

Fits decently well on my palm:

And oh, the camera, the dual lens camera...yeah... well, this phone have camera and just like any other phone with camera, it works like a camera, it takes picture of up to 13MP image size and 720p video. 

I have no problem with the camera so far and I don't demand anything spectacular either, everything work as it should be. I never bother about excellent image quality and the so called "DSLR" alike function available on the phone, probably if this is the Huawei P10 or Huawei P10 Plus that comes with the so called Leica optics, then maybe I would dig a little further on the camera but I wont go super crazy hoping for excellent image quality at low light condition and so on. As long as it works, take decent picture for Instagram or what ever social media platform that you use and that's about it. I'm happy, I'm a simple person indeed. If I want better photography and image quality, I will grab my Panasonic Lumix GX1.

Thus, having said all that, I don't expect anything wonderful from the advertised features of "Dual Camera" and if you want to buy this phone because of the "Dual Camera" - I hope you can control your expectation so that you wont be disappointed though at the same time I dare to say here that the camera is not terrible by all means and for most regular and normal people with their daily regular and normal use, it's pretty decent and highly likely that you will be happy considering the price.

I uploaded here a couple of pictures taken using the Leagoo M8 Pro Dual Lens Camera - this is straight from the phone/camera - no editing and no downsizing, it is as it is. If you think they are decent enough, then you are on the right path of considering to get this phone but if you think they are terrible and you demand better quality, add more money and buy other brand/model.

I wont focus much on the OS, I believe that at least half of the world population using mobile phones nowadays knows and understand Android OS very well, probably they knew Android better than Windows XP SP3 LOL LOL LOL.... All I can say, Android is very good, it works well for me, the integration of Google system in Android OS are exciting and I like it very much.

Even so, there is one particular thing that I like to focus on this review and that is about the typical 3 important buttons on Android phones/tablet - the Menu, Home and Return/Back buttons - despite been using Android phone for many years now, I don't actually know what is the correct name for those 3 buttons but at least that's what I call them.

Nonetheless, usually in most phones or tabs, they tend to have those buttons somewhere down here:

However, on this M8 Pro, Leagoo decided to designed and embedded the 3 sacred buttons on the touch screen platform instead. Not that this is totally unusual or revolutionary - there are tablets (tabs) that use the same configuration - something they call as "soft-button" instead of the actual "physical button".

It's not really a deal breaker, as far as I'm concern the 3 buttons on the touch screen works very well though they are situation when you wish that it is available at the bottom. Look at the picture of this Lenovo A806 for example, you can see the usual 3 buttons at the bottom, just like many other Android phones you see in the market.

Talking about this Lenovo A806 (also known as Lenovo Golden Warrior A8), I used this phone for about 2 years and then suddenly it stop working - when you switch it On, it keeps on restarting - On and Off over and over again till eternity non-stop and thus I decided it's become senile and it's time to get another cheap Lenovo phone and then suddenly I found this Leagoo M8 Pro with Dual Camera and the price is slightly lower than what I paid for the Lenovo A806, 2 years ago. This Lenovo A806 is by far the best budget smartphone I ever use when it comes to performance - it has Octa Core (8 processors) and 2GB RAM and I never experienced any lagging while using it - everything is just smooth but then again the battery dry too fast - just within the 8 hours range with frequent use of WhatsApp messaging, social media and plenty of gaming and videos. Thankfully though, I don't pay premium price for it, so 2 years using it, malfunction happen, time to move one with a cheaper and probably exciting new model, life goes on...

OK, back to the Leagoo M8 Pro, so basically this is how it looks like on the screen when you are pressing any of the 3 buttons - it is really on the touch screen area:

Thankfully though, the 3 buttons remain appear on some apps and games interface, which is good, I like to see it that way...

But in certain apps/games, the 3 buttons is totally disappear:

However, I learned the trick on how to get the button to appear again especially in the case where you need it - wanted to press the "Return/Back" button to close the apps/games or if you want to press the "Home" button to switch between apps.

Basically, you need to touch and scroll down somewhere on the top right here (this is if you put the phone in horizontal position just like in my picture below):

And just like that, the 3 buttons will appear here:

Other than that, everything else seems OK, I have no further complain what so ever. Installing and using the usual apps/games that I downloaded from Play Store - everything is OK, though I noted that at times while using WhatsApp messaging, the apps freeze a little bit for a while when I typing my messages - probably the WhatsApp is demanding in using too many resources power from the Leagoo M8 Pro (4 processor core / 2GB RAM) - I never experience this when using Lenovo A806 (8 processor cores / 2GB RAM).

On the other hand, I like to highlight on this fun feature that I totally didn't expect available on such a cheap phone - the option to do print directly from the phone and I think this is very cool and I like it a lot even though I may not always use it anyway.

I've been using the 7 Android phones in the last 8-9 years or so and so this is the first time I saw such feature available on a budget Android phone:

However, if you wanted to use this feature - you must have a printer with WiFi capability and we happen to have this Canon printer with WiFi option and it is connected to our WiFi network and all is smooth:

Once you installed the printer apps, just open the document you wanted to print and just do it. For the purpose of testing, I created a test Word document using the free "WPS Office" apps.

Apart from printing documents, we can also print the photos from our camera phone directly, it is a simple as selecting the picture(s) and click "Share" option from your Gallery menu and then you just look for the installed printer and just like that, it's easy!!!! - unfortunately though, our printer is not the colored printer type - just a typical simple black/white printer - but at least it has WiFi option hehehehehe....

I guess. probably someday in the future, this printing features will soon be standard on all smartphones models - just a matter of time, wont be long now....

I did mentioned earlier about the finger print sensor. The finger print sensor is located below the dual camera lens right after the LED flash bulb. It's exciting to know that you can have such fun feature on such a cheap phone. Basically, when you "locked" the phone and then you put the assign finger on the sensor, it will "unlocked" your phone immediately - with the condition that you put your finger correctly and accordingly on the sensor. It works very well, I have no problem with it so far and it's quite fast.

This phone also support USB OTG, which means you need to buy that USB OTG Cable, it's something like this:

So you plug that cable at the bottom port of your phone where you usually connect your charger cable and on the bigger USB port part, you can plug in your USB thumb drive or a card reader maybe (or any equivalent storage devices formatted in FAT32) and the phone can read the files/media contents available on that USB thumb drive accordingly like play a song or video files or accessing PDF files stored inside the USB thumb drive.

Overall, this is indeed a very decent and fun phone with exciting features in such a friendly price tag. If you just use your phone for typical phone calls and text messaging and social media and a little bit of fun games and apps and camera and watching video and/or YouTube, this phone should be fine for you or your wife or your children.

However, if you're looking for a phone that is capable to play high end video games and if you demand great picture quality from a camera phone and you wanted an overall high end speedy performance, then I guess this USD 63.00 phone is not for you. You probably should consider those Huawei P10 Plus or those Samsung Galaxy S8 or S9 maybe.

You don't buy a typical budget family sedan/saloon car and expect it to perform like light weight sports car, right? Different segment have different price and thus different pros and cons. You get what you pay, simple as that.

As for me, this phone should be good for me for a year or two, maybe three - if the phone can still handle it. Some reviewers says this model is now the king of cheap Chinese phone and I totally agree with that.

Leagoo M8 Pro - Dual Camera - Stylish Phone - Made in China - You'll love it!!!

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