ZOPO Lion Heart ZP999 pro (mt6595m) review

Very soon ZOPO will again try to expand to the smartphone indursty witth the ZP999 Lion Heart. The show-off product of this series will be the ZP999 Lion Heart, which is very well equipped and makes itself to be a high-end device by the chinese producer. Since the Xiaomi Mi4, the Oneplus One and the Meizu MX4 were already presented on the market as chinese flagships, we can definitly say that the ZOPO ZP999 Lion Heart exceeded all expectations. By the end of 2014 we are positively surprised by such a Lion Heart!

We recieved the ZOPO ZP999 Pro directly from ZOPO this morning, so we instantly do a review for you.

Technical Equipment

First some word about the specifications. The data sheet looks very persuasive. A 1080p-FHD-Display, 3 GB RAM and an Octa-Core MediaTek MT6595m processor. Also the great battery with 2.700 mAh and the camery make us hope for a very good performance. The processor by MediaTek is called MTK MT6595m and is the best SoC they have to offer.

Support: 1080p videos at 60fps, Slow Motion Video (90-120 fps),
picture in picture mode,the trajectory mode ,scene photo mode , 
40/ 99 shooting, zero-delay camera, noise reduction, anti-shake ,
face recognition, automatic scene detection

Glass, valuable and compact

Just after the first sight one thought cought me: The ZOPO ZP999 Lion Heart looks like a mix between the Samsung Galaxy S4, the iPhone 4 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 3. The front consists completely of glass and looks like a big iPhone 4 without Home-Button, the recess fits the ZOPO-owned style with a ZOPO logo and 4g LTE, the design on the left and right hand side strongly reminds me of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and I personally have to think of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 when holding it in my hand as a general feeling.

But in reverse this does not mean, that design, value and such things are not good, because actually it is the opposite: The device feels very valuable and solid due to the anti-skidding back and also the covers that are made of plasic make a good impression. Even though in my opinion the silver grey aluminium frame fits best to the whole concept. Still the size is pretty compact for a device with a 5.5“-display and can be handled very comfortably.

The ZP999 Lion Heart is mainly based on the rounded edges. ZOPO completely concentrated on rounded elements in this series, which made the competitive models very handy. For me this is more than Nizza, because for many years I rather hold smartphones in my fingers instead of the whole hand. But many users like to cover the device with their whole hand and then you defititely notice the rounded and handy edges.

Sharp or made-to-last

Just like the shell the display is also surprisingly good. 1920 x 1080 pixels on a 5.5 inch display result in a very sharp and crystal clear font and thanks to ClearMotion it is also very bright, so it can be read in daylight. Its white is quite nice and the angle stability also does a good job.

I can only criticize the value of the black colour, since it is much better in the competitive models – you can especially see that in dark surroundings. After all you can configure the colour-temperature as you like in the system configurations MiraVision by MediaTek.

Practically you will notive the sharp texts and pictures during FHD-films and gaming. Yes, I am convinced that the display of the ZP999 Lion Heart is one of the best there is.

UI-Design by Flat Design

The ZOPO ZP999 comes with a pre-installed Android 4.4.2 and has been adjusted by ZOPO. The latter presents some functions, which indeed can by useful, but all this is put into a User Interface, which is designed by Flat Design. That definitly is a downside.

While Samsung, LG, HTC and so on constantly improve their own User Interface and modernize it optically, ZOPO did not do a good job on its ZP999. That is a pity, because it does look beautiful, but the interface is confusing and cluttered on some important parts. For example the notification bar. They almost did not change anything compared to the original Android OS 4.4.2.

As it is with many Andoid-adjustments in asia the Asian OS also comes without an App-Drawer. Luckily the function is still available on the ZP999 Lion Heart, you can use it without any problem on Google Now Launcher.

Android OS can be useful

Some functions are useful in other areas. The telephone manager comes with an authorization control, which can be used to authorize App-Permissions very detailed. Furthermore you can use a control which does the same with App-Notifications.

When the smartphone is being moved, sensores start different actions as part of movement control, which is very nice. For example calls can be taken by holding the phone close to your ear. Sounds are muted when the ZP999 Lion Heart is put on the desk with the front side down. If you can not touch the phone, you can select apps or widgets by moving your hand in front of the camera or you can move pictures in the galery, take pictures, add songs to a playlist, control the browser. All this functions work very well, but can also be deactivated individually.
I like to use the Smart Wake Function. With a double click on the turned off display I wake the ZP999 Lion Heart and write „C“ on the display to use the camera, with „W“ I can use the torch. You can define the applications manually.

Smoothness – that is the question

If you rely on the data sheet, you could think that the ZOPO ZP999 Lion Heart simply flies through the system. 3 GB RAM definitely are a huge number and also the MediaTek MT6595M Octa-Core 2.0 GHZ processor with top production is meant to have best values. I immediately startet a test on Antutu Benchmark v5.2.0 and the ZOPO Lion Heart gets unbelievable 46249 points (according to the last test it was reduced to 37416 points) and beats the HTC One M8T, Xiaomi Mi3 W, Samsung Galaxy S5 and Vivo Xplay 3S. The GPU of the device is by PowerVR Rogue Han and provides many points with the 3D-test, which earned 8214 points, then come the CPU Integer and Loat-Point with 4874 and 5195. Mulitasking is the highlight of the Lion Heart 6475 and the reason why it is a flagship.

So far so good, right?

Through most of the using-time the theory also meets the practical use. The device runs fine, but does not feel on top of the world. I really am no gamer, but just for interest I tried on the CPU how the processor works when gaming. I did not notice one single problem, Asphalt 8 is a lot of fun and runs very quickly.

Insofern also alles in Ordnung, oder?

 Camera, Battery and Speakers

After only a few days I can not provide good information about the Battery. Also I only used the device in WLAN at home, so I can not rate the battery life in mobile data-connectivity. So I will not provide you with any results according to the battery, but I guess that in average you can use the smartphone one and a half days.

I am a little disappointed by the speakers. They sound very thin and since they are placed on the back, the sound goes into the wrong direction. When lying on the desk the sound also gets very damp. The sound of the Sony Xperia Z3 is way better.

NFC, HotKnot and Gaming performance

HotKnot works by the NFC chip on the back. With this function I share any website or app with my Sony Xperia Z3 with only one click. That is an interesting function, but I almost never use it to share files. I did not try to pay with my phone yet.

Result until now

After my first days with the ZOPO ZP999 Lion Heart I do like this device. The body is compact and nice, value and processing are just right, the battery seems to by fine, too. Furthermore the display has a good quality and the ZOPO-adjusted OS provides some interesting functions. The possibility of NFC, HotKnot and Mobil Paying did not appear to be available on any other chinese smartphone.

On the other hand the Android-adjustment is everything else but beautiful and the camera does not seem to be more than average. Videos can be captured in Full HD i.e. upto 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution at 60fps, since it comes with the MT6595M processor instead of the MT6595 processor which support 4K videos. The performance of the 3D-gaming and FHD-videos is perfect. Compared to the Meizu MX4 for 360 € and only 2GB RAM, the ZOPO ZP999 Lion Heart is available for about 300 € on China Online Shops – you have to recommend it with such a price. I do like the ZOPO ZP999, especially due to the quality case, which looks noble and well-done.

If I have more to say to the ZOPO ZP999 in the future or some aspects change (positively and negatively), I will present it in another report. You can leave questions and comments under this blog. I will try to answer them as good as I can.