After reviewing quite a few Leagoo phones, I have an opinion that the company usually makes decent phones for a bargain price. The Leagoo S8 aims to continue that tradition by offering premium full-screen design and a lot more for just about $130. Learn more in our full Leagoo S8 review.
UNBOXING
The phone ships with all the usual stuff and some extras include a pair of earphones and a soft TPU case.
DESIGN and DISPLAY
The Leagoo S8 is yet another budget phone that has a full-screen design but I have to tell you that this is one of my favorites since the device just feels nice in the hand. That brilliant 5.7” HD+ display with 18:9 aspect ratio and tiny side bezels make the phone narrow and comfortable to hold even though the device is taller than phones with 16:9 aspect ratio displays. The panel itself is great but I wish it was a little bit brighter.
The build quality is solid and the phone looks premium thanks to the metal frame with nice buttons and glass backplate.
The Leagoo S8 is one of those rare budget phones that has a dual camera setup both on the back and on the front.
Now a few features as quickly as possible: the fingerprint scanner is accurate but the display could light up faster, there is a front-facing LED flash for selfies and another LED for notifications.
Finally, the loudspeaker quality does not really impress like on most of the budget phones.
HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE
As most of these budget phones, the Leagoo S8 ships with good specs for the price.
I like that gaming performance is pretty good even in the highest graphics settings, which is always impressive on any budget phone. However, the Leagoo S8 gets hot on the upper portion of the phone very quickly.
BENCHMARKS
USER INTERFACE
When it comes to the user interface, the phone runs Android 7 with the Leagoo’s skin on top of it. I don’t like the fact that they took away the app launcher and for some reason, Leagoo added their own Play Store that I didn’t really use. As for added features, there aren’t too many to talk about. You can customize the navigation bar, switch on/off LED notification light and that’s about it. You can also choose from quite a few different themes, wallpapers or change the transition effects. As for the day to day performance, the Leagoo S8 is a fast phone as I’m yet to see it lag or stutter.
IMAGE QUALITY
The overall image quality is pretty good given the fact that I could only test the camera on a dark and cloudy day, meaning that the lighting was poor. The dual-camera setup may be fun to play with for some time but the camera’s software simply draws a circle around the center of the image, meaning this is not the best-looking bokeh effect.
Selfies look pretty good in daylight and the front facing LED flash is pretty powerful in lower lit environment.
The 1080p video quality is just mediocre. What is a bit frustrating is that the audio is being recorded to the right channel only.
Selfie camera is able to shoot videos only in 480p, meaning that the quality of the footage is kind of poor.
CONNECTIVITY
In terms of connectivity, I can’t really complain. I found the call quality and signal reception to be quite good and other connectivity options work fine.
The phone ships with 12 sensors including the gyroscope, so you are all set if you want to use the device with VR headsets.
BATTERY LIFE
A 2900mAh power bank assures a pretty much standard battery life. I could get over 5.5h of screen-on time but this measurement is always subjective, so your results may vary.
It takes about 1.5h to fully charge the phone with the supplied fast charger, which is a great result for a budget phone. However, the phone still uses the micro USB port, not the USB type C.
CONCLUSIONS
Overall, the Leagoo S8 shapes up to be one of the better all-around budget full-screen phones out there. Sure, it has a few minor caveats to consider like poor audio in video recording mode, micro USB port instead of the USB Type C but in general, this is a solid and nice-looking phone that is not going to break your bank.
