Lenovo A60 runs Android 2.3, Dual SIM, a steal at only PHP 7,990.00

EDIT II: Lenovo has released its holiday 2012 lineup — the P700i, K860 and S560 models. There is also an upgrade to the A60, the A65 and the more recent A60+. Check them out! So as not to confuse with the timelines, the P700i, K860 and S560 are the latest releases. Here is a comparison between the S560 and the P700i.

EDIT: Updated to include more insights after really getting to use it

I won Lenovo’s latest gem, the A60, last night. It’s been a long time coming but Lenovo Mobile is finally here. Oddly enough, the mobile division isn’t being handled by the consumer group of Ida Ong. Lenovo Mobile is a completely separate group with the phones being distributed by Open Communications Inc.

The A60 is a charmer bringing much needed competition to the Android phone market in the country. What exactly did they do? Well, for starters they added dual SIM functionality to an already complete Android 2.3 package. In other words, this isn’t some baduy version of Android that leaves out the Marketplace functionality. It’s full Android 2.3 Gingerbread. And yeah, DUAL SIM. The second killer item is the price point. Where else can you find a dual SIM Android phone at only PHP 7,990.00

Unlike most mainstream Android hardware suppliers like Samsung and HTC, Lenovo played around a bit more with the system preferences. No, we’re not talking about how Samsung uses TouchWIZ and HTC uses Sense UI. Lenovo mixed up some of the system preferences. For instance, where you would usually find options to disable data in mobile networks, you find these settings on a per SIM-card basis instead. Joining contacts from Facebook, Twitter and Google works slightly differently as well but can be easily figured out.

Really, I can go on and on with how great this phone is. I still can’t believe Lenovo was able to release something that doesn’t look like a sub-10k phone and reduce the price point. There has to be a loophole somewhere — 1500 mAh battery? Nope. 3MP VGA camera? Nope. 220MB internal memory (hmm the only yellow flag — but still!)? The smartphone is powered by a MT6573 650MHz processor — nothing fancy here. No Snapdragon or anything like that. But still, in real world use, there was no UI lag. There’s a bit of it in graphics intensive apps and games but you really can’t complain at this price.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the front hardware buttons. The design was rather confusing making me think they were touch enabled when there were also buttons right under them. Buttons were a bit stiff. But again, I can ignore this because of the epic price point.

For more details, check this out.

Pros
Responsive UI
Value for money
Dual standy DUAL SIM (each SIM is active all the time)

Cons
Only 220MB of internal memory (might have problems with huge address books for memory loss — of course the solution here would be to have all your apps saved in microSD card expansion)
Front Hardware buttons could use some work