We miss the old LeEco with its iconic design
If you ever wanted an iPhone but could not afford Apple’s $1000 offering, you’re in luck, because the former legendary LeEco, a company known for selling top-notch smartphones with high-performance ratios at low prices, has an offer for you. After years of fighting against bankruptcy, the company returned with its original “LeTV” name.
The S1 Pro is an iPhone 14 Pro clone complete with the Dynamic Island pill cutout. The first time they did this was with the Y1 Pro+ with an iPhone 14-like design. These two are complete knockoffs. Or, more politely, a poor man’s iPhone. But at the very least, LeTV is using its own software and not making a fake iPhone.
Still, there are subtle changes in terms of the design. The pill notch of the S1 Pro is slimmer and placed a little higher on the screen. It also has a much thicker chin and a more squarish body, and the buttons here are made of plastic instead of metal. The iPhone 14 Pro has a much more uniform and rounded screen and also has a metallic frame.
Design is not the only thing that was copied though. Even the so-called functions of the dynamic island has been reproduced in LeTV’s own UI. This includes notifications and a mini-player.
The phone uses a fork of Huawei Mobile Services because GMS is banned in China. In terms of specs, it is definitely pretty weak and not at all a flagship. The outside is iPhone, the inside is your typical budget Android: 6.5in. HD+ (1600x720px) IPS LCD, a 12nm UNISOC T7150 chipset with four Cortex-A75 cores at 1.8GHz and four Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.8GHz as well. In terms of GPU, it uses an 800MHz Imagination (aka PowerVR) 9446. This chipset is comparable to the MediaTek Helio G88. However, unlike that chipset, this one has 5G capabilities. Hence, the S1 Pro+ has 5G capabilities alongside Wi-Fi 6/6e and Bluetooth 5.1
It also has a 5000mAh battery charged via USB-C and 10W charging. The cameras are also not that impressive. At the back is a 13MP shooter with unknown auxiliaries (obviously no LiDAR) and a 5MP selfie front. The 8/128 variant of the phone is priced at CNY 899 (~Php 7.4K). The phone will probably not get released elsewhere in the world.
Source: GizmoChina