Here’s what most people said to me when they saw the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro in my hands, in this order: Wow, that’s a huge phone, followed a few minutes later by, How did that cat get in my living room? I’ll explain the cat thing, but first, the phone hardware.
The $499.99 Phab 2 Pro is big hunk of brushed aluminum alloy with a 6.4-inch quad-HD display. Its physical build really isn’t bad once you get past the size: the display is coated in Gorilla Glass and it has shiny aluminum edges that give it a solid feel. It has a fingerprint sensor on the back; loud, powerful speakers; fast charging capabilities; it even has — wait for it — a headphone jack. And as with most larger phones, it accommodates a giant battery.
The Phab 2 Pro has three rear cameras, which are a critical part of the Tango experience
The guts are what make this a midrange phone, not a premium one. It runs on a customized version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 652 processor, which is okay but doesn’t match the performance of Qualcomm’s current top-of-the-line mobile processor, the Snapdragon 821. When it comes to still images, its cameras are pretty subpar; even in average, stable conditions, like under office lighting, photos snapped with the 16-megapixel rear camera looked noisy.