Lenovo announces the affordable VIBE K5 and K5 Plus smartphones at MWC 2016

Sub-$200 smartphones used to be plasticky, cheap-feeling and just downright bad. Luckily that’s not the case anymore. There are some really great budget-friendly Android smartphones on the market nowadays, and the line between low-end and mid-tier is fading rapidly. Lenovo has just announced two new smartphones at MWC 2016 that aim to perfectly combine affordability and user friendliness.

The Lenovo VIBE K5 and VIBE K5 Plus are the newest devices to come from the Chinese smartphone manufacturer. For the most part, both devices share the same specifications — 5.0-inch LCD displays, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of on-board storage, microSD expansion, and removable 2750mAh batteries. As you may have guessed, the K5 Plus has slightly beefier specs. It has a Full HD display (compared to the K5’s 720p screen), and a Snapdragon 616 processor, as an alternative to the K5’s Snapdragon 415. Both devices come with 13MP rear cameras, 5MP front cameras, 4G LTE connectivity and dual SIM card slots.

They’re both running Android 5.1 Lollipop as well, which is unfortunate. Google released Android 6.0 Marshmallow to the masses way back in October 2015, so it’s really too bad that Lenovo has neglected to give its users the latest version of Android. Lenovo says they’ve also pre-loaded the devices with some productivity and social apps like SHAREit, SNAPit and Guvera Music.

Both new devices come with dual rear-facing speakers with Dolby Atmos on board, which should be able to bring users good sound quality without the need for headphones.

The Lenovo VIBE K5 and K5 Plus will be available in March 2016 for $129 and $149, respectively. Unfortunately Lenovo has no plans to bring them to the U.S. at the moment, but we’ll let you know if that’s changing.