Letv expanding in to India with powerful, Quad HD Le Max phablet

We’ve seen a huge rise in the number of affordable smartphones come to market with premium design and specifications over the past 12-18 months. It’s no coincidence that this has lead to a rise in the number of relatively unknown Chinese manufacturers push out of their national borders to sell their branded products overseas. Companies like Huawei, OnePlus and Xiaomi have all launched competitive smartphones at budget-friendly prices. Following in their trail is Letv, a company which has just announced its intention to launch a high-end smartphone in India for the first time.

Letv announced its plans to launch the Le Max in India in the middle of next month to a group of fans at a meetup event. With India being one of the biggest consumer markets in the world, it’s no surprise to see the up-and-coming smartphone maker targeting the country for a smartphone launch. Companies like Xiaomi and OnePlus have seen success in India, with highly targeted marketing and manufacturing strategies.

As for the Le Max itself, it’s undoubtedly the flagship of Letv’s smartphone range and boasts a number of features you’d expect in the most high end Android smartphones from any manufacturer.

Dominating the front is a 6-inch, quad HD (2560 x 1440) display powered by an octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor with Adreno 430 graphics. There’s a massive 4GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage as well as a generous 3,400mAh capacity battery. It has dual-SIM support, has a built-in fingerprint reader and USB Type C connector. The rear camera boasts a 21MP sensor, while the front-facing camera has a 4MP sensor.

Design-wise it looks virtually indistinguishable from phones made by Huawei. That’s to say, it looks like a big version of the Honor 7, or Huawei Mate S with its all-metal rear panel and centered fingerprint sensor and camera. While the display looks like it’s edge-to-edge, we know from Fonearena’s hands-on images that — like the Huawei phones — it has a black screen gap all the way around the display panel.

In paper, it certainly seems like a strong smartphone, but with it having little to distinguish itself from the competition in design or specifications, it’ll be interesting to see how well the company performs, especially in India where there are already a boatload of great affordable smartphones available.