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With this being my first smartphone review, I’ll try to make sure to cover everything important but I might miss something. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. Starting out with the phone and accessories, Le Eco includes a Quick Charge 3.0 power brick, reversible USB type C cable, earphones, a TPU case, headphone jack adapter, and a pre-applied screen protector. Quick Charge on a phone of this price really surprised me. It charges the non-removable 3000mAh battery very fast, getting it to 100% in under an hour. The included type C earphones sound great, and boast Le Eco’s special CDLA technology, which stands for Continual Digital Lossless Audio. This claims to offer a much better listening experience provided that you are listening to HD tracks. In my case, it seemed to make the low end more pronounced but didn’t do anything to wow me. The earphones themselves are very reminiscent to Apple’s earpods, but feature some “purely for aesthetic” LEDs on the back. On top of CDLA you’re also getting Dolby Atmos, which delivers a very realistic surround experience. This phone has definitely delivered in the audio department. The included TPU case is “ok” It doesn’t fit the phone at the bottom very well, but does a decent job at protecting the phone from drops. Regardless, the inclusion of this case at all is very convenient. Le Eco offers a different case you can buy separately, so you can do that if you don’t like the included one. Moving onto the phone itself, let’s dive into specs. Under the hood is a Snap Dragon 652 processor @ 1.8ghz, which boasts 8 total cores – 4 low power and 4 high power cores. Single Core performance isn’t far off from flagships like the Galaxy 7, but where the 652 shows it’s weakness is in multicore performance. For the most part the phone was smooth like butter, with occasional lag spikes here and there. Having 3gb of RAM definitely helps the phone with multitasking. Alongside the 652 is an Adreno 510 GPU, which can easily handle games and video streaming. The Le S3 comes with 32gb of storage, which should be plenty enough for the average user. Although the phone does support dual sim, it unfortunately does not support micro-sd expansion at all. If you’re a data junky that needs more than 32gb, upgrading to the more premium Le Pro3 at $400 will get you 64gb of storage and better specs. Moving onto the aesthetic of the phone, you’ll see it is very HTC esque. Flanking the 5.5in 1080P gorilla glass 3 protected screen are 2 large bezels. The bottom bezel holds non-switchable capacitive navigation buttons, and then top bezel holds the handset, 8mp camera, and an ambient light sensor. Looking at the top of the phone you’ll find an extremely useful ir transmitter that really adds some polish to this phone. The bottom features a single speaker that sounds just fine, and can reach high volumes without distorting. Moving onto the back you’ll find a 16mp camera that can shoot 4k as well as a very fast fingerprint reader. The fingerprint sensor’s placement on the back is a weird but welcome addition to me, as I came from the iPhone 6. For the camera, I’ll be comparing it against the iPhone 6, which might be a generation behind but can still output some very good photos. As for the Le S3, the camera is better than I expected. It’s very comparable to the iPhone 6, but has double the megapixels. You won’t really be able to see the difference in the megapixel count if it’s on facebook or snapchat, but will notice it when editing the photo or modifying it, as you have a lot more data to work with. 1 area that the iPhone does seem to outperform the Le S3 is in autofocusing. Not only is it faster, but it also seems to more accurately focus on an object. The shutter speed is also faster, so moving the phone while taking pictures doesn’t negatively affect the image as much, as seen here. The LE S3 does support 4k recording at 30fps, but you’ll probably want to stick to 1080p as that 32gb won’t last long. Lastly, the phone can shoot at 720p 120fps, which looks alright. To wrap up the camera, it can shoot very impressive photos provided that you have decent lighting conditions and are a little patient. With the hardware out of the way, let’s dive into the software. To me, this area is a bit of a mixed bag. Le Eco has incorporated some interesting stuff, but also some useless stuff. For example, swiping to the right while on the home screen will bring you to a news area which pretty much compiles and organizes the latest YouTube videos. You can select categories to browse from. While this is a neat feature, it’s nothing game changing. It’s just a slimmed down version of the Youtube app, so I just don’t really see the point. Moving on, Le Eco also includes an app called Live, where you can stream live Television shows and movies. Some of these channels are free and some are a paid subscription based. A few of the channels here are HGTV, the Food Network, Machinima, and Vice. I actually think this is pretty convenient, as your favorite show can be watched pretty much anywhere. One last thing I want to cover is the EcoPass, which is an optional subscription to Le Eco’s extra services. With the Le Eco Pass, you’re getting unlimited cloud storage for photos and videos and a whopping 5tb of storage for all other files. You can upload, download, and delete data off the cloud via the ecophone, an IOS app, or a desktop browser. This made it extremely easy to transfer all my photos and videos from my iPhone to the LeCloud, where I could access them anywhere. With the ecopass you’re also getting a discount on all the subscription based entertainment services that you watch in the live app. Finally, you also get an extended 2 year warranty on the phone – nice! This easily challenges Apple’s iCloud. To sum up this review, LeEco has created a sleek, premium phone with a price tag that doesn’t match. The phone feels great in the hand, is fast and makes good use out of the mid speced hardware within. The biggest selling point to me is probably that ecopass.