Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Twenty-two days ago, Lenovo started hyping the upcoming launch for its Z5 smartphone. Lenovo VP Chang Cheng shared the above images of an all-screen smartphone on China's Weibo social network. Cheng said the device was a technical breakthrough and that it would have a 95-percent screen-to-body ratio. Three weeks later, neither of those claims appears to be accurate—if they ever were.

Lenovo has now made the Z5 available for pre-purchase in China, and the device on Lenovo's site differs significantly from the pre-release hype. Instead of the promised "all-screen" smartphone—which was shown in previous images to be notch-free—we're getting a device with a notch and a sizable bottom bezel. The "95-percent screen-to-body ratio" is now only claimed to be 90 percent.

Considering the lead times in device design and manufacturing, it's difficult to see how this could be a mistake or accident. This wasn't a largely obscured smartphone tease like Andy Rubin's first tweet about his Essential Phone. This wasn't like the myriad other product teasers, all cloaked in darkness and shadow. Lenovo showed both a full design sketch and a product render that both appear to be non-representative of the actual product. The render of the Z5 shows the entire left half of the smartphone and should display the notch (compare the position of the clock in the two images). Having an early design sketch not correspond to a finished product isn't terribly unusual, but showing it off less than three weeks from launch day and using it to hype the finished product definitely is.

Now that Lenovo has taken the wraps off the Z5—at least, what Lenovo claims the Z5 is today—we learned it isn't a high-end flagship device. The phone seems set to launch in China for a starting price of 1,299 yuan ($203). The phone has a 6.2-inch 2246×1080 LCD, a Snapdragon 636, 6GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a 3300mAh battery. It's actually pretty cool that a mid-range smartphone is getting a flagship-style design like this. It's a shame Lenovo didn't promote the device with this design from the start.

Listing image by Lenovo