Lenovo S90 Sisley review: Under cover

Straight-forward phonebook

The Lenovo S90 Sisley comes with a very streamlined phonebook experience. It is laid out across four tabs: dialer, contacts, messaging and favorites. You can view either single contacts or groups as well as blacklist entries. Tapping on a contact brings up a popup with access to a contact's scrollable info.

The phonebook

As on most Android launchers, you can assign a plethora of contact information including custom ringtones and images. You can link contacts too, if you've added the same person on multiple services.

You can also search for contacts or filter them by their first letter.

Nice phone experience

We didn't experience any issues with the quality of the calls we placed with the Vibe X2. The voice made it crisp and clear to the other end. The proximity sensor makes sure the screen stays off when you hold the phone to your face.

Flipping the phone on its face while it's ringing would mute the call ringing. The secondary noise cancelling on-board microphone ensures a quieter background for your voice while in call.

The dialer and the call log share the same screen. The dialer offers smart dialing and it works both with names and numbers.

The Smart Dial works like a charm

We put the Lenovo S90 through our traditional loudspeaker test and it scored a Good mark, which means you'll likely have no trouble hearing the phone in crowded rooms, but don't count on it at parties. It definitely outshines most of its rivals though.

Here's how it stacks up against the competition:

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overall score
Samsung Galaxy A5	57.9	60.7	66.6	Below Average
Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime	63.0	60.3	68.3	Below Average
Xiaomi Mi 3	64.9	64.8	66.6	Below Average
Sony Xperia C3 Dual	66.2	61.1	75.3	Average
Lenovo Vibe X2	66	67.7	71.8	Average
Sony Xperia C3 Dual (Clear Audio)	68.3	65.8	71.6	Average
Motorola Moto G (2014)	66.5	66.2	75.1	Average
Lenovo S90 Sisley	66.6	65.9	75.7	Good
Xiaomi Redmi 2	70.8	70.9	77.4	Very Good

Messaging

The messaging section is business as usual with all SMS/MMS communication is organized into threads. Attaching a photo, video, audio recording or the like automatically turns your message into an MMS.

The messaging app supports MMS

The Lenovo Sisley also comes with Hangouts, which is another way to handle texts. It can now handle all of your text messages, including SMS and MMS, so you can center most of your conversations in one place I that suits you.

For email, the Gmail app includes the four inbox options (Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates) that Google recently introduced in their online interface. The default Email app is similar to Gmail and can also handle multiple POP or IMAP inboxes, which is useful for when you want to keep track of multiple accounts from one place.

Full-blown email experience

The Lenovo S90 Sisley employs the stock Android keyboard, which many users like. It stretches nicely on the 5" display and allows for a really quick typing. You can enhance it even further by turning on the Gesture typing. A cool little feature is that you can use the volume rocker to move the cursor left or right when you're in a text box.