Lenovo's Zuk Z2 Smartphone to Launch in 2016, Confirms CEO

Lenovo-owned Zuk, the company that launched the Zuk Z1 smartphone earlier this year, would be launching the handset's successor Zuk Z2 next year, said the company CEO. However, no particular dates were given.

The announcement, which came from the company CEO's Weibo page (via Gizmochina), also suggested that the Zuk Z1 users would be receiving a new ZUI version based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, sometime in March next year. The version's closed beta is expected to reach by the end of next month. Although the CEO has not yet confirmed, rumours suggest the Zuk Z2 to sport a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor. The chipset is set to launch on Tuesday.

Last month, Zuk Z1 smartphone reached international markets with Cyanogen OS 12.1, as promised in August. The smartphone in China was launched with the firm's own ZUI skin running atop Android 5.1.1 Lollipop out-of-the-box. Rest of the hardware remains the same.

To recall, the Zuk Z1 features a 5.5-inch full-HD (1080x1920 pixels) display and sports a physical home button on the front panel. Notably, the home button on the Z1 smartphone also embeds the fingerprint scanner. Much like recently launched flagship smartphones, Lenovo's Zuk Z1 features the USB Type-C 3.0 port. Under the hood, the new smartphone packs a dated Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.5GHZ coupled with 3GB of RAM and Adreno 330 GPU. The handset supports dual Nano-SIM cards and packs 64GB of inbuilt storage.

The smartphone sports a 13-megapixel rear camera with Sony sensor (IMX214) and optical image stabilisation (OIS), another feature that's found in high-end smartphones. There is an 8-megapixel front-facing camera also on board. It packs a large 4100mAh battery and will be available in White and Grey colours. The Zuk Z1 smartphone measures 155.7x77.3x8.9mm and weighs 175 grams. The model launched in China supports both 4G LTE bands in India (FDD-LTE Band 3 1800MHz and TDD-LTE Band 40 2300MHz).