The fight for the best affordable phone in Asia: Lenovo Lemon 3 goes official, to rival the Xiaomis of the world

China has become the world's largest phone market in recent years and over there, the competition is intense, especially when it comes to affordable phones. If you start counting Chinese phone makers, you might as well find that there is a brand for every one of the billion people living in the world's most populous country.

It should come as no surprise then, that days after Xiaomi (a company said to be the world's second highest valued start-up after Uber) unveiled its Redmi 3, Lenovo is announcing a rival to the phone in the same price tier: the new Lenovo Lemon 3.

Great value for the money

Now, keep in mind that here we are talking about phones that are officially sold only in China (and in some other Asian countries), but that will most likely not be officially sold in the United States or Europe. Still, it's interesting how such cheap devices push the envelope of what's possible in an affordable phone.

Here is what the Lenovo Lemon 3 is all about: at an official price of just around $106 in China (699 yuan, if you buy it via re-seller expect a double digit price hike), it brings a 5-inch display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 octa-core system chip under the hood, a 13-megapixel rear cam coupled with a 5-megapixel selfie shooter and a plentiful for its class 16GB of internal storage.

We also consider the presence of Dolby Surround effects as an interesting extra (it's hard to what this really means, but hopefully, it's an indication that Lenovo has taken care to make sound on this affordable phone better than standard). Apart from all this, the phone itself looks sleek, with a fairly non-chubby, 7.99mm thin body.

The only part where it clearly loses the comparison with the Xiaomi Redmi 3 is the battery: while the Xiaomi features a 4,100mAh cell, here you have a 2,750mAh battery.