By Chris Chang, posted Nov 2, 2011 at 3:37 PM, 728 views,

Lenovo Creating The Greatest Phone Ever: WP7+Android

China’s largest PC maker Lenovo is doing something “top secret”. Recently, the company’s senior product manager for Lenovo Lepad revealed a mysterious device running Microsoft’s Windows Phone Mango operating system, while we all know Lenovo’s been snugging up to Android for its smartphones and tablets all this time. So, is there a new Lenovo smartphone in the works for Mango? Or a phone that dual boots Android and Mango?

First, here are the photos posted by Lenovo’s product manager on Sina Microblog (China’s Twitter-like service):

Looking closer at the Windows Phone-powered handset, we noticed something. See that penguin and the “red-eye” logos? The penguin logo actually represents QQ, the number one IM in China. As for the red eye logo, it represents Sina Weibo, the number one social network in China. As far as we know, social media services are integrated tightly into the peoples hub on Windows Phone, and since both Twitter and Facebook are banned by the Great Firewall, QQ and Sina Weibo will eventually replace Twitter and Facebook. So, that’s why we are seeing QQ and Weibo appearing on the home screen of the mysterious handset.

Lenovo LePhone S2

What’s more, this mysterious phone actually looks similar to the upcoming Lenovo LePhone S2, the company’s next generation smartphone. According to Chinese tech site PCPOP, the Lephone S2 features a heavily customized Android 2.3 OS, 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chip, 800 x 480 TFT LCD display, 8-megapixel rear camera (with 720p recording), 0.3-megapixel VGA camera on the front, a micro SD card slot (supports up to 32GB). Comparing with its predecessor, the S2 features a smaller plus lighter body, better camera and probably better battery life. It runs on both UMTS networks, like the one AT&T uses in the U.S., and CDMA EVDO networks, like Verizon uses. However, the phone doesn’t work on any U.S. network. It is built exclusively for the Chinese market, and there’s absolutely no Google services visible—not even the Android Market. And we’re think the phone is debuting soon, since it has received its Chinese network access license.

Probably the most interesting thing is that if Lenovo is really releasing a Windows Phone-powered handset, it will be a new challenger in the Chinese Windows Phone market since Chinese mobile manufacturer ZTE already unveiled their first Windows Phone in China. We would really love to see Chinese mobile manufacturers start kissing Microsoft’s ass…

Source: @Joker (Sina Weibo), PCPOP via Engadget