Back at Mobile World Congress, Lenovo unveiled three new smartphones. Yesterday, Lenovo made the top-of-the line S860 (above) available for pre-order in India, and will be priced at $349 unlocked. This is a unique, and kind of odd, handset.

Lenovo’s main selling point for the S860 is the massive battery: “Its huge 4000mAh battery delivers up to 24 hours’ talk time on 3G and 43 hours on 2G, plus 40 days’ active standby.”¹ Notice the 3G reference in that quote. The S860 is not 4G compatible, a major strike against the device. Anyhow, as a result of the gigantic battery, the phone itself is huge. The dimensions are: 149.5 mm x 10.3 mm x 77.0 mm, and the S860 weighs nearly half a pound. The phone is cased in an aluminium brushed metal unibody.

The display is 5.3 inches and has a 1280 x 720 HD resolution. The phone is powered by a mid-tiered 1.3GHz Quad Core processor and runs, quite strangely, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean – two builds ago. Lenovo has stated that it will update the OS to Android 4.4 sometime in the near future. The 8 mega-pixel main camera on the S860 is pretty lackluster. The most interesting feature on the S860, however, is the “USB On-The-Go Charging and Sharing.” The battery is so powerful that the phone can act as a backup power source for other devices.

Overall, the S860 is a strange device, with and odd mix of features. It is not clear whether the device will be launched in the U.S. but the $349 would make it a difficult phone to sell.