bought this phone today, as per headline.i got on their help page and it seems a big problem, i was not informed of this today when i bought the phone, any advice would be grateful, going back to the shop tomorrow thanks KC

Just been through this with a Lenovo K3 Note, similar model.

Search on the internet how to"root" your phone, load recovery software and then load a non Chinese "ROM"

A Singaporean guy called Jin Lin does a nice video on how to do it and it worked for me.:

Just search for the right ROM for your model

Thanks. I was gonna buy a Lenovo today.

Better specs than the Samsung model and 70% of the price.

Guess I'll wait a while longer to decide.

Is the Play Store "not working" or just not there?

Lenovo phones sold for the Chinese market often don't have all the Google Services Framework (not only Google Play)

Adding it is possible but non-trivial and requires rooting the phone.

On the other hand, like Burl Ives said, there's often the possibility of installing an alternate firmware, either one official Lenovo firmware for the western world, or some custom firmware.

thanks for the replies, app store was there but not working, the lady got a message the next day, it would appear, they new i had bought this phone and it upgraded itself, no problems , she very happy with it, and to the person thinking of not going ahead to buy one, go ahead, she knows more about phones than me.likes it better than her samsung. and cost to me was 5,500, was 6,000 (leave thais to negotiate) lol

Thanks. I was gonna buy a Lenovo today.

Better specs than the Samsung model and 70% of the price.

Guess I'll wait a while longer to decide.

Which Lenovo is better than a Samsung?

I almost bought their top phablet once but

It didn't stack up against the note 4 or 5 at the time

Bssicslly everything was a grade lower..... From battery to screen and so on...