Gionee has launched their new midrange phone the S6 in India few days back. This phone was first announced in China back in November 2015. The Gionee S6 is yet another metal-clad device and comes with a 5.5 HD Super AMOLED Display with Gorilla glass 3 and a screen to body ratio of 77.8%. It has a symmetric design and cambered design.
The phone is powered by 1.3 GHz, 64 Bit Octa Core processor coupled 3 GB RAM with 32 GB internal storage and expandable memory up to 128 GB. Here is the detailed review of the phone.
Related Reading: Gionee S6 Unboxing
Design and Build:
Gionee’s S series phone are known for slim and metallic design and comes with stylish looks. The Gionee S6 is no different and features an all metal construction. With the device less than 7 mm in thickness it is great to hold and use. The rear panel has a matte finish and has camera unit along with LED flash on the top and the Gionee branding at the center. The sides of the device have a chamfered edges all round with a glossy finishing which gives a premium look.
At the bottom, it comes with USB C type port with speaker unit located on either side with a symmetrical design. The top portion houses the audio jack while the left side has the SIM tray. The power and volume keys are placed on the right side. There is a slight curvature on the rear panel, but it is hardly noticeable. The front panel has 5.5 inch HD display, front camera, sensors and three capacitive buttons which are not backlit.
Overall, the design is one of the strong points of the Gionee S6 and it is definitely a looker.
Display:
The Gionee S6 comes with a 5.5 inch HD SUPER AMOLED display with Gorilla glass 3 and a screen to body ratio of 77.8%.
While we are used to seeing Full HD displays at this price point Gionee has opted for an HD panel. Even though it is an HD panel, colors look quite good, thanks to the AMOLED panel. The touch response is also very smooth and so are the viewing angles.
Ideally, we would have wanted a Full HD panel at this pricing.
Software:
Gionee S6 runs on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop out of the box with the company’s custom Amigo UI 3.1. There haven’t been considerable changes to the UI from what we have seen on Elite S7. It comes with multiple home screens devoid of an app drawer. The notification center does not have quick toggles instead they are available similar to iOS and you need to swipe from the bottom of the screen to pull them.
The version 3.1 of the UI feels more polished than ever. The UI offers some basic customizations and themes and you can also download more themes using the app. There is also widget support on S6.
Another useful option in the S6 is the Chameleon mode which first debuted in the Elife S7. As the name indicates, you can change the color of settings and other option in the phone, by selecting any color using the camera. For example, you can easily open the Chameleon app and point it to any object like leaves or flowers and your settings will have combination colors of these.
The Gionee S6 also features smart gestures like double tap to wake and sleep, smart brightness, smart answer and more. You can also draw patterns on the display and launch apps from the display without turning it on.
The phone also comes with a system manager app which allows you to clean up cache, manage apps and also data traffic limit. The phone also has Kids Home app where you can configure a separate home screen for kids with their own apps. S6 features other apps from Gionee including Xender, Mood card and other bundled apps like Du Battery, Touchpal, 360 Security, WPS office and more.
Performance:
The Gionee S6 runs on 1.3Ghz MediaTek MT6753 Octa Core 64 bit processor coupled with 3GB RAM and Mali-T720MP3 GPU. We tested the phone under various conditions and did not experience any lags and the overall performance was quite good with 3GB RAM and it was a tad better than Elife S7. Even though the MT6753 isn’t a really powerful processor especially at this price, S6 worked without any hiccups and the multitasking was lag free.
The phone ships with 32GB of internal storage out of which around 25GB is available for the user. There is Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, USB OTG, FM radio and Wi-Fi Direct. The phone also supports 4G LTE as well as VoLTE, so you will be able to use it with Reliance’s Jio platform when it is launched. This makes the phone future proof for networks as well.
The call quality on the phone was quite good and we never experienced any dropped calls. The phone comes with dual SIM card, but it is a hybrid slot which means you can either use two SIM card or use one SIM and micro SD expansion which supports up to 128GB. The output from the speaker was also decent especially for multimedia.
The gaming experience on the device was pretty good and when we played graphic intensive games it performed pretty well without any lags. The temperature on the device did rise after prolonged gaming to almost 45 degrees.
Camera:
The phone features a 13MP rear camera with LED flash and a front 5MP camera for selfies and video calls. The camera features lots of modes and options including a professional mode which allows you to manually control aspects like white balance, exposure, shutter speed, ISO and also focus. There is also magic focus mode wherein you can change the focus after taking the photos. Overall, the interface of the camera is pretty good and offers lots of features and options.
We tested the camera in various light conditions and found the performance to be decent. In daylight, the performance was pretty good although the colors looked slightly over saturated. The sharpness levels were decent although some of the photos very blurry and resulted in noise. The low light performance was also decent, but photos were noisy with extreme light conditions. While the camera performance was good, it will not beat other phones in this priced point, especially the Vibe X3, Mi4 or the Q-Terra. There is also a 5MP front camera which is very good for selfies and quality of photos were good. The 1080p recording from the device was just average. Here are some of the samples taken with the camera.
Battery Life:
The phone comes with a 3150mAh battery with USB C type port and the battery performance was quite good on the device. With moderate usage, we could easily get slightly more than a day of battery life with the Gionee S6’s battery. The phone also comes with some useful options to get better battery life. You can enable normal mode or battery saver mode (extreme mode). The extreme mode turns the phone to use only basic functions like call and SMS, but can extend the battery life.
Verdict:
While Gionee S6 is a winner in many aspects including gaming, performance, battery life and design, the pricing is the biggest issue with the phone. With mobile phone market getting more and more competitive, Gionee should be looking for better pricing. We feel the S6 is a bit over priced at this segment which is ruled by Full HD displays and better processors. Other notable omissions from S6 are fingerprint scanner and NFC support.
If you are still looking for a sleek, slim and stylish phone and ready to compromise on features, then Gionee S6 is a decent buy.
