Devices these days are like if they have good looks, they don’t have a good performance and if they’ve got a good performance, they don’t have good looks. But Gionee finally accomplished the impossible with their Gionee S6. Believe it or not, it’s a really great device. It’s been the first time that I’m praising a completely Chinese brand.
Does the Gionee S6 really give a meaning to the brand Gionee? Why should we wait, let’s check it out in the complete review?
DESIGN
The design of the Gionee S6 is done very well. But Gionee hasn’t been constant in its design. Also, the design of this doesn’t look original since people can mistake it to be LeEco. Well, that’s not a big deal since most of the Chinese manufacturers use this design. If we keep it aside. Gionee had done a great job here. The unibody aluminum metal of the device feels very premium to hold. But again, that thing makes this device a bit slippery too and that’s why they provide a silicon case in the box. So, no big deal with that. The phone is very slim and sleek at 6.9mm thick. And does weigh only 147g. The rose gold color of the S6 looks dope but if it gets scratched, the color gets a bit faded. Don’t worry, though, silicon case is there to rescue. The softkeys provided are not backlit so, it gets a bit of a time to get used to them. Also, they’re so responsive that if we touch them wrongly while playing games or doing some work, they respond too fast like in 0.1 sec or so. It’s sometimes annoying and at the same time good too. The device is comfortable to hold and the button placement in spot-on, allowing for some level of single-handed use. The buttons on the side have good tactile feedback as well. At the bottom, we have a USB Type-C charging port (USB 2.0 speeds) which is flanked by two speaker grilles. Around the back, we have a 13-megapixel camera and the LED flash. There’s a 5-megapixel camera on the front as well as a notification LED that’s hidden away in the front facia. So, in the overall design aspect, the phone is good and gives premium device feeling.
DISPLAY
Gionee S6 sports a 5.5-inch HD AMOLED display at a 720 x 1280 pixels with a 267 PPI pixel density and on top of it, Gorilla Glass 3 for protection and it is quite legible under most lighting conditions. However, the colors are wildly oversaturated which can get a little jarring at times. We wished there was an option to tweak the colors for a more natural effect. The touch response is very very good. We were totally impressed with that. The bezels are not too thick too and when the screen is off, the bezels get well mixed up with the display and the phone look bezel-less. Overall, the display is quite good.
HARDWARE
Gionee S6 gives you an octa-core MediaTek MT6753T SoC running at 1.3GHz and 3GB of RAM. It’s not the most powerful SoC to be honest, especially for this price, as we’ve seen this in phones that cost nearly half as much. But still, it performs well on the device because of the software optimization. For storage, there’s 32 GB of onboard storage that you can expand by 256 GB; there’s Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, USB OTG, FM radio and Wi-Fi Direct. The phone supports 4G LTE on Band40 as well as VoLTE, so you will be able to use it with Reliance’s upcoming Jio platform. In overall, the hardware is good too.
SOFTWARE
The Gionee S6 runs the Amigo 3.1 skin on top of Android 5.1 Lollipop. Well, it does look a lot iOS-ish though but it’s good after getting used to it. Gionee has added some neat touches in Amigo 3.1, like the ability to quickly access your hidden photos with a simple pinch-out gesture in the gallery app. You can also safely eject OTG drives by simply tapping the button in the notification bar. It comes well preloaded with some dumb apps like WP Office, DU Battery Saver, Xender, TouchPal keyboard, 360 Anti-virus, Due speed booster and Hungama. Most of the third-party apps like the trial games and productivity apps can be uninstalled. You also get an app called Kids Home, which lets you grant your kids access to select apps. The phone also comes with AMI Note and AMI Lock apps from Gionee, but these weren’t present on our review unit.
Despite the extensive skin, Android runs very smoothly without any hiccups. Multi-tasking and transition effects are lag-free as there’s about 1.6GB of free RAM available at any given point. The phone gets a bit warm during gaming or video playback but never uncomfortably hot. Voice calls are handled well too although the edge around the earpiece doesn’t offer the most comfortable feeling if you’re on a long call. So, in the software department, I like it very well.
CAMERA
The 13-megapixel rear camera captures very good detail and good colors in daylight. Landscapes and macros are sharp and well-detailed and the camera is quick to focus and capture the image. We found the HDR mode to be a bit temperamental as it refused to capture an HDR shot. Low-light shots aren’t great as there’s quite a bit of noise that creeps into the picture, but overall it’s acceptable. The camera app comes with a variety of extra features too like GIF, a barcode scanner, and a professional mode. The 5-megapixel front camera does take some decent selfies and the video with it is good too and is steady because of the software stabilization. Here are some sample images though to check out if you want.
BATTERY
The Gionee S6 with a 3150 mAh battery which can really give you a juice up to 1 and a half day in day-to-day life usage. And with extreme usage, it can survive up to 12 or more hours, based on your usage.
Also, Gionee never told that it comes equipped with fast charging. It went from 0% to 35% in half an hour. Great job is done here Gionee. Well, there was a problem with the adapter that it wasn’t working for me after 2-3 days. Well, I think that might be a fault with our review unit. Other than that, the battery backup is awesome.
CONCLUSION
The Gionee S6 is a well-crafted smartphone and in some ways, offers better value than Oppo’s R7 Lite since it has double the onboard storage, FM radio, and supports VoLTE out-of-the-box. Given its price, we would have liked a more powerful SoC and a better display in the S6, as it would have been a good opportunity for Gionee to truly disrupt the mid-range market. But the company has played it safe and the premium you’re paying is for the design and build.
The Gionee S6 is a good phone in its own right but feels a bit expensive for the hardware on offer. Plus, it’s also lacking some features like NFC and a fingerprint sensor, which would have been nice to have.
Overall, in our opinion, the phone was GOOD.
