Gionee S6

The Gionee S6 starts at Rs. 6,999 and is available in 3 colours – silver, rose gold and gold. The device has a 3GB RAM with 32GB of internal storage and expandable memory up to 128GB via a micro-SD card. The phone supports dual sims and runs on OS Android 5.1.

The Gionee S6 has a 5.5-inch HD AMOLED display with a Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. The phone’s weight is 147g, and thickness is 6.9mm. The phone’s metal exterior, flat back panel and sharp edges give it a premium and elegant look and feel and feels quite compact for a big screen smartphone. The bezels on the front side are pretty sleek, despite the fact that Gionee has not incorporated them within the display.

The top front part above the screen has a 5MP, LED light, the earpiece and a proximity sensor. The capacitive buttons at the bottom for navigation are not backlit and are decently responsive. At the bottom under the screen is the USB Type-C charging port along with two speaker grilles.

Flipping to the back, there is a 13MP camera and an LED flash. Under that is the Gionee company branding and that’s about it.

The device supports Dual-SIM 4G with VoLTE, which is accommodated by the SIM tray on the left of the panel. You’ll have the option between choosing another SIM or a microSD card.

The right side of the panel has the volume and the power button and the volume rockers, and the top of the panel also has a 3.5mm audio jack.

As mentioned above, the S6 has a 5.5-inch HD AMOLED display with a screen resolution of 1280x720p which is protected by Gorilla Glass 3. The screen size is pretty impressive for the overall size of the phone, and it is quite legible under daylight conditions. The viewing angles are good, and the colours are vibrant and pop out, sometimes maybe a little too much. The display is also slightly resistant to fingerprints, and one of the drawbacks of the display is that it doesn’t offer full HD resolution.

Gionee is powered by an octa-core MediaTek MT6753T SoC operating at 1.3GHz and 3GB RAM. The SoC is a bit of a let down considering the pricing of the phone, but it also supports 4G LTE on Band40 as well as VoLTE.

The Gionee S6 runs the Amigo 3.1 skin on top of Android 5.1 Lollipop, which comes with its own set of apps, and any third party apps that are present can be uninstalled.

This device is excellent for multi-tasking as it shuffles smoothly between apps. The performance is lag-free as there is around 1.6GB RAM available at any given point.

After gaming for about 30 minutes, the phone gets a bit warm but never uncomfortably hot. The quality of voice calls is good, although the earpiece feels a bit uncomfortable if you’re on a long call. Audio quality is better with the headset than with the loudspeaker. It isn’t great for watching movies, but notifications and alerts sound good.

The 13MP camera does an excellent job in good lighting conditions, but sometimes the colours of the images were a little over saturated.

The results of macro shots and landscape shots had lovely detailing and sharpness, and the camera was quick to focus. Clicking photos in low-light conditions is a task since the images turn out grainy. The front facing 5MP camera can take satisfactory selfies, especially indoors. Video recording is good too due to the stabilization software.

The Gionee S6 has a 3150mAh non-removable battery which lasted almost 12 hours after our video loop test. The battery charges quite quickly, and we could get a full charge in a little over an hour. On a typical day, the phone lasted us a day and a half without charging.

While the S6 has a good battery life, we’re not sure it justifies the pricing of the product. It doesn’t stand up to its competitors, especially when phones like LeEco 1S and Huawei Honor 5X offers similar features for a far lesser price.