The Gionee S6 and Gionee S6s are pretty average products. They just have good battery life and good build quality. They were priced a little over Rs 15,000, so we weren’t expecting much. However, the S6 Pro is priced at Rs 23,999. So, the Gionee 6s Pro competes directly with the Xiaomi Mi 5 (Review), Moto Z Play (Review), HTC One A9 and Asus Zenfone 3 (ZE520KL). Does the S6 Pro justify its price? Let’s find out.
Gionee S6 Pro design and build quality
The design profile of the new model is very similar to the Gionee S6, except for a few changes. The design of the edges is eye-catching. According to Gionee, the S6 Pro has a metal chassis which makes it look premium and sturdy. The phone is slim and doesn’t feel too bulky. The fit and finish is good for the most part, except for the home button which has a bit of a rough edge.
The display has adequate brightness for outdoor use. The resolution is also decent for sharp images and text. It has a 5.5-inch full-HD IPS panel with Gorilla Glass 3 protection. There are two capacitive buttons but they do not have backlighting. You will also find a notification LED along with the front camera at the top of the phone. The hybrid dual-SIM tray is present on the left while the power and volume buttons are on the right. The headphone socket is on the top and the USB Type-C port is at the bottom. This phone has a mono speaker.
There is a 13-megapixel camera on the back panel along with a single LED flash. The fingerprint sensor is integrated into the home button. Instead of writing the IMEI number on the metal frame, Gionee has used a simple sticker which is an eye-catcher.
The S6 Pro comes with a 10W wall adapter, USB cable, headset, screen guard and silicone case. The quality of the accessories is good and they seem durable. The build quality is good and the slim profile makes it easy to use with one hand. The phone does slip from hands sometimes, but we wouldn’t call it bad.
Gionee S6 Pro specifications and features
The phone uses an octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 chipset which is more powerful than the commonly used MT6753 chipset. You will get 64 GB of storage with 4 GB of RAM. You will be able to increase the storage up to 128 GB via microSD card.
Other specifications of Gionee S6 Pro include Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi b/g/n, GPS, FM radio and USB OTG. Considering the Pro version, we expected Wi-Fi 802.11ac and NFC. But it is not available. This phone supports 4G LTE along with Voice over LTE.
Like the S6s, the S6 Pro will run Gionee’s Amigo 3.2 user interface based on Android Marshmallow. This is not our favorite version. It is a layered UI.
In the Settings app, you will find the Edge bar. This is a vertical list of app shortcuts that can be accessed by swiping left or right on the home button. You can add up to 6 shortcuts here. With the split screen feature, you will also be able to reply to incoming messages while watching a video. For this, you will not even have to close the video player.
Due to Amigo UI, you will get many apps pre-installed. You will also be able to remove all third party apps. But it will not be possible to do this with Gionee’s app.
The phone comes with Gionee’s own VR launcher app which works with most Google Cardboard VR headsets. We tried using it with the OnePlus Loop VR headset. It worked without any problems.
Gionee S6 Pro performance
Despite the heavy skin, the overall performance is good. We never felt any lag while switching between apps or running system animations. The edges of the phone get a little warm while using the camera. Sometimes the entire body of the phone also gets warm. But this problem did not occur frequently. The GPU performance was a little weak. The fingerprint sensor works fine to unlock the device.
The S6 Pro does a good job with media playback. Videos with high bitrates played just fine. Audio quality is also pretty good. However, the speakers are a little weak and the sound is not very loud at high volumes. The stock audio and video player does a good job of separating your media files. You also get DTS Audio Boost.
The lack of PDAF or laser autofocus in the 13-megapixel primary camera means that it is a bit difficult to take sharp and blur-free photos. The focusing time could have been a little less. It focuses even slower in low light. Landscape shots lack detail and colour, we faced this problem even in daylight. These photos don’t look bad when viewed on the phone’s display, but the deficiency becomes clearly visible on a larger screen. We noticed a lack of detail in macro shots. Photos taken in low light are worse than average. There is a lot of lack of detail and a lot of noise in them.
Gionee has made big claims about the screen flash feature on the handset for selfies. But the reality is that it is not capable enough to light your face, let alone group selfies. The 8-megapixel front camera is nothing special. The good thing is that the camera interface is easy to use. You get a lot of options with it. You have Pro, Slow Motion and Panorama shooting modes. The video recording capability is 1080p. The quality is average. We feel the camera could have been better.
(Click to see camera samples of Gionee S6 Pro)
The 3130mAh battery lasted 10 hours and 13 minutes in the video loop test, which can be called good. In normal use, we were able to use the phone for more than a day without needing to charge it. You will not get fast charging, but the charger provided with the phone fully charges the battery in about two hours.
Our verdict
Expensive smartphones in the mid-range segment are generally good all-rounder handsets. These devices are not made keeping the budget in mind, so the company tries to give excellent performance in one or two departments. And customers are also happy with satisfactory performance in other departments. Gionee’s previous S6 models have been excellent in battery life and build quality, but there was nothing memorable in other departments. Sadly, nothing has changed in the S6 Pro as well.
Apart from the build quality, battery life and display, there is nothing in this phone that would make you choose it over similarly priced smartphones from Lenovo, Xiaomi, Asus or HTC. The cameras are the weak link. The selfie camera along with the primary camera gives average performance in all kinds of lighting. The phone gets a little warm while using the camera. Gionee has not provided features like Wi-Fi 802.11ac, NFC, backlit capacitive buttons and fast charging. We cannot recommend you to buy this phone.