The company’s ‘S’ series consists of premium handsets and we saw the launch of Gionee S6 earlier this year. The Chinese company has now launched the Gionee S6S, an upgraded variant of the Gionee S6. Gionee claims that the ‘Selfie Flash’ is one of the biggest features of this smartphone. Gionee claims that it is targeting young customers in the age group of 18 to 25 years who are fond of selfies with the new handset.
But can the Gionee S6s with its stunning unibody metal design compete with other smartphones in this price range? Find out in this review.
Look and design
With a unibody design, the Gionee S6S feels comfortable to hold in hands. Its metal edges provide great grip. But weighing 166 grams, the Gionee S6S is a bit heavy for its size.
The front of the phone has a 5.5 inch 2.5D curved display which comes with Corning Gorilla Glass coating. While the rear of the phone is made of metal. The phone has a gold lining on the rear edge which gives the phone a premium look. Like its other smartphones, Gionee has given three capacitive buttons for back, home and recent. The front camera is given above the display along with an LED flash.
There is a rear camera with LED flash on the rear panel of the phone. And a fingerprint scanner is given just below the camera. Gionee’s new logo is below the fingerprint scanner. There is a speaker grill at the bottom of the rear along with the company’s branding. The phone has power and volume buttons on the right panel while there is a hybrid SIM slot on the left. There is a regular micro-USB charging slot and a 3.5mm audio jack at the bottom. With a thickness of 8.15 mm, Gionee S6S is definitely not the slimmest smartphone available in the market but it did not feel uncomfortable during use.
However, we would like to point out that if the ‘Gionee’ branding was removed from the rear of the handset, the S6s could easily be mistaken for an Oppo, Huawei or Leica smartphone. Many handsets that come with a metal unibody design now have rear panels that look similar on all sides. For example, the lines on the top and bottom of the handset and the placement of the cameras are all similar, apart from the round fingerprint scanner.
The company has launched the S6s in India in Latte Gold and Mocha Gold colours. We got the Latte Gold unit for review.
The 5.5 inch full HD display given in the phone is sharp and very bright. We were able to use the S6S smartphone quite well in sunlight. We did not face any problem with the viewing angle during use. Gionee S6S has an in-cell IPS display. Watching movies and playing games on the phone was also a fun experience and we did not face any problem during this.
Overall, the Gionee S6A has a pretty good design and the build quality of the phone is great. However, the edges of the handset could have been more rounded for easier use.
Specifications and software
Gionee S6S has a 5.5 inch full HD (1080×1920 pixels) IPS display and comes with Corning Gorilla Glass. The company has provided 2.5D curved glass in the S6S. The dual SIM Gionee S6S runs on the company’s Amigo 3.2 which runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
This phone has a 1.3 GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6753 processor. This phone has 3 GB RAM. It is worth noting that Gionee is one of those brands that is continuously using MediaTek chipset.
The S6S has a 13-megapixel autofocus rear camera with Sony IMX258 sensor, LED flash and f/2.0. This phone also has an 8-megapixel fixed-focus front facing camera with LED flash. The front camera also comes with aperture f/2.2 aperture and a 5P lens. Apart from this, the front camera also has screen flash support. The S6A has 32 GB inbuilt storage. This phone comes with a hybrid dual SIM card slot. Storage can be increased up to 128 GB via microSD card.
Talking about connectivity, Gionee S6S has features like 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, 3.5mm headphone jack and Micro-USB. This phone has a 3150 mAh non-removable battery. There is a fingerprint sensor on the rear panel. S6S comes with a regular micro USB slot. Gionee S6S comes with a display protector film and a transparent case.
Gionee S6s runs on the company’s Amigo 3.2 custom ROM which is based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The S6s has some new visual effects which were not available in the previous phone. Users can now arrange apps on the home screen with two new options. With Cleanup, new apps can be moved to the top or bottom of the home screen. Apart from this, with Arrange, users can arrange apps in different panes.
As before, there is no app drawer on the phone and all apps are displayed on multiple home-screens. Many Chinese handset makers have revamped their custom Android versions which results in fewer apps coming preloaded on these devices. However, the same cannot be said for Gionee as the S6s comes with a host of apps preinstalled. These include Gionee Zedder, Hotoday, Compass, Mobile Anti-theft app, G Store, System Manager and Mood Wallpaper. The Gionee S6s also comes with its own Shamilion app which lets you use the camera to pick a color from any object and create a color theme based on it.
The Gionee S6s comes with a number of features such as Fake Calls, Super Screenshot Tool, Theme Park and Extreme Battery Mode setting. Other software features on this phone are also seen on the Gionee Marathon M5 Plus (Review).
The software on the Gionee S6S definitely looks better than the Marathon M5 Plus. The Marathon M5 Plus runs on Amigo 3.1 which is based on Android 5.1 Lollipop. However, the biggest problem with the software is the pre-installed apps that cannot be removed.
Performance
We did not face any problem while multitasking on the Gionee S6s nor did we face any performance issues during day to day use. We did notice some frame drops while playing Dead Trigger 2 on the Gionee S6s. Apart from this, we also felt the phone heating up when playing games for long periods of time but the phone never felt uncomfortable to use.
Voice calls on the Gionee S6S are clear and we did not face any call drops. We also spent some time reading an e-book on the Gionee S6S and did not face any issues with the display. There was no problem with 4G connectivity on the phone, although we could not test VoLTE on the phone.
Gionee S6s performance was great and we were able to run everything on the phone. The phone gave decent results in benchmarking tests.
We have to give a special shout out to the music app on the phone as it has a lot of tweaking options. The audio quality from the speakers is great and we were able to play loud music without any issues. The speakers are not great for watching long movies.
The Gionee S6s has a 13-megapixel rear camera with a Sony sensor. And we took some good photos with good details and accurate colours. However, when we zoom in and crop the images, the detailing is lacking. But the photos taken in low light with the S6s are much better than the Marathon M5 Plus.
The company has said that the biggest feature of Gionee S6S is its front camera. The phone gives excellent selfies with accurate colors if the lighting is good. But, the quality of selfies is not that good in low light. Gionee has provided video flash along with front flash to make selfies even better. But this flash also does not work very well.
We liked the camera app of Gionee S6S and it launches quickly. We did not face any problem in the app. Apart from this, the camera has features like Panorama, Slow Motion, Macro, Night, Time Lapse, Text Recognition, HDR, Professional, Smart Scene, Ultra Pixel, Mood Photo, PicNote, GIF and Smart Scan. Apart from this, the camera app also has other features like scene mode, exposure and white balance. Video can be recorded up to 1080 pixels from the rear camera.
battery life
The Gionee S6S smartphone has a 3150 mAh non-removable battery. In our video loop test, the battery of Gionee S6S lasted for 13 hours and 10 minutes which cannot be called bad. The battery of S6S lasts longer than its previous smartphone S6.
With normal usage, the Gionee S6s lasted more than a day. On a single full charge, we were able to use the phone for more than 30 hours. The phone took just 2 hours to charge from zero to 100 percent. However, the phone does not officially support fast charging.
Our verdict
At Rs 17,999, the Gionee S6s is a fantastic package with an all-metal design. But the company is selling this smartphone as one of the best selfie shooters available in the market and we weren’t too impressed with the phone’s performance in low light.
Apart from this, we did not like the overall performance of the phone and we felt the problem of heating in the phone while doing serious tasks and frame drops during gaming. Overall, Gionee A6s is a decent phone. We did not face any problem during everyday use of the phone.
There are many phones available in the market in the price range of Rs 15,000 which come with the same specifications as Gionee S6S. We have to see how Gionee will establish itself in the market. The low price of S6S can help the company to get success for this smartphone in the market. The biggest advantage of Gionee S6S is that it is easily available in the market at offline retailers.
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