Gionee S6 Pro

With a starting price at Rs. 7,499, the Gionee 6S Pro is available in Gold, Silver and Rose Gold. Just like the Gionee A1, the 6S Pro also has an internal storage of 64GB with expandable storage. It also has a 13-megapixel rear camera, and 8-megapixel front camera with a rear LED flash. The device operates on Android 6.0, with the software skin as Amigo 3.2 UI.

The new phone sports an all-metal body with a 5.5-inch full-HD IPS display which is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

At the front top, there is a call receiver with the front camera lens and the proximity sensor. The back of the device consists of the camera lens with LED flash and secondary noise cancellation microphone. Under this is Gionee’s logo and another one at the bottom, and at the top of the device has a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

At the front bottom below the screen lies a physical home button between two touch-sensitive buttons which are not back-lit. The physical Home button comes with a fingerprint scanner embedded in it. To unlock the phone with the fingerprint scanner, you have to touch the Home button. If you want to jump to the home screen from any menu, you need to press the button. 

Moving to the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port for charging, along with two speaker grills of which the left one is a microphone while the right one is the speaker grill.

The right is where both volume rockers and power button are located. On the left lies the SIM card slot which can accommodate a Micro SIM along with a Nano SIM or a micro-SD card.

The Gionee S6 Pro sports a 5.5 inch Full HD IPS LCD which is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3, but the colour temperature is more on the warmer side of the scale. The adaptive brightness is perfect, and the display is easily visible under direct sunlight. Watching videos can be a bit of a letdown, especially if you increase the audio to high volume. The audio quality on the earphones is definitely better than the speaker.

The Gionee S6 Pro is powered by an Octa-Core 1.8 GHz MediaTek MT6755 with Mali-T860MP2 GPU. It has 4GB of RAM and 64GB internal storage with expandable memory up to 256GB via microSD card. The device performed smoothly through daily functions like browsing, watching videos and messaging. During the daily usage as well as multitasking, we didn’t see any lag either.

When tested for gaming performance, there was no glitch or any lag. However, after 30 minutes of testing, the phone did get a bit warm, but that is understandable considering its metallic body. The one disappointing feature was the vibration intensity on this device. Clearly, Gionee has opted to cut costs and settle for a below average vibration motor.

The Gionee S6 Pro possesses an 8MP front camera and a 13MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture, LED flash, and an auto-focus setting. Both the cameras perform decently, but the images produced aren’t too spectacular. When clicking pictures in low-light conditions, the camera doesn’t take in too much light, and so the photos come out grainy, noisy and lack sharpness.

The front camera does have a flash too, but it is quite useless since the flash makes the lighting look unnatural. Adding to this, the photos taken also tend to be overexposed or underexposed, and look far from natural.

Having said that, the camera app also provides features such as Panorama, Slow Motion, Manual Mode and Time Lapse amongst others.

The S6 Pro is backed by a 3130 mAh Lithium-Polymer battery which will easily last for an entire day and a half with normal usage. On a slow day, it’ll last you a day. However, the phone doesn’t support fast charge and can take up to 2 hours to charge to 100 per cent.

With respectable software performance, decent cameras and good battery life, the S6 Pro still comes across as overpriced. Other phones such as the Asus Zenfone 3, the Samsung Galaxy A7 2016, the latest Vivo V5 or the Nexus 5X perform better in terms of camera quality and display, which gives them the upper hand in the market over the Gionee S6 Pro.