Review: Gionee S6 Pro is a Good Device Competing with Better Ones

Is Gionee S6 Pro a better buy than Xiaomi Mi 5 and the One Plus 3? What about the value for money? Read the review.

Gionee S6 Pro offers good performance, but can we call it a value-for-money device? Read this review to find out. (Photo: Shiv Kumar Maurya/The Quint)

Trust Gionee to grab attention with a few clever additions. Their last few smartphones stand testimony to this – the Gionee Marathon had super stand-by owing to a 6,020 mAh battery. Then there’s the recently released Gionee S6 S with a selfie flash.

But the Gionee S6 Pro, priced at Rs 23,999, is a no-fuss smartphone. It looks like any regular smartphone nowadays. So does it offer something to hold your attention? Just scroll further to find out.

Pros:

• Metallic build. Premium look
• Full HD crisp display
• 4GB RAM. Fast performance

• Good fingerprint sensor
• Decent camera
  

Cons:

• Finishing slightly off the mark
• Average battery life

What’s Good?

The Gionee S6 Pro is a "97% metallic" phone, as Gionee claims. It looks quite robust and fits perfectly in the palm owing to a curved back panel. The phone has antenna lines along the top and bottom of the back panel, as seen on the iPhone 6.

The phone has visible antenna lines on the back panel, as seen on Apple iPhone 6 and 6S. (Photo: Shiv Kumar Maurya/The Quint)

The ‘Pro’ is also suffixed for a reason. The 4G VoLTE-enabled smartphone has 4GB RAM paired with an octa-core 1.8GHz MediaTek processor. When you get so much power in your hands, you’re naturally going to download some high-end games. But fret not, the 64 GB of space on-board shall take care of it. It’s further expandable to 128 GB. It runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with a custom UI, Amigo, overlaid.

The phone uses a USB Type-C port to connect to the charger, and has dual speakers which are loud enough. (Photo: Shiv Kumar Maurya/The Quint)

The smartphone has a fingerprint scanner which also doubles up as a home button. It needs a bit of getting used to though, since it’s quite thin and hence only registers a small patch of your skin. The scanner also has an ‘edge bar’ which activates on gesture-based actions on the fingerprint scanner. For example, if you slide your finger from the left edge, a quick navigation menu pops up.

And yes, it has a headphone jack too. It’s not that difficult, eh, Apple? (Photo: Shiv Kumar Maurya/The Quint)

Another area where the Gionee S6 Pro is certainly a worthy competitor in this segment is the camera. Housing a 13-megapixel camera at the back and an 8-megapixel shooter at the front, it clicks quite vivid and detailed shots. But beyond the usual are the add-ons, which come in the default camera options. There are different modes for camera usage. It has a ‘text-edit’ mode also, wherein you can edit the text in a photo clicked by the phone. In our usage, it worked quite well for most of the English fonts.

A sample photograph taken in auto mode. (Photo: Shiv Kumar Maurya/The Quint)

A sample picture in regular mode. (Photo: Shiv Kumar Maurya/The Quint)

As the light dips, noise creeps into the photograph, giving it all a very hazy effect. (Photo: Shiv Kumar Maurya/The Quint)

And all of it appears on a clean 5.5-inch Full HD display. It has been optimised for virtual reality too.

What’s Bad?

Battery drain was one of the serious issues crippling the smartphone we reviewed. The 3,130 mAh battery drained quite fast. It will have you looking for a charger after six-seven hours if you’re an active user.

The phone’s quite thin and manages to fit in the palm quite easily. (Photo: Shiv Kumar Maurya/The Quint)

The build quality also got us concerned because the blue lining on the chamfered edges came off after carrying it in pocket just a few times. Also, the device got really hot while charging, or even when using the camera for an extended time. There’s a lot of ‘handle with care’ written all over there.

The lining on the chamfered edges came off after a week’s use. (Photo: Aaqib Raza Khan/The Quint)

The corners were the worst hit. (Photo: Aaqib Raza Khan/The Quint)

Why Buy It?

The Gionee S6 Pro holds out a good proposition if you consider the performance it brings to the table. But the problem? The table has other phones too, such as Xiaomi Mi 5 or LeEco Max 2, in a similar price range. If the Gionee S6 Pro impressed you with its performance but you wish for more bang for your buck, do check out the One Plus 3.