Gionee S6 Pro review: Nothing compelling on offer, as compared to rivals

Chinese smartphone maker Gionee has not had a very good year. The company has been overshadowed by the number of brands populating the market. It has also seen a drop in sales which led to changes in its branding as well as marketing. The company still somehow hasn’t been able to make a big impact. It does sell its budget handset, the F103 , quite well in tier 2 and tier 3 cities but the rest of its lineup is still underwhelming. This year they announced two new smartphones the S6 and the S6s , both of which didn’t quite impress. Now comes the S6 Pro which sits right on the top. The smartphone is also the first offering from the company that supports VR. Better late than never I suppose. But is it worth buying the smartphone? Read on for more. Build and Design: 8/10  A smartphone with a metal build is available in almost every price range today. Probably the only differentiating factor for me is how good the finish on the S6 Pro is and how practical it is to use. Gionee has done well here. If you compare the S6 Pro with another metal-clad smartphone priced at say around Rs 10,000, there might not be a huge visual difference. But you can feel the difference. The chamfered edges, the curved glass over the display and that golden colour make the smartphone attractive and worth the money.  The back has a brushed finish and it is slightly curved, both of which improve the grip. The edges are nicely polished, although it feels a little fragile. A few drops or bumps will definitely leave a dent. But that is true of almost all metal smartphones. The power button and volume buttons sitting on the right edge are quite solid. The bottom edge houses the USB type-C port with two speaker grills on either side. Only one of them is the actual speaker while the other is just there for aesthetic reasons. The primary camera sits at the back and offers a slight bump. There is also a dimple under the camera lens which seems like the fingerprint scanner, however it only houses the Gionee logo. The fingerprint scanner is actually embedded in the home button sitting below the display. Features: 7/10 The S6 Pro is Gionee’s most expensive offering this year for the Indian market, so I was expecting a feature packed device. However it doesn’t sound very convincing on paper when compared to other smartphones in the range. It comes with a 5.5-inch display with Full HD (1920x1080) resolution and a 2.5D curved glass on top. The handset is powered by a MediaTek Helio P10 chipset having an octa-core processor clocked at 1.8GHz with 4GB of RAM and a Mali-T860MP2 GPU. In the storage department there is 64GB of internal memory which can be expanded using a microSD card.  At the back there is a 13MP camera with an LED flash, f/2.0 aperture and phase detection autofocus. At the front there is an 8MP camera. Other features include a fingerprint sensor embedded in the physical home button, a 3,130mAh battery and dual-SIM card support. In terms of connectivity features, the handset offers 4G LTE, VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and USB Type-C port. It runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Amigo OS 3.2 UI. This is Gionee’s first VR enabled handset, and the company also announced a dedicated VR headset for the S6 Pro. However, we weren’t provided with a unit so we can’t say much about it. Display: 7.5/10 Gionee has used a 5.5-inch IPS LCD panel for the handset. With a Full HD (1920x1080) resolution, you get 401ppi which is pretty good in terms of sharpness. It is slightly curved all around the edges which gives it a nice finish. The screen to body ratio is almost 73 percent which means overall the handset doesn’t feel huge, although I think the area above the display could’ve been trimmed down a touch.  It isn’t the most unique display, but the quality is satisfying. The tone is slightly towards the warm side and surprisingly, there are no options to adjust that manually. Colours are punchy, contrast is also under check. Even the brightness feels sufficient in almost all conditions. OS and Software: 7.5/10 The handset runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Gionee’s own UI called Amigo OS. It’s your usual Chinese styled UI with a missing app drawer and a variety of UI changes. The quick setting toggles for instance can be accessed by swiping from bottom up, while swiping down from the top brings in the notification shade. There is a theme app, a special dynamic lock screen wallpaper app and bunch of bloatware, including games, on the handset.  The fingerprint scanner embedded into the home button is impressive. Not only is it super quick but it’s also really accurate. It managed to read my fingerprint from any position without any hesitation, something which my Nexus 6P can’t do. It also offers a swipe gesture which brings up a special drawer from the left or the right (depends on what direction you swiped) that includes apps and settings. Performance: 7.5/10 At the heart of the smartphone is a MediaTek MT6755 Helio P10 octa-core processor with four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.8GHz and the other four Cortex-A53 cores at 1GHz. There is 4GB of RAM which is plenty for multitasking. Handling the graphics is a Mali-T860MP2 GPU. The P10 processor has proved to be one of MediaTek’s more successful SoCs but it isn’t a workhorse. Having said that I didn’t face any performance issues. It managed to perform quite good actually, probably because of the optimised UI.  Gaming performance is pretty good. I played Asphalt Nitro for about 30 minutes and everything seemed to be in order. Yes, heat is there but to be honest the handset goes warm rather than boiling up.  In terms of raw benchmark performance, the handset is no match against any of its competitors. Be it the **Xiaomi Mi5** , **LeEco Le Max 2** or the **OnePlus 3** , it can’t catch up. In my opinion, the Helio P10 is made for handsets priced between the Rs 10,000-15,000 price range. Not that I am complaining about the overall performance, but Gionee could’ve used a more capable SoC. No issues with call performance as the sound is loud enough and I didn’t notice any disturbances. I tried a bit VoLTE calling through Jio as well which turned out be great. Camera: 6.5/10 The smartphone features a 13MP primary camera with an f/2.0 aperture aided with an LED flash and a phase detection autofocus system. On the front there is an 8MP unit for selfie lovers. The camera app is easy to use and quick on the response. There are a bunch of filters to play around with. You can also experiment with the variety of modes including panorama, slow motion video, time-lapse, HDR, GIF, barcode scanner and a special ultrapixel feature which bumps up the pixel resolution to 9312 x 6976. I fail to see what’s the point of that? There is a manual mode which honestly improves the quality, but only if you know how to use the exposure settings properly. The camera takes good looking pictures which seem sharp and colour rich. However viewing the pictures on a larger display reveals that the colours are a bit dull and the contrast is not up to the mark. Noise starts creeping in even when shooting in daylight. Also, some pictures seemed oversharpened. I did like the macro capabilities of the camera though. The front camera is also just average. It comes with a beauty feature to smoothen your skin. In low light, the camera performance is just acceptable as there is a lot of noise and loss of details in the auto mode. You can however fine tune it using the manual mode which can still produce slightly better results. Both the cameras can shoot 1080p videos, sadly there is no 4K support. Video quality is also pretty much acceptable. Battery: 7/10  The battery is rated at 3,130mAh which is as good as most of the flagship smartphones. The battery easily lasts a whole day even if you use a 4G connection upon normal usage. Heavy usage would give you maybe half a day or even less. I got close to 4 hours of screen-on time which is not bad. The PCMark battery benchmark gave us 7 hours and 22 minutes, which is slightly lower than the OnePlus 3 and the LeEco Le Max 2. Verdict and Price in India I have seen and tested a number of smartphones. But the Rs 20,000-Rs 30,000 range has never been consistent. The Gionee S6 Pro is priced at Rs 23,999, but it is selling on Amazon India for around Rs 22,299. With the S6 Pro, Gionee’s closest rivals would be the **Lenovo Z2 Plus** , Xiaomi Mi 5 or the LeEco Le Max 2 , both of which are currently cheaper and offer better feature packages. On top of that, brands like Xiaomi and LeEco are offering decent support be it service or software. The smartphone has an aesthetic value, a decent battery life and snappy performance for day to day usage. But that isn’t enough to make it a hot seller in the highly competitive segment it is operating in. As it stands, there are better options than the Gionee S6 Pro on the market. If you are looking for something in the sub-30k range, then I would highly recommend to spend your money on the OnePlus 3. Yes, it is priced higher than the S6 Pro, but that extra value will be worth. But if you are on a strict budget, then you should probably look the LeEco Le Max 2 or even the **Lenovo Z2 Plus** which is a way cheaper for the powerful features it offers.