Hands on with the ZTE Blade S6
Heading to Europe, the ZTE Blade S6 is hoping to give the big boys a run for their money by offering high-end specs at an affordable price point.
Looking like an iPhone and sharing the same name as Samsung’s new flagship are no coincidences. ZTE wants people to see its new Blade S6 as an affordable alternative to the the top flagships currently on the market, although I feel it'll compete more comfortably with phones like the Sony M4 Aqua and the OnePlus One.
SEE ALSO: Samsung Galaxy S6 hands-on
I think the iPhone comparison is a little lazy anyway, as the smooth plastic Blade S6 has a couple of unique quirks, such as the glowing blue capacitive home, option and return keys at the base of the screen. I’m not a massive fan of its faux-aluminium plastic trim, but it's not as bad as the shiny chrome-a-like one that Samsung stuck on last year’s Galaxy S5.
The ZTE Blade S6 has a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor and 2GB RAM, and runs on MiFavor 3, a ZTE skin of Android 5.0 Lollipop. The phone’s 5.0-inch display is 720p HD and it has 16GB of internal storage, plus a microSD slot that makes it possible to add up to 64GB more.
Measuring 144 x 70.7 x 7.7mm, the Blade S6 weighs 134g and has a non-removable 2400mAh battery.
Sony’s popular IMX214 13-megapixel sensor has been used for the main camera, while the front-facing camera is a 5-megapixel wide-angle jobby. The Blade S6’s camera app has a decent auto mode, as well as a pro mode that offers some manual control over settings such as White Balance, ISO (up to ISO 800), exposure and metering.
It also has some intelligent features such as the Group mode that will take multiple shots of a bunch of people, then allow you to select everyone’s best expression so that it can combine them to create one image with the best expressions of everyone. For videos, the Blade 6 is capable of 4K/UHD video recording, time-lapse and slo-mo.
MiFavor 3 is a very clean and welcoming Android UI, with a good level of customisation based on environmental changes, time and your location. It also offers some decent control over the device theme and elements such as the size of the dial pad. This will be great for people like me who are cursed with baby hands. The OS also has a feature called Smart Sense that can register motion and gestures to command applications. For example, flicking your wrist can activate the phone’s torch.
All of that and a little more for only £169/$249. Sounds almost too good to be true. We'll just have to see how it measures up when we get one for review.