Gadgetory

the standard of budget-friendly mobile phones increasing all the time today's more affordable mid-range phones are easily equivalent to the flagship devices of only a couple of years ago and the competition in this area is really heating up there are lots of devices at sub $300 and some even as low as $200 now one company that's been making a lot of waves in this space is ZTE recently LAN reviewed the ZTE Blade s6 and now ZT is released a bigger version of the same phone the ZTE Blade s6 plus with a 5.5 inch display and the same internals of the blade s6 this phone has lots to offer so let's have a look at it like the ZTE Blade s6 it's quite obvious what has inspired the design of the s6 plus from its grey card body rounded corners circular home button and even the naming convention the blade s6 Plus borrows heavily from Apple's design language of course while it looks similar to the iPhone 6 plus it actually feels quite different the entire body of the blade s6 Plus is made of plastic and while plastic doesn't necessarily have to feel cheap unfortunately it could be set up the blade s6 plus that it lacks a premium feel for example the plastic is coated in a smooth satin finish and it tends to slip around in the hand quite a lot although I didn't drop the phone during my a few days that I was using it as my daily driver I could see that it could be a worry for some although overall the blade s6 Plus looks like the blade s6 there is one big difference in its construction the blade s6 is a sealed unit that uses trays for both the SIM card and the micro SD card but the s6 plus is different the back is removable and the cards are inserted in a more traditional fashion however the battery still remains non removable large blade s6 have an issue with too much movement in its back cover and as a result a general hollow feel to it but because of its different cover construction I didn't see anything like that with the blade s6 plus since the ZTE Blade s6 Plus has a 5.5 inch display it's quite a big device this isn't helped much by the large space at the bottom for the capacity keys although we're only talking about a couple of millimeters it just seemed oversized to me but on the positive side the device is fairly thin at under 8 millimeters which when combined with the rounded corners means that the phone is easy to hold however one handed use for me at least he's out of the question going around the device the power button on the volume rocker located on the right hand side and can be easily reached the headphone jack is on the top along with the IR blaster while on the bottom is the Micro USB does ates 6 plus utilizes capacitive keys up front and they do have an appealing unique look to them the home button in the center is denoted by a ring that glows a nice bright blue when you touch it or when you have notifications or when the device is charging to LEDs flanked the home button to represent the back and menu keys by default the back button is on the left and the menu keys on the right but that could be changing the settings you can flip them the other way round if you prefer the ZTE s6 plus comes with a 5.5 inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 720 p this results in a pixel density of 267 PPI considering the size of the display this resolution may seem little low to some but my experience with the screen was very good keep everything including videos and games within great display brings with it all the loved features of an IPS LCD panel including bright but not overly saturated colors great brightness and good viewing angles if I had to complain about one thing it would be to mention the brightness levels set by the phone when using auto brightness was just a little too higher for me I found myself adjusting the brightness manually to compensate under the hood the blade s6 Plus packs an octa-core 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 1.5 gigahertz it's backed by an Adreno 405 GPU and 2 gigabytes of RAM this is one of the best mid-range processing packages currently available and for everyday tasks gives a performance that is similar to its more high-end counterparts the blade S 6 plus is snappy responsive and fast animations run smoothly every time apps open quickly and multitasking is a breeze the gaming experience is also great with a device handling graphic intensive very well the device comes with 16 gigabytes of on-board storage which is further expandable by an additional 32 gigabytes using a microSD card however the storage comes partitioned the 16 gigabytes is divided up into a system area or four point two nine gigabytes a user area of three point eight seven gigabytes which is used for installing apps and a phone storage area seven point eight three gigabytes which is used for data and media there is an option to move app from the user area to the phone storage unfortunate there is no option to move apps from either the user storage or the phone storage to the SD card you are however able to set the default right location to the external sd card however this seems to be a bit hit and miss in terms of which apps respect will understand this setting also the camera app has a separate setting for where the images should be stored but it can be set to use the external sd card a single speaker is found on the back at the bottom right corner and why it does get the job done it obviously doesn't provide as good as experience as you would get from say a phone with front-facing speakers a standard set of sensors and connectivity options are available including support for 4G LTE but it's worth noting that since this device is catered towards the Asian and European markets it won't connect to the LTE networks in the US the ZTE Blade s6 Plus as a 3000 milliamp hour battery and it does a pretty good job the best I got out of it during my testing was 36 hours of off charger time with an on screen time of three and a half hours there's also a battery saver mode provided in case you need to get some extra juice out of that battery when it's running low but you're away from a charger I also did some individual app testing and according to game bench YouTube will stream video over Wi-Fi for about 6 hours on one charge whereas Epic Citadel will run for about 3 hours before the battery is fully consumed the camera on the smaller blade s6 is quite impressive and happily the blade s6 Plus uses the same technology what you're looking at is a 13 megapixel Sony made sensor with a 28 millimeter wide angle lens when you jump into the camera interface you're going to notice two modes simple and expert simple it's basically just an auto mode that lets you snap photos without having to worry or play around with any additional settings on the other hand expert mode introduces a few additional controls like white balance ISO metering exposure but that's about as extensive as it gets various shooting modes like HDR panorama and a few others are also available but one thing to notice they're only accessible when you're shooting in simple mode the pictures are sharp and vibrant in color but not overly so as to make them look unrealistic and in most situations where lighting was adequate I was able to pretty much get any shot I wanted the F 2.0 aperture is also great and you can create pictures with a shallow depth of field quite easily something you'd normally only achieve with a DSLR in low-light performance can be a bit hit and miss with high noise levels but with a steady hand you can get reasonable results however don't expect too much as the camera has a maximum ISO of 800 overall the rear camera is a pretty solid offering and it's certainly one of the plus point of this phone if you're a selfie lover you're going to enjoy the front-facing camera as it comes in at 5 megapixels the quality isn't spectacular by any means but just like the rear camera he has a wide-angle lens which means you can easily fit you in a couple of friends into a single shot with Android 5.0 lollipop out of the box the ZTE Blade s6 plus is one of the few phones that runs the latest iteration of Google's operating system you get all of the great features of lollipop plus a few additions from ZTE including a custom launcher while the custom launcher does have its own unique features a lot of the stock elements of Android 5.0 are available here things like the lockscreen notification shade overview settings dialog and clock all still preserve the material design from Google like the software experience we get from many devices from China the custom launcher is colorful with squared icons and does away with the standard app drawer in favor of having all the applications reside on the home screen however with folders you should be able to stop things from getting too cluttered of course it is still Android so you always have the option to download a third-party launcher from the Google Play Store if you're looking for a more familiar experience tapping the Menu button or swiping up from the bottom of the screen brings up the launcher customization panel here you can choose from a series of solid colored or abstract wallpapers or even download new ones from ZTE s online library there is also a built-in slider which gives your wallpapers a blurred look plus you can also alter the desktop transitions once you're satisfied with all your changes that you've made you can create a backup copy within the launcher preferences so that you never lose them as a teen you've also include the option of a navigation helper called me pop it's an onscreen bubble with navigation keys to help with one-handed operation since the screen on the s6 plus is quite large this could be a very handy feature for some and so there you have it the ZTE Blade s6 plus what you're getting is a smart phone with a large display a great processor package and a solid camera experience it's available globally right now for a special launch price of 270 dollars later on it's recommended retail price will be 299 dollars for those in Europe and Asia it's definitely worth considering if you want a wallet friendly smartphone with a 5.5 inch display my name's Gary since Lander Authority I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please give it a thumbs up also don't forget to use the comments below to tell me what you think about the Zed blade s6 plus also don't forget to subscribe to Andrew Authority's YouTube channel and as for me I'll see you in my next video ZTE ZT now is definitely ZTE