Gadgetory

hey what is going on guys lon here from Android Authority and within the last year or so budget smartphones have become more and more competitive and nowadays you can get a phone with a 720p screen a quad-core processor + 1 to 2 gigabytes of RAM for less than $300 and in some cases even less than $200 2 to 3 years ago these phones would have been considered flagship smartphones so we've come quite a long way in such a short amount of time and here in 2015 we've already seen quite a few budget-friendly smartphones hit the market and we can only expect to see more as the year goes on but the latest one that we're going to take a look at here today is from a Chinese OEM called ZTE so with that being said let's go ahead and take a look at the ZTE Blade s6 and see how it stacks up when looking at the ZTE Blade s6 it doesn't take long to figure out where ZTE got their inspiration from I know many of you are going to say it so I'm just going to say for you it looks like Apple's latest iPhone 6 with its gray colored body rounded corners and curved sides the placement of the ZTE logo all the way down to the designed by ZTE in California assembled in China stamped on the back it's all too familiar of in appearance the key word here though is looks because the actual build quality and the way it feels on the hand is a whole nother story the entire body of the phone is made of plastic and plastic doesn't necessarily make a phone feel cheap if it's used right but in the case of the Blade s6 it's not the plastic is coated in a smooth satin finish and while I haven't dropped the phone it does tend to slip around in the hand quite a bit my biggest gripe with the Blade s6 is the amount of give on the back of the device giving it a very hollow feel this could just be a defect with my review unit but it was something I noticed pretty much immediately on the bright side the phone is fairly thin at 7.7 millimetres and when you combine that with the 5 inch display thin side bezels and rounded corners and sides you get a phone that for the most part feels very easy and comfortable to use in one hand taking a tour around the rest of the device the power and volume keys are located on the right side exactly where they should be for easy access on the left side is a dual SIM card slot and micro SD card slot followed by a 3.5 millimeter headset jack up top and the micro USB port on the bottom the blade s6 also utilizes capacitive keys but they actually have a pretty unique look to them the center home button is denoted by a blue circle that also glows a nice bright blue when you touch it receive a notification or when the phone is charging two separate LEDs flank the home button which represent back in menu by default back is on the left with menu on the right but if you prefer it the other way around you can flip it in the settings the speaker can be found on the backside denoted by a tiny slit and it's a speaker that simply just gets the job done it sounds fine but it pales in comparison to phones with front-facing speakers and being located on the back it can easily be muffled when laid flat on a table or by a misplaced finger as mentioned earlier the display upfront measures in at five inches with a resolution of 720p and utilizes IPS LCD technology for pixel junkies the 720p resolution might not be enough but to my eyes that look just fine for pretty much anything including games and video the IPS panel itself looks great colors are nice and vibrant but not overly saturated viewing angles are also quite good and it gets pretty bright as you would expect from an IPS LCD the blacks on this particular panel was also surprisingly good they're not as good as the likes of an AMOLED screen but there's certainly some of the best I've seen for an LCD without exhibiting light bleed one of the best parts about this display actually has to do with the glass itself the edges of the glass are curved similar to the Moto X and iPhone 6 creating for a very smooth and seamless experience when swiping general performance on the blade s6 has also been a great experience inside is one of Qualcomm's latest 64-bit chipsets the Snapdragon 615 awed meant advise of Ram the blade s6 is responsive snappy fast and performs about as well as some of the higher SPECT flagships out there that you probably wouldn't notice that this wasn't a top tier processor animations are nice and smooth apps open quickly and multitasking can be done without skipping a beat the adrenal 405 onboard also provides for a great gaming experience from the most simple games like clash of clans to more intense games like Nova 3 while maintaining very playable frame rates despite how well the Blade s6 performs I did notice that dragging the brightness slider up and down resulted in some choppiness this most likely is a software-based performance issue so I have no doubt it's an easy fix but it was a little bit jarring to see what the rest of the hardware 16 gigabytes of storage can be found on board and the micro SD card slot will allow for an additional 32 gigabytes if the built-in storage happens to not be enough LTE and 3G connectivity is also available but only Asian and European markets are currently supported if you live in the US like me you're going to be stuck on edge connectivity and I have to admit it made this pretty difficult to use especially if I was out and about and didn't have access to Wi-Fi this could change in the future if ZTE decides to release a u.s. specific model but as of right now this is how it stands moving on to the camera ZTE is claiming that the blade s6 will deliver DSLR like quality which is a pretty bold claim but essentially what you're looking at is a sony made 20 millimeter wide angle lens coming in at 13 megapixels when you jump into the camera interface you're going to notice two modes simple and expert simple is basically just automatic if you'd rather just snap photos and not worry about any additional camera settings expert mode will bring a few additional controls like white balance ISO metering and 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 note is they're only accessible when you're shooting in the automatic or the simple mode while I don't think the pictures are DSLR light quality I will admit that they are actually quite good pictures are sharp and vibrant in color but not overly so that it looks unrealistic and in most situations where lighting was adequate I was able to get pretty much any shot that I wanted the F 2.0 aperture is also great giving off that bokeh effect that you can normally only achieve what they do sell our camera dynamic range however isn't the best and as you'll notice in some of these photos it tends to crush the darks quite a bit causing a lot of detail to be lost HDR does help in most situations but I found that it works best indoors in outdoor situations it does bring out more detail as you would expect but it tends to create a very cold and unnatural looking blue cast to the images with indoor shots it was a lot more reliable and what I really enjoyed about the HDR post-processing is that it also bumps up the saturation giving off a very vibrant look that I thought was pretty pleasing to the eye in low-light performance was pretty shoddy which was very surprising considering the f 2.0 aperture the noise levels are extremely high making it impossible to capture much detail and a maximum ISO of 800 doesn't help improve the situation either all in all the rear camera is pretty solid but it's a far cry from what you can get from a DSLR if you're a selfie lover you'll 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 it is a wide-angle lens meaning you can easily fit you and a couple of your friends into a single shot now before I talk about battery life one thing to be aware of is that I was connected to Wi-Fi the majority of the time simply because edge connectivity is slow and it makes this phone practically unusable so I can't really comment on what battery life might be like if you're on 3G or LTE connectivity so just keep that in mind that if you're in a region or market where you can actually take advantage of the 3G and LTE speeds your battery life may vary but with my usage which is fairly average the most I was able to get was 15 hours off the charger and four-and-a-half hours of screen on time which isn't bad but considering I was connected to Wi-Fi all the time I was expecting a little bit more so it does have me somewhat concerned as to what battery life might be like on LTE the good news is the blade S six is running lollipop which includes a battery saving mode by default that can greatly extend your battery life when you're low on juice with Android 5.0 lollipop out of the box this makes the blade S six one of the few phones to be running the latest OS you get all the great features of lollipop with a few additions from ZTE but I hesitate to call their customizations to Android a skin outside of the custom launcher a few pre installed applications and some extra features it's a mostly stock build of Android elements like the lockscreen notification shade overview and applications like the Settings dialer and clocks still preserve the material design from Google like most Chinese OEMs the custom launcher is colorful with squared icons and does away with the standard app drawer in favor of having all applications reside on the home screen leave you with folders as the only option for any type of home screen management however this is still Android so if you want a more standard Android experience third-party launchers from Playstore are always an option swiping up from the bottom of the screen or simply hitting the menu button will bring up a panel of customization options for the launcher itself you can select from a series of solid colored or abstract wallpapers and more can be downloaded from ZTE s online library or you can simply just use your own there's also a built-in slider to give your wallpapers a blurred look which I actually thought was a really nice touch desktop transition effects are also available if you're feeling fancy and once you're satisfied with all the changes that you've made you can create a backup within the launcher preferences so you never lose them gesture and motion features can also be found in these settings and some of them are gimmicky and some can be pretty useful but you do have the option to disable them if you don't like them gesture features include things like air gesture cover phone screen and shake it air gesture allows you to control your music by holding volume down and drawing a V or an O to start and stop the music it's a very awkward thing to do but it does seem to work pretty consistently cover phone screen will silence any incoming calls or alarms just by waving your hand over the phone and shake it will open either the flashlight or camera by shaking the phone when you're on the lock screen the motion features are a little bit more self-explanatory with features like auto call auto answer pocket mode and flip to mute the device the rear camera can also be activated by holding volume up and bringing the phone up horizontally and the same thing can also be done with the front-facing camera when bringing the phone up vertically towards your face and finally you have me pop which puts a bubble consisting of on-screen navigation keys on your home screen for easier one-handed operation the blade s6 is already pretty easy to use in one hand but this is a very handy feature to have just in case you need it the ZTE Blade s6 will be available globally on February 10th directly through Aliexpress and on Amazon and eBay for select regions the price is very affordable at - $49.99 and from the way things are shaping up this year especially with some of the phones we saw at CES like the blue vivo air and zenfone 2 the budget landscape is looking to be extremely competitive in 2015 to be perfectly honest though this isn't a viable option if you live in the US unless you're willing to put up with the edge data speeds but if you live in an Asian or European market that can fully take advantage of the LTE connectivity then this is a pretty solid budget smartphone to consider but there you have it for the ZTE Blade s6 the design might be pretty uninspiring but once you get past that you'll find a phone that delivers great performance 64-bit hardware a solid camera experience and Android 5.0 lollipop right out of the box at a very affordable price as always guys thank you so much for watching this video if you did enjoy please give a thumbs up down below and also subscribe to the channel which is also down below if you haven't already and don't forget to check out the website for more in-depth coverage and Jory comm because we are your source for all things Android