It’s another day and the review kit is coming thick and fast. Today we have the ZTE Blade S6 4G, an affordable Android Lollipop phone sitting in the mid level price bracket (currently £189 on Amazon). The phone is available now, and we had a brief hands on with this phone whilst at MWC in March. We were (say that 3 times fast) quite taken with it. So we managed to coerce ZTE to send us one just as it goes out to the public. We can let you guys see what they are doing with the Blade range.
If the name “Blade” sounds familiar then it is because it’s made a few appearances in the UK under different names. Remember when Orange existed as it own entity? Anyone remember the San Francisco?
The phone comes with some pretty good specs for the price and it should be a nice challenger to the bigger names.
Here are the specs..
- Display:- 5.0 inch HD with In-Cell Technology
- Platform:- Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 615 octa-core chipset (MSM8939)
- Camera:- Sony IMX214 13M AF + 5M wide-angle FF
- Network- LTE: B3/B7/B8/B28(B20) (1800/2600/900/700(800) UMTS: (850)900/2100 MHz GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 BT: 4.0 Wifi: 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
- Operating System:- Android L (5.0.2)
- Interface:- 3.5mm Earphone Port, Dual Nano SIM, 5pin Micro USB, Micro SD
- Memory:- 16GB eMMC + 2GB RAM DDR3
- Features:- Proximity, Ambient Light, Accelerometer, Compass, Gyro, A-GPS/GPS, FM Radio
- Smart Sense
- MiFavor 3.0 U
- Size:- 144 x 70.7 x 7.7mm
- Battery:- 2400mAh
Some pretty good-looking specs there, I think you’ll agree. The only uncertainty at the time of writing is the memory card support, however I cannot think of any reason why it wouldn’t support 128GB (I will confirm in the full review). The phone feels really nice in the hand, and bears an uncanny resemblance to an iPhone 6 as you will be able to see in the video below.
I really like the way the phone feels in my hand and the plastic rear cover does help add a bit of grip to the case, making accidental slips something to not be too concerned about anymore. The one aspect of the phone I don’t really love is the UI, but I am going to use it in its pure form for as long as I am testing it; maybe it will win me over.
Here are some close-up pics of the phone for you see what it looks like in detail.
I’ve taken a few pictures on the phone just to let you see the initial camera quality which does seem to be good, and rest assured a camera face-off will be happening. If only there was a way to compare it with the Huawei P8 that James is testing….
..I will be pitching it against my trusty Xperia Z3 for now.
For the time being, enjoy the gallery below of pics taken from the phone.
I am pretty pleased with the Blade S6 and I look forward to using it as my daily driver for the next week or so. Thanks to ZTE for the loan of the unit so we can bring you this review.