ZTE Blade S6

The name might lead you to expect the Blade S6 to be a copy of the Samsung Galaxy S6, but it’s much more similar to the iPhone 6 in design. The clean white front with circular home button, rounded corners and curved screen edges is certainly reminiscent of Apple’s flagship smartphone. Even the SIM and microSD slots are very iPhonelike, not that there’s much scope for differentiating there. And the MiFavor UI’s lack of an app tray is just Apple all over.

For a budget- to mid-range phone the ZTE is good-looking, at least from the front, with its slim bezels and slick design. But this unibody phone is built from a slippery white and silver plastic, and compared with the iPhone 6 has a larger, lower-resolution 5in screen and slightly bigger and chunkier – but still commendably thin for the price – 7.7mm chassis. The weight is identical though, with both phones coming in at 129g.

The home button might be circular, but as soon as you put the phone on charge or get a new notification, it glows a cool blue. That constant glow can be irritating when charging the phone overnight, and you should note there’s no fingerprint sensor built into this button either. On either side sit touch-operated Back and Multitasking keys, and you can switch these around if you’d rather have the Back button on the right than the default left.

That 5in screen is a usefully bright IPS panel, which offers realistic colours and excellent viewing angles. It might have only an HD (720x1280) resolution, but its 293ppi pixel density isn’t far behind the 326ppi of the iPhone 6, and it’s quite acceptable for the price.

A small speaker is found on the rear. If you’re left-handed or place the phone screen-up you’ll find it easy to muffle, but it otherwise does an acceptable job. There’s also a headphone jack up top, which lets you take advantage of the Blade’s FM radio.

Equipped with a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 64bit octa-core (quad-core 1.7GHz Cortex-A53, quad-core 1GHz Cortex-A53) processor, Adreno 405 graphics and 2GB of RAM, performance is very decent for a mid-range phone. The ZTE Blade S6 also feels nippy in operation, with no sign of lag when launching apps or moving between home screens and menus. In real-life use we couldn’t fault it.

In terms of storage the ZTE Blade S6 has 16GB built in, and it has microSD support up to 32GB. That will be plenty for most users, although you can also make use of cloud storage with Google’s ownand third-party apps.

Not only is this ZTE Blade S6 a 4G LTE phone, but it supports dual SIMs as standard (both NanoSIMs). Note, though, that the data connection is accessible by the first SIM only on this dual-SIM model. For more information on what this means read our dual-SIM phones feature on page 100.

As with all phones, you should check the Blade S6 will work with your network, which we understand may be an issue in the US. ZTE lists support for GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz, UMTS 850/900/2100MHz, and 4G LTE 1800/2600/900/700MHz.

The Blade S6 also supports dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and A-GPS. There’s no NFC, but Alive Share software lets you transfer files and play multiplayer games with nearby compatible handsets.

At the ZTE’s rear is a 13Mp Sony Exmor IMX214 camera with a 28mm wide-angle lens and f/2.0 aperture that can shoot full-HD (1080p) video at 30fps. We were impressed with the quality of the images it took. Colours were realistic and detail is sharp, although the LED flash does little to help grainy low-light photos, though we found video can be rather jerky as you move the camera.

The standard Camera app is basic in its Simple mode, with the usual Auto, HDR, Panorama, Beautify and Smile modes. You can also straighten images, remove moving items from view and take group photos in which you can pick the best image for each person in shot. Switch to expert mode and you lose these presets, but you’ll get more control over your image in terms of exposure, ISO metering and white balance.

After you’ve taken a photo you can edit the image to add filters, borders, decorations, doodles and text, and blur parts of the picture.

At the front is a 5Mp selfie camera with f2.2 aperture. The resolution is good, but while there are Beauty and Smile shot modes there is no real-time preview or ability to adjust the effect.

The Blade S6 is one of the first non-Nexus devices to come with Android Lollipop out of the box. With cheap phones often left behind as new Android updates are released, that’s fantastic news.

Over the top of Lollipop is the MiFavor 3.0 UI. The most noticeable difference over standard Android is that it removes the app tray, and with all app shortcuts displayed on the home screen, it offers a very iOS-like experience. We’re not keen on the approach, but you can use folders to minimise the clutter. MiFavor also provides a number of themes and customisation options.

ZTE fits a 2400mAh nonremovable battery to the Blade S6, which you’ll need to charge every day.

Verdict

The ZTE Blade S6 is a great-value Android Lollipop phone with strong performance and an attractive iPhone 6-like build.