Elephone has announced a number of new devices lately which includes the affordable Elephone G6 smartphone. We already reviewed its sibling, the G5 a few days back and now, its time to take a look at the slightly costlier, but a lot faster option, the G6.
Elephone G6 is up for pre-order starting September 23 worldwide. Yes, you don’t have to be in China to pre-order the device as Elephone has made the device available in many countries throughout the world.
We were lucky enough to get our hands on this amazing device from Elephone. Here’s our first impression of the device.
DESIGN
We previously reviewed Elephone G5, the OnePlus One clone and praised its design. The newly announced Elephone G6 too is based on the same design, which is actually a good thing. The overall design looks premium and the slightly curved back actually helps you to hold it perfectly on your palm. This ergonomic design along with the soft touch material on the back makes it very easy to operate the device even with one hand.
The G6 is extremely thin too and at 7.6mm, its one of the slimmest Elephone handsets out in the market. Although the device features a 5inch display, the overall device looks compact with 143x71x7.8mm dimensions.
DISPLAY
Although pricier, the G6 is smaller than the G5. It comes with a 5 inch 1280 x 720p display up front which should be able to deliver sharp images and videos on screen. Given that G5 sports the same resolution on its larger screen, the screen quality will be better on the G6.
HARDWARE
Elephone has made sure that the hardware is top notch on the G6. The device sports a Mediatek MTK6592 OctaCore processor clocked at 1.7GHz along with ARM Mali 450MP GPU. You get 1GB RAM on board along with 8GB internal storage. Luckily, the memory is expandable via a MicroSD card up to 64GB.
It’s a octa core phone with 720p display, but Elephone G6 is listed for only $136.9 at giztop.com, never had an octa core phone priced so cheap.
CAMERA
Elephone G6 comes with the same 13MP rear camera found on the G5. Unfortunately, the company went with a smaller 2MP sensor for the front camera which is kind of disappointing. The less pricier version G5 comes with a 5MP front shooter, so we expected G6 to feature atleast this sensor.
Still the 2MP front camera managed to click good pictures even in dim light.
The camera quality isn’t that great, but still in normal daylight pictures were quite decent. Things got a bit grainy in low light, but we can’t really expect more than this from an affordable mid range phone.
Check out the gallery below to get an idea about the G6’s camera.
CONNECTIVITY AND SPECIAL FEATURES
The device comes with standard connectivity features like Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, A-GPS, Wi-Fi, MicroUSB, Dual Sim card slot etc. However the phone does have one special element which differentiates it from all other mid range phones. The G6 comes with a fingerprint sensor on the back which provides additional protection to the data on the device.
The small rectangular bar below the camera is the fingerprint sensor.
This is not something that you usually find in smartphones in this price range, so brownie points to G6 for this special feature.
As for the battery, we were a bit disappointed. The phone comes with only a 2,250 mAh battery which is less than what you get in most 5 inch smartphones in the market. However, it should be enough for a day long with moderate usage. Unfortunately, we couldn’t play with the handset to get an idea about the talk time on the device.
SOFTWARE
G6 comes with Android 4.4.2 Kitkat OS with the option of MIUI on top. There are a number of gesture controls on the device like double tap to wake, quick app launch from lock screen by drawing the specified letters, special finger print sensor based features etc.
The finger print sensor on the back provides additional security to the data on the device. You can unlock the device using the sensor, protect apps like gallery, messaging etc to keep your personal data safe. As we mentioned before, this feature is really the highlight of the device and we are sure many will choose the device just because it comes with the sensor.
In short, we like the new Elephone G6. It comes with a powerful Octa Core processor, a finger print sensor, a decent camera and the latest Android OS with special software tweaks. And this Elephone G6 is listed for $119 at giztop.com
