THL T6S Review

[jucaftp]

I also did a T6S review on a local forum today so I'll just paste it here also (I'll split into two topics because too many images).

This is the first time I've ever had contact with a ThL smartphone and I find it pretty nice. The thl box is quite good, there's a foam on the inside to protect the screen. The phone came with one applied screen protector (quite poor , It scratches easily, isn't anti-glare) and an extra one, one earphone and one charger, both just regular chinese stuff. The store sent me a hardcase as a gift, nice [Pictures 10 and 11]. The phone was well packed. The outside box had a few bumps on it, but ThL box was perfect due to bubble wrap absorption. The first thing I did was root the phone using VRoot tutorials that are available all over the internet. I just had a bit of trouble installing the drivers on my Win7 64bits but after that everything went smooth.

Overall quality of the device impresses me right out of the box, same as Jiayu F1 and Doogee DG2014 that I recently bought. The battery arrived with 70% of charge, and I went right in to see for the first time the KitKat Android, expecting big changes (bleh). It's a clean ROM with only 4 bloatwares on it. First look is all good, specially judging by it's cheap $90 price. I'm coming from a MTK6589 so right at the beginning I noticed it's a little more quick than my Star B94M. Screen is amazing, cameras are not disappointing, and the touch is sensitive and fluid.

The design is similar to the new fashion: thinner close to the sides, and with a metal of some sort even thinner, giving the extremely thin sensation. The screen borders are not very thin, but also don't bother the eyes. Power button on the right side, volume buttons on the left side, USB and earphone connections on the top. In the rear, camera and flash are at central top, and speaker is at central bottom. It's a fancy design, everyone I showed the phone liked it. There's this special detail on the sides that's a chrome metal, which is really nice [Picture 4]. Back cover isn't 100% smooth, which gives a nice feel to the hand when using the phone. The capacitive buttons dont have backlight, but at least they have a chrome color which almost reflects something when you're using it in the dark. If you have really good eyes you might see the buttons. This really bothers me. Some pics of the device:













About the performance , a 6582 with 1GB of RAM is enough for me. Of course the more the merrier when it comes to RAM but I believe nowadays 1GB is pretty manageable. Jumping from 6589 to 6582 brings a whole new flow when it comes to games. A recent example is the silly game BackToBed which didn't go well on my 6589 when all graphics were enabled, but with 6582 everything went smooth even with x4 antialiasing. Also GTA San Andreas on HIGH worked fine (didn't test MAX). Just remember that it's very good with games because the resolution is quite low - 854x480p. The T6S has 8GB of internal memory, which came splitted as: 2.26GB for internal memory and 3.86GB emulated as a SD card. I intend to use a external microSD card so I'll try to merge these into a ~6GB internal memory. I think I saw a tutorial to accomplish this by upgrading the firmware trough SPFlashTools using EBR1 and EBR2 for MTK6582 with 8GB with KitKat. Antutu prints:



T6S marketing (aside from the low price) is it's screen which is a JDI IPS screen, which really surprised me given the price. I supposed that with such screen size and low resolution it would be kinda weird, but for some reason it looks alright. A friend of mine actually asked if it was 720p. My mom chose T6S screen over Doogee DG2014 when I asked her about the quality, showing her the same picture with high resolution on both devices. Looking carefully I can see pixels in T6S, but image quality (contrast, brightness, colors) brings a really good feeling about the screen. With 40% brightness it beats my Star B94M at 100% brightness, so that's good. I'm not a screen expert but I like it! View angle is very very good, only one of the sides shows a little bit of burned colors, but only at very high angles. I couldn't get those burned colors in image.





Touchscreen is sensitive and responsive, BUT it only accepts two simulaneous touches. I think this is a big mistake from ThL, because it's very bad to type messages fast, and some apps and games require more than two touches. Also, both touchs can't be in the same horizontal line [Picture 17]. As an example, while typing a message (portrait position) you have to type slowly, because if you press A and L at almost the same time, the screen will recognize the mid-point (which is about letter G), so it's a mess. I've seen other chinese phones with the same problem (i.e. Jiayu F1, Doogee DG200). Check the pic:

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The cameras also surprised me. My comparison base is a Doogee DG200 which has the same camera hardware, and both T6S cameras performed better. The flash is really poor, both as a flashlight or as camera flash. In the dark it only helps at less than 50cm. Some pictures taken with it:













The sensors are very few: no gyroscope nor compass, both I'd like to have to use for photosphere and GPS. It has the simple combo: acelerometer, light sensor, proximity sensor, all working very well. Light sensor is so much better than B94M. I am able to use auto-brightness very well. If it doesn't bother the owner to have the brightness auto changing every now and then, it works perfectly. It has a notification LED but it seems to be only RED.

Both GPS and 3G worked out of the box here in Brazil. GPS fix in less than 2 minutes, inside the apartment, not moving. In a second test, riding around the city, it worked very well using Waze App. No confusion between close streets like my B94M used to do. I couldn't test it very well yet, but seems alright.

The battery seems to last up to 24hours. I'm not a good comparision base because I usually just pick up the phone for a few calls and very few internet use. What I can say is that the stock ROM could manage DeepSleep very well. With other chinese devices that I used, I had to do a few tricks to get DeepSleep working. With T6S frequency management is very well done. During the night, 10 hours only took 2% of the battery. I've just checked and it's been 22 hours running and still has 70%. Again, my guess is 24hours for regular use.

Other: Speaker volume is pretty high. I'd say it's about three times higher than my B94M. I've told you I loved the build quality, but here are some details: When opening the back cover I've notice that the antennas (those black stuff) have their name on it. [Picture 31]. I've never seen this on a phone and I think it's a detail that shows how much T6S cares. The battery is pretty big, bigger than my 2000mAh of B94M, so my guess is it's a real 1900mAh. It fits very very well, which is quite good because it won't get loose over time. Rear camera came with a protective film [Picture 31],so it doesn't scratch the outside 'lens'. In the center of the speaker there's a small higher dot [Picture 32], which is good for anti-scratching the back cover when the device is on a surface. I think it's pretty cool that chinese brand care this much even when I've seen many Motorolas and Samsung all scratched.



To sum up:
Pros:

• Build quality;
  
• Screen quality;
  
• Cost;
  
• Design;
  
• Clear ROM;
  
• 3G and GPS working out of the box;
  
• Good game performance
  

Cons:

• Only 2-touch;
  
• Lack of sensors
  
• Bad flash
  
• No backlight on capacitive buttons.