THL T6S Review

THL T6S

 Today, there are a lot of China Smartphone makers in the country. From MyPhone and Cherry as Dual King of Rebranded Smartphones comes creeping other companies like SKK, Torque, Kata, THL etc. The craze for sub-10k phones is amazing. Whenever a company releases one, you can be sure that it will have a group on Facebook with fan base reaching thousands before the actual release!

Today, I decided to get back on the sub-10k range and try one from a well-known company in China which is trying to creep into Philippine Market. The one I bought is none other than the spec heavy, light priced THL T6S. Priced relatively cheaply at about Php 4,000. T6s packs 5 Inches of 854×480 JDI TFT Screen, Quad core MT6582M Chipset, 1GB Ram, and Kitkat out of the box. Does the China Made China released ‘Technology Happy Life (THL)’ phone pack a significant punch, or does it perform similar to pseudo rebranders king Cherry Mobile? Read on and find out!

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1. BOX AND CONTENTS

 

Contents other than the standard is present on T6S.  It contains the Manuals, USB Cable, charger and a headset. Nothing special.

2. Design and Build

 

THL T6S sets itself apart by not going with curved edges. Instead it takes an Xperia-ish square edge, which, in my opinion, is a better choice with respect to looks. The button layout is pretty much the same, with Capacitive touch buttons below, volume rockers on the left side and power button on the right. Depending on your preference, the ‘Menu, Home, Back’ capacitive layout maybe good or bad. The back consist of a protruding camera, speakers and THL logos. It’s made with plastic Matte back which may or may not make you cringe when you scratch it.

Overall, the Phone feels and looks ok but it does not stand out. You won’t have any friends asking you ‘Wow, ang ganda! Ano to?’ (Wow this looks great! What is it?)

3. Display

T6S sports a 5-inch JDI 854×480 screen. At this point in time, anything below 720p will probably get an eye-lash bat, but considering its price point and competitor (Flare 3 has 960×540 qHD display), this one is just about right.

The screen boasts good viewing angles and adequate brightness. Though if you are tight about display, you would undoubtedly notice some pixels here and there.

4. Entertainment

Performing as your Multimedia Driver, THL performs ok with some great hits and so-so miss.

On loudspeaker, T6S performs ok especially for bedroom use, it gets bad outdoors, well why would you use a phone loudspeaker on public. Attach your head/earset/bud/phone (I use JVC FX3X), it has good performance, great amount of loudness, but not too much bass considering I use a bassy in-ear plugs.

As expected from a China made generic android, the codec for videos is extremely bad. Luckily, MX Player Pro will easily solve this problem. Speaking of media playing, it runs 1080p videos but it does not seem to run perfectly as it shows stutters. Small sized 720p videos will work fine.

For Gaming, THL holds itself well, playing non-HD mainstream games with relative smoothness. For HD games, I expected it to perform badly but it surprised me! Don’t get me wrong, this thing is not made for such as there is presence of extremely long loading times but it did play Vice City, Asphalt 8, Gangster 4. It played them but expect long loading times and lags. Again, I know this is not made for such games, I’m actually praising THL for the fact that it opens the aforementioned games.

Web Browsing and YouTube streaming is not that of a strong suit. Don’t use for heavy browsing. And take note of the fact that it only plays up to 480p on YouTube. Yes, I am aware of the phone’s resolution at 480p.

Also note that, unlike high end phones today, this phone does not default to MTP, it uses USB Mass Storage Mode, which I think is less efficient than the former.

5. Camera

 

For the camera, the box says it has 5MP, surprisingly you can capture pictures at 13MP! Amazing? No not really. As most of you may know, quality does not depend on Pixels. This is certainly true for T6S. Pictures look washed out especially indoors and low light. If you are looking for a camera phone with a cheap price tag, better stay clear of this one.

6. Software

T6S is powered by a quadcore MT6582M processor partnered with 1GB Ram. Initially, it seems to be a very snappy phone, but open a few apps, it shows slowdowns. I don’t know if this is unit dependent but I sometimes encounter random reboot of the phone. Sometimes it becomes painstakingly slow, what I must do is reboot it and it runs fine again. It is also powered by Kitkat for those who have ‘latest always’ syndrome.

T6S’ interface is named Launcher3, which just looks and feels like a gimmicked version of Stock. I would have preferred the latter as I see no advantages on using this Launcher3.

Functioning as a phone, T6S does well, call quality is okay at best and SMS/Keyboard/Phonebook is all stock.

Being a China phone, expect some Bloatwares, you can easily uninstall them, though.

7. Battery

 

Same as with every other P4, 000 phone, and battery takes a huge hit. I don’t think you should expect great battery life from this phone, as it is average at best. It CAN last you through your work, but overnight charging is a definite must. Expect standby time of 12 hours and on screen time of about 2 and a half hours.

Executive Summary

CONS:

• Crappy out of the box video codec
• Unimpressive Camera
• Lags and stuttering on HD Games
• Some Bloatwares
• Disappointing Battery Life
• Random reboots
• Lags

PROS:

• Ok headset audio output
• Ok loudspeaker output
• Ok Display for a 480p phone
• Ok looking phone

Honestly, I am not impressed with this phone. For a P4, 000 phone, I know I should not expect much. I can’t pinpoint it exactly but I feel there is something missing here. It has been a very long time since I reviewed a phone on this area so I can’t exactly tell you how it performs with others of the same price range. But if you are going to ask me if I can recommend this? I guess I can say it’s ok just be aware of the cons listed. With the way Asus Zenfone hit the market, other phones will have a hard time competing, Asus Zenfone 4 review will come up soon so stay tuned 😉

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