<div style="text-align: left;">There are those of us who like a smartphone to have some solidity and heft. And then there are others who like their devices light. The S 5.1 is fly-away light; so light that I initially thought the battery was missing. This sliver of electronics comes from Chinese company Gionee.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />The S5.1 is really all about its slimness. It’s the slimmest phone in the world. And yes, it’s called 5.1 because it’s that many mm thick.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />What might have looked ordinary in a thicker form, looks and feels specially nice because it seems a marvel to be able to pack in so much in such little space. And it is. Of course, you’ll have to be super careful with it because it’s easy to forget in a pocket or anywhere else. You wouldn’t want to sit on it and hear a bit of a snap, though it’s not about to bend.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />I had a look at the white version, but there are black, blue and pink ones available as well. It’s all glass and metal and has nice classy looking edges. The back doesn’t open up, but well, the phone is light enough for you to be keeping a portable charger handy somewhere. No one should be seen without one of those any more.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Gionee has put all sorts of stuff into the box and that includes a flip case. Thoughtful really, but the case has to be stuck on with whatever they’ve put on it and this will effectively hide the whole reason for which the phone is thought to be special.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Also in the box is an OTG cable, the usual charger and a number of screen guards. The screen on this phone is an AMOLED, strongly coloured and vibrant and no compromises on viewing angles. It’s a 1280 x 720 display of 4.8 inches. It’s narrow and even my thumb can reach to the other side of the display.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />On the home screens, you’ll notice all the app icons. Gionee is another phone maker that likes to put its own skin on top of Android in a way that they hope will make them distinctive. Ask most users who’ve seen plain Android and they’ll tell you it’s just an annoyance. I’m afraid I’m in that camp as well, as I’d rather have the option of doing what I want on the phone and if not, stock Android is pretty nice looking on its own steam. Instead, several companies have tried to customise by removing the app drawer, changing icons, and providing themes and gesture features. That’s what Gionee has done with its Amigo 2.0 interface as well.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />The benchmarks place this handset somewhere between the older HTC One (not the M8) and the LG G3. It works fine but some reviewers do report lag. I’m afraid that’s a situation that occurs with many phones, once they’re fully in use and packed with apps and data. The S5.1 has 16GB of internal storage but no external slot and that’s a downer with many, except that at least it’s better than the 8GB you often get. Gionee has put in a lot of apps onboard to begin with though.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />The handset has a cramped but interesting keyboard with predictive text on steroids. You can flick words up and have them float up into the text area. That’s always nice and as you get used to the phone, a keyboard like this will make one handed text input easy. Of course, all sorts of keyboards are a download away.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />The cameras on this phone are 8MP and 5MP and they’re both about average. The camera lens doesn’t stick out of the phone, which is a nice bonus. There are two camera apps, one regular and a “Charm Camera” that lets you do all sorts of things like beautify and also click documents.<br />If big heavy phones really frustrate you, consider this slim Jim.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><table width="600" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="1" border="1"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><strong>Huawei Honor 6</strong></td></tr><tr><td><div><img width="200" vspace="6" hspace="6" height="327" align="right" alt="" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=0703b506-feef-48ce-b4bb-59cbdd03a05f&groupId=219112&t=1420548737902" />Huawei’s recently launched Honor 6 has the design popularised by earlier iPhones. The slab-of-glass look, though it isn’t glass on the back. It’s now a bit of a tired design, having been copied and given a twist here and there by so many companies. But if you’re not looking for something particularly different, it works.</div><div><br />It’s s a 5-inch screen phone and being in the pre-phablet size, it’s easy to hold and use, including with one hand. It has a 1080 x 1920 screen with a nice high pixel density of 445ppi. Whenever you turn the phone on, the lock screen will show you a new wallpaper, though you can just set your own, of course. It makes for a nice surprise. Swiping up from the bottom of the lock screen brings up a quick menu which includes things Huawei thinks you might want to access quickly, for instance, the music controls.</div><div><br />You also have an option of two home screen styles, one regular Android and the other “easy” mode with large tiles. There are lots of other software touches like that with Huawei’s “Emotion UI” interface, on top of Android KitKat which is nothing special and mostly annoying as most such “skins” are.</div><div><br />The Honor 6 uses Huawei’s own 1.3 GHz octa-core processor, Kirin 920. With 3GB of RAM to work with, it has the phone performing smoothly with no hiccups and slowness. The battery is a 3000mAh and performance fine – not spectacularly – and you have some power saving modes that help. There’s 16GB storage on board with a card slot for 64GB additional.</div><br />Camera specs are good – 13MP and 5MP – with a simple camera app. Camera performance is about average, sometimes surprisingly good even in low light and sometimes as noisy as many others. But it does have a fast shutter.</td></tr></tbody></table><div> </div><div>(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 26-01-2015)</div>
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
