Landvo S6 Android Smartphone Review

Today for review, we have something quite different yet similar we have been doing lately. We have been reviewing lots of Tablets recently and today I have for you a smartphone review. This Smartphone might look similar to something you see all around now a days, but is yet different and better put, cheap. Today for review I have the Landvo S6 Android lolipop smartphone for review which is equipped with quad cores, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of ROM, 5.0 inch 720p capacitive screen and more.

One thing to notice before proceeding is that the smartphone is advertised with Android 5.0 though it is shipped with Android 4.4 installed. According to their website you can install Android 5.0 from their website, but the link to the file/setup is broken and there’s no option for updating the OS in settings so you might just want to get a open source Android 5.0 setup if you wish.

Specifications:

 

As you can seem from the specifications, the Landvo S6 seems well equipped for an unlocked budget smartphone. The Landvo S6 is available in Blue and White colors, and the one I have is the Blue color. So lets get right into the unboxing.

 

Unboxing:

So the LandvoLandvo S6 comes in a ordinary rectangular box with the Landvo logo on the front bottom and their slogan “Landvo, for the world” and just beneath that we can see the color list and the color of smartphone ticked that’s inside the box. But before I mentioned that Landvo S6 only comes in two color then what sorcery is this? Simply put, only Blue and White models of Landvo S6 are available right now so either the golden model is yet to hit the market or they added golden by mistake and forgot to take it out.

Ohh the box did came sealed as you can see I’ve got the seal broken on the left side prior to unboxing, but that wasn’t really me, I had some issues at customs and they just had to open the box to peak inside. Well it arrived safe and sound at least. There’s nothing at the back of the box except it’s just blue colored so passing on.

So once you lift the top of the box, you have the smartphone right infront of you covered with plastic and stuck between foam for safety.

Once you take the phone out, you can see that there’s a hidden compartment. And an interesting thing is that there’s a pic of the front of the smartphone with pointers pointing out stuff like sensors and camera.

Once you open the compartment and Bingo! There’s stuff in it!

Well of course, but lets move that aside and have a look at the bottom of the box and once again we have a smartphone picture but this time of the back and pointers pointing at stuff like button and ports.

Well lets see what came with the Landvo S6. So we have 2 boxes; the little one contain the charging adaptor while the big one has the wire. Then in the little plastic bag we have the key that opens the Sim case. Then in other plastic we have a spare screen protector, yes the phone does come with screen protector applied. And finally we have the instruction manual. Yup, that’s all. Wait no headset? Yup, it’s sad that the Landvo S6 doesn’t come with headset instead you have to buy them separately and this is honestly something it should come with.

The charging cables come well packed and rolled up and is about 30 inch and they are also really flexible so low chances of damaging the wire.

 

Finally the stuff you were waiting for. Out of the plastic cover that is how the phone looks like. we have the plastic that we’re supposed to peel off from the top of screen protector with pointers pointing at keys, camera and range sensor on it.

On the back we have similar treatment. Covered with plastic with pointers pointing towards cam, flashlight, speaker, headphone and usb port over the screen protector. Why screen protectors on the back as well you ask? Well, I haven’t said much on the body yet, have I? The Landvo S6 has a silver body with touchscreen glass on front and glass on the back as well, hence the Landvo S6 comes with screen protectors on back as well to protect the back from minor scratches. We also have the Landvo logo below the camera, the manufacturing location, IMEI number etc.

And that is how the front and back looks without the plastic with pointer.

Now lets take a closer look at the body and at the bottom we have the speaker holes at the left, then usb connection to the left, then a little hole which I believe to be the mic and then the headphone port.

This side of the body was supposed to be the right side, but since the phone is upside down we have it at left right now. So here we have the power key at the top side with 2x nano sim slots below it. Yes, this is the outside difference mentioned in the start of review. Whereas the Galaxy S6 which looks similar to this phone only has support for 1x Nano Sim, the Landvo S6 has support for dual Nano Sims.

 

To access the sim case, you’ll need the key. You’ll need to insert the pointing side of the key into a little hole present on the sim case and apply a little force to unlock it. No wonder, I absolutely don’t like the idea of using a key to open the Sim case. In case you are outside, and want to swap the sim, you can be in trouble. I haven’t really tried anything else that looks similar to the key, but I guess anything would work, just make sure you don’t break it inside.

And then we have the actual right side of the phone. There’s nothing else to be mentioned except the two volume keys near the top.

Here are some more snaps I took of the Smartphone.

 

Problem right after first boot!

Yup, you heard it right, I faced a problem with the phone right after my first boot. The issue wasn’t something really serious and something one can’t really solve but it can leave one’s phone out of use for some days until they find a solution.

Well, on my first boot, the problem I faced was that the phone language was set to Chinese or Japanese language, since I don’t really recognize the characters, let’s just assume it was one of them. It was a easy fix seeing the logos of the options, but I did made a video so if anyone got the same phone or intend to buy, they can take help from it.

The phone does come with Google play and it’s own store known as Mopoplay which I disabled as I didn’t wanted to use 2 stores. Then there’s also a copy of the Clean Master app that was pre-installed on the phone in Chinese/Japanese language that I removed regardless of who copied it, it is not our concern.

Performance

The Landvo S6 comes with the MTK6582 Quad Core 1.3GHz processor, Mali 400 MP GPU and 1GB of RAM. Let’s be honest here, everyone knows 1GB of RAM isn’t enough for today’s applications, multi-tasking and 5 inch 720p screen which they tried to somewhat balance with the Quad core processor and Mali 400 GPU but to be fair, notice that the price is just about right for the specs we get with the phone. I did notice some lag and delay while opening camera/applications/games and browsing through menu however. The phone did became a little bit slow in reaction timing after the torture of applications and usage as well.

Below is a video in which you can see the boot timing, (which is very slow) some gameplay of games I recorded and a 1080p short film video playback.

Once again, you can notice how long the boot timing was which usually companies try to avoid but when it comes to gameplay, the phone performed pretty well. I only noticed some stutters while switching through game menus and stuff but not during the actual gameplay. The only game (as of yet) in which I notice minor lag was the Asphalt 8 at high settings so overall the Landvo S6 should be enough for mediocre gaming at med-high settings.

Above is the results from the famous Smartphone benchmarking program known as AnTuTu. The results are not great, but not bad either as at the same price I’ve seen more expensive and known smartphones with lower scores, though doesn’t mean I haven’t seen the opposite too. One thing to mention is that the day after I booted the phone and ran the Antutu benchmark, the score was around 18.5K but the score mentioned in this article was taken right before writing the article so we can see the phone has already seen some performance downgrade after using and installing applications and well that was expected.

After that, I ran another benchmark which is famous around the PC gaming and overclocking community but has taken a place in smartphone benchmarking world as well, 3DMark – Ice Storm Extreme. The Landvo S6 scored 2031 points in the benchmark which is an average performance in the same budget smartphones.

Touchscreen

Touchscreen responsiveness is one of the main selling feature of a smartphone for me personally. Why? Because I’ve used my dad’s phone for a long time which is very unresponsive and sometimes works on its own. We have kind of a similar condition here but it’s better than the one Dad uses. The touch screen isn’t really responsive and is also inaccurate at times. I have to swipe a few times to get the notification bar down, it is hard to click on small objects, links and stuff while browsing or using applications, the touch screen is also not much enjoyable in the FPS games and I can’t even write a sentence perfectly without making several spelling mistakes. All and all, I’m not happy with the touchscreen sensitivity and accuracy of Landvo S6 overall. What’s the point of a well equipped phone when you can’t use it comfortable and the way you want?

Sound

The Landvo S6 has the speakers at the bottom of the phone which my opinion is better than having at the back. The sound quality is really great and loud. You can hear each and every word clearly while playing songs or games or calls. The mic is also really good and easily understandable on the other side on calls or while recording. Full marks here.

Battery

Personally, I’ve never liked the idea of built-in batteries, but companies have to do it for the interior design, so they do it and we accept it. The Landvo S6 has a 2550mAh battery which runs about one and a half day on minimal use and about 3.5-4.5 hours on extensive use on 1 time charge. It takes about 2 1/2 hours to completely charge the battery from 1% to 100%. So overall, the battery is nothing special but an average performance you’ll see from a budget smartphone.

Camera

The Landvo S6 has dual cameras; the front being 2.0 megapixels while rear being 8.0 megapixel. The camera does well in broad daylight or rooms with enough light, but it’s doesn’t perform that great in darkness. The front camera being at 2MP gives great results taking selfies which I rarely do, while the back has more detailed shots. Though as soon as you zoom in, the image starts to loss it’s quality and once you’re completely zoomed in, you get image of a quality you’d see in a UFO sighting video. Below are some pictures I took while a trip to a local entertainment center.

Temperature

Well it’s a known fact that while gaming a smartphone does heat up, at least I haven’t used any smartphone that doesn’t heat up while gaming. So is the case with the Landvo S6. But it heats up to a bearable extent and only around the camera side where I suppose the GPU or CPU would be. According to the Clean Master application, the highest temperature I’ve seen on the smartphone is 52C so far.

Conclusion

It really is hard to conclude this review as there are ups and downs and patterns that I can’t really sum up easily. First let’s talk about the Landvo S6 with a little comparison to the Galaxy S6. Simply put, you wouldn’t know it’s a Galaxy S6 or Landvo S6 until you know the specs, see the Landvo Logo and the dual sim feature on the body. The Landvo S6 also has metal body, glasses on both side, buttons position and camera exactly identical. Even the OS and notification bars looks identical to that of the Galaxy S6. It even has the Side key panel, Air gesture, Multi-Window, Face lock, fingerprint lock features and S health application.

Now let’s talk about the device itself. The sound quality is great, the performance in gaming and browsing is good, the battery life is average, the camera is good, but the touchscreen isn’t really up to all that stuff and a touchscreen is the most important part of the phone.

If you are aiming for the original S6 in the future but want to have a feel of what it is like, then the Landvo S6 might be a good option. Considering the price which is about $107.75 at gearbest.com the specification and all the stuff are priced greatly and if you think you can adjust with the touchscreen in case of minimal usage but want something fancy, there are better choices out there but it’s not a bad choice either.

Pros:

• Great sound quality
• Good camera quality.
• Good performance in gaming, browsing and other stuff.
• Average battery life
• Price is great.
• Cloning at it’s finest.
• Spare screen protector

Cons:

• Touchscreen isn’t really responsive or accurate.
• Doesn’t come with a headset.