ZTE Blade S6 Plus hands-on

The ZTE Blade S6 Plus is a larger version of the Blade S6, offering an affordable 64-bit Android phablet-class handset. Aside from the larger display, and thus – body, it doesn't differ much from its smaller sibling, in terms of specs.

Design and Display

The ZTE Blade S6 Plus has a design language reminiscent of the iPhone 6 Plus, with its curved sides, round home button, and flat back. Its body is plastic with a faux-aluminum finish. The home button is neat, as it glows in blue and the Android "Menu" and "Back" capacitive keys are disguised as small dots on both sides of it.

The display measures at 5.5" across its diagonal, and sports a 1080 x 1920 resolution, bringing its PPI density up to the crisp 400. The display offers nice, vivid colors, and good viewing angles.

Processor, memory and interface

Just like the Blade S6, the Plus sports a 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 615, this time clocked at 1.5 GHz. We'd say we find this Qualcomm SoC to be a pretty adequate one that can take some abuse. It has 2 GB of RAM, 8 GB of internal storage – surprisingly, less than what the 5” Blade S6 offers, but at least the S6 Plus still takes microSD cards of up to 128 GB, however.

The phone comes with a ZTE custom interface laid on top of Android 5.0 Lollipop. The UI is light, minimalistic, intuitive, and generally snappy.

Expectations

A nice offering for those looking to grab a 64-bit phablet without shelling out too much cash. The Blade S6 Plus even has the looks to boot with the cool aluminum-like finish and glowing capacitive keys. It sports a FHD resolution, as opposed to its smaller sibling, so the screen is crisper, but we're not sure how we feel about the smaller internal storage.