Introduction
Vivo has officially launched its new smartphone - the Vivo S6 5G today at an online event in China, and it arrives as a successor version of the Vivo S5, which was announced last year. It is the first S-series phone to come with 5G capabilities. The front camera of the Vivo S6 5G can capture better and clear selfie shots in dim-light conditions, according to the company. The phone unveiled with the super-fast 5G support and a bunch of camera tricks that provide better performance to the users. Moreover, with Exynos 980 Chipset on board, the phone packs enough power to tackle intensive tasks like gaming with ease. The Vivo S6 5G comes in two variants at launch. The 8GB RAM and 128GB storage variant start at 2698 yuan ($381) while the 8GB and 256GB storage variant is priced at 2998 yuan ($423). The phone will go on sale in China from April 3 via Vivo’s official store, Tmall, JD.com, and other major online and offline platforms.
Alongside the Vivo S6 5G, the smartphone maker also announced a new pair of wired earphones. The brand claims it to offer an exceptional audio listening experience in both media consumption and calls. It features an L-shaped 3.5mm headphone jack port and a built-in mic as well as a single button to wake up Vivo’s Jovi AI virtual assistant. This new wired earphone from Vivo is priced at 129 yuan ($18), and it will go on sale starting April 3 alongside the Vivo S6 in China. Additionally, the brand is offering a 30 Yuan ($4) discount on these earphones exclusively for the buyers of the company’s new S6 smartphone.
Design and Display
The Vivo S6 5G arrives with a familiar 3D curved design with a couple of interesting colors like Gradient Purple-Blue and Light Blue. As the company mentioned in one of its earlier teasers, the brand has limited the phone’s weight to just 181 grams, less than its predecessor. Vivo has also ditched the diamond-shaped camera housing from the Vivo S5 in favor of a simpler round camera design. This camera setup features a 48MP primary sensor, and the flash is placed outside, just below it. In addition, the phone has an under-display fingerprint sensor for authentication. The handset measures 161.2 x 74.7 x 8.7 mm dimensionally. There’s a 6.44-inch AMOLED HDR10 certified waterdrop display upfront with 2400 × 1080 FHD+ resolution, 103 percent NTSC ultra-wide color gamut, and ultra-high contrast of up to 1200000:1. Vivo S6 5G provides an 83.2 percent screen-to-body ratio at 409 PPI density.
Front and Rear Cameras
On the back panel, Vivo S6 5G offers a rounds-shaped quad-camera setup for photography experience. This includes a 48MP primary shooter that’s paired with an 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens, 2MP depth of field lens, and a 2MP macro lens capable of 4cm close-up shots. The 48MP (wide) primary sensor has an f/1.8 aperture, 1/2.0", 0.8µm pixels, and PDAF technology. An 8MP ultra-wide shooter houses f/2.2 aperture, 13mm, 1/4.0", and 1.12µm pixels. The Vivo S6 supports 4K video shooting and 1080P real-time beauty mode shooting too. There’s a special dual view video mode that displays the video streams from the rear and front cameras simultaneously on the screen.
The big highlight of the Vivo S6 5G is its front-facing camera. Featuring the same 32MP selfie shooter like its predecessor, but with a larger f/2.08 aperture, the phone has a few tricks up its sleeve. It supports EIS on both front and back cameras. It has a new Super-Clear night view selfie mode that uses new super night view algorithms and lights up the screen upfront for brighter selfies when the lighting goes down. The selfie shooter also has six preset beauty makeup modes to liven up your selfies. The 32MP front camera of the phone can record Full HD videos at 30fps.
Battery, Chipset, and Software
Under the hood, the Vivo S6 5G draws power from the 8nm Exynos 980 upper mid-range 5G processor. This is paired with LPDDR4X 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of storage. It supports both SA/NSA 5G standards and arrives in a dual SIM standby variant. As for the software, the phone runs the Android 10 operating system overlaid with the Funtouch 10.0 layer. It also has the company’s Multi-Turbo technology. This consists of six individual technologies, which include CPU Turbo, AI Turbo, Net Turbo, Cooling Turbo, Game Turbo, and ART++ Turbo. The company claims that the new generation of Cooling Turbo on the Vivo S6 reduces the phone’s temperature by up to 10 (degree) celsius as compared to its predecessor.
Furthermore, Vivo is also offering a bunch of software features like intelligent image recognition, app sharing, and screencast. As for connectivity, you get a Wi-Fi ac and Bluetooth 5.1. The phone is also Hi-Res certified. Vivo S6 5G arrives with a 4500mAh battery, that’s larger than the S5. However, what’s really surprising is that it supports just 18W charging technology. To recall, even the S5 had a 22.5W charger, so it is really disappointing to see Vivo downgrade the charging tech on the new model.