A Cozy 8-core Phone for the Autumn Market

THL T6 Pro: A Cozy 8-core Phone for the Autumn Market

Autumn is the ideal season to release new products: People are waiting for the Halloween and Christmas holidays. Being the star of fast developing consumer electronics market, cellphone companies will never be left behind. The leading companies like Samsung and Apple have announced their latest cellphone products, yet Google’s Nexus products are not even be leaked.

The 8-core Android cellphones have come to us months ago, even Qualcomm has broken its words to launched 8-core processors. Before Qualcomm’s 8-core processors are widely used, the only brands on this market are Samsung’s Exynos 54X0 series and MediaTek’s MTK6592. Exynos series have the bad reputation for battery-consumption and temperature control. And the lack of baseband patents make Samsung’s processors higher price for its extra cost. At the same time, MediaTek’s only 8-core processor MTK6592 has been sold over 6 months. Though not competitive with Qualcomm flagship 4-core processor like Snapdragon 800, MTK6592 is a quite decent processor: subordinate flagship performance, perfect battery-consumption and the low cost for manufacturers. Considering the upgrade version MTK6595 has been postponed several times, the MTK6592 is still trending in 2014 and 2015 spring.

Before the MTK6595 is mass produced, MTK6592 will slowly but steadily lower the price, in other words, cost down. From over $200 to the present price about $120, this process speeds up much. The model we’re talking today, THL T6 Pro is definitely an ambitious product. THL has brought us many classic cellphones: T100S, T200C, T11, and W11… Their recent models THL5000 and T6S did win reputation for cost/performance, battery-consumption, and build quality. While the THL5000 with over $260 and T6S with less than $90, there is a great gap between these two models. Considering the MTK6582 quad core phones have come with the low price, THL’s impossible to make a high-end quad core phone and mark it over $150. Thus THL chose to build the upgrade version of T6S, which is T6 Pro.

Sharing the same model with T6S, T6 Pro also has many same features with T6S. The specifications for T6 Pro is standard: MTK6592 octa core processors, 1GB RAM and 8GB ROM, 5” IPS HD screen, 2.0 MP and 8.0 MP dual cameras. Surely it aims at the customers who are eager to experience the octa core phones, yet worried about the unknown brand’s cheap products, or the unnecessary expensive ones.

The T6 Pro inherited simple but smart design. The same engineering plastics material on the back of T6 PRO feels quite different. The soft touch feels cozy, even in the cold weather days. The anti-slip surface is helpful when holding it in your hand. For this design, it won scores for anti-scratch part. The sound of speaker is impressive, so no need to worry you will miss the call. The T6 PRO used the three traditional button keys as well: menu, home and back. Fortunately the menu button has the right icon, not the multi-task icon on some other models. The power button and volume buttons are on the side of the phone which can easily access and the touch feels clear for each button. The 3.5mm microphone interface and micro USB interface are on the top. It feels better to hold the phone when charging it. At the bottom of the phone, the open slot of the back cover and the denoise microphone are here.

For the camera part, T6 PRO’s rear 8.0 MP camera lacks of unique features. But the main functions are supported: LED flashlight, auto-focus, panorama shot, face recognition, and continuous shot. Besides, it can toggle between 4:3 and 16:9 photo scale. The actual quality of the rear camera is decent for 8.0MP. The noise control is OK, but the glare prevention needs improvement.

The hardware performance of T6 PRO is within our expectation, both the Antutu benchmark and the 3D games / video playback experience is the normal MTK6592 level. 1GB RAM will be short for many background running apps. We agree that it can meet your daily demands as a starter phone. Though it’s an entry-level octa core phone, there is a long way between the T6 PRO and flagship ones. But running Facebook and Twitter will be more than sufficient. If this phone has the lower than $150 price, there would be chances for T6 PRO. And for this price, we can give it a 4.5 stars remark.