Chinese phone manufacturer Gionee wants you to forget phones like the Blackphone, the Turing Phone, and the BlackBerry Priv, since the company believes its recently announced M6 and M6 Plus flagships are the most secure phones around.
The biggest selling point for both phones is a data encryption chip that Gionee says will protect everything from call records, to photos and documents, to notes and other sensitive information. The chip’s practical utility, along with more specific details, are currently unknown, though Gionee did say that the chip is similar to the “secure element” used to store data related to Apple Pay, albeit far more encompassing in the types of stored data. The company also mentioned the chip will protect M6 and M6 Plus owners from Android malware.
As for the phones themselves, the M6 goes first with its 5.5-inch, 1,920 x 1,080 resolution AMOLED display, 8-megapixel selfie camera, and 13MP main shooter with phase detection auto-focus and dual-tone LED flash. Elsewhere, a 1.8GHz octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 chipset and 4GB RAM power the M6, with either 64GB or 128GB of native storage expandable by up to an additional 128GB through the Micro SD card slot.
Impressively, the M6 houses a huge 5,000mAh battery, which Gionee claims will provide up to 6.4 hours of video, 55 hours of continuous phone calls, and 33 days of standby time. Furthermore, thanks to fast-charging technology, the battery goes from zero to 100 in two hours. Finally, the M6 runs Android Marshmallow out of the box, though you will not recognize it since Gionee opts to layer its Amigo 3.5 OS on top of it.
Moving on to the M6 Plus, the phone stays true to its name by opting for a larger 6-inch, 1,920 x 1,080 resolution AMOLED display. As for the cameras, the selfie camera remains at 8MP, though the main shooter gets a nice bump to 16MP. Finally, the larger size of the M6 Plus allows it to stuff a larger 6,020mAh battery, with not much else in the way of differences.
The M6 and M6 Plus will not be the most affordable phones around, particularly as far as Chinese phones are concerned, but their respective $404 and $434 prices are still impressive price points to hit. Unfortunately, there seems to be a discrepancy between Chinese and global models of the two phones, as the data encryption chip is not included in the global versions. Regardless of which version you get, however, the M6 and M6 Plus feature fingerprint sensors that further augment their focus on security.
