Released alongside the relatively more premium Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Plus, the Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie serves to be easier on the pocket. It touts the exact same 16MP front-facing sensor, for less the price. For the budget-conscious, avid selfie-taker, this seems like a perfect choice.
Out of the box, each Flare S6 Selfie purchase comes with the following:
- Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie main unit
- 1 1.5A wall charger
- 1 Cherry Mobile Brand USB-C data/charging cable
- 1 Cherry Mobile Brand IEM headphones
- 1 Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie user manual
One could say the Flare S6 Selfie takes the normal Flare S6 and adds a bit of the Flare S6 Plus’s core feature – its front-facing camera. Whether or not the rest of its features would stack up remains to be seen. For our first impressions, read through below.
Compared to the Flare S6 Plus, the Flare S6 Selfie sports a home button front and center, just below its screen. It also doesn’t come with an 18:9 ratio and slim bezels, but its huge front camera more than makes up for it.
Perhaps the only gripe anyone could have about the back of the phone would be its camera bump. Other than that, however, the phone looks clean and feels solid in the hand. Of course, it can also feel a little slippery, so a case could prove a little helpful. It’s too bad Cherry Mobile failed to include one along with the phone, though.
On the right side of the phone lies the power and volume buttons. Meanwhile, the SIM tray sits opposite at the left side of the phone.
Many would appreciate the fact that the Flare S6 Selfie still rocks a headphone jack, located on top of the phone. Down below sits the charging port and the speaker grilles.
Finally, in front of the phone lies a 5.2-inch FHD display. Up top are the camera, other sensors, and an LED notification light. Meanwhile, flanked with Android navigation keys on either side, the home button below doubles as a fingerprint scanner.
Both front and rear cameras use Samsung S5K3P3 sensors and take decent, 16 MP photos. While it takes a few seconds for the camera to initially adjust focus depending on the lighting conditions, it manages to take clear photos.
The camera features HDR, Panorama, Beauty, Mono, and Night, modes, useful for quick point-and-shoot photo ops. It also comes with Bokeh, which could be a little tricky to get right the first time. To take a bokeh shot, the camera prompts the user to move the phone upwards after taking a first photo. It then takes more of the background in the second photo it takes. Once photos turn out right, the bokeh effect proves pretty nifty.
Again, like the more expensive Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Plus, the Flare S6 Selfie features Cherry OS. Built on Android 7.0 Nougat, the software runs snappily. One thing to note is the launcher looks a bit different from that of the Flare S6 Plus’s, but that could be from the difference in screen size. Just as always, the phone comes with a bevy of Cherry apps, some of which one could just do without. So far, the software runs without a hitch for day to day use. On a related note, we’ll be covering gaming and other power-intensive tasks in our full review, so stay tuned.