Review: Oukitel K6000 Pro

When it comes to smartphones, the number one issue that every single person has is the battery life. We’ve seen batteries become a bit more efficient, as well as larger. But smartphones still don’t last a full day for most people. Oukitel’s main selling point in their smartphones is their battery life. They’ve put out smartphones like the K4000, K6000 and K10000, all of which we’ve reviewed already and have scored amazing battery results. Is having a large 6,000mAH battery in the Oukitel K6000 Pro enough to justify picking one up? Let’s find out in our full review.

Specs

When it comes to the specs of the Oukitel K6000 Pro, we’re looking at decidedly mid-range, but still pretty respectable. The K6000 Pro sports a 5.5-inch 1920×1080 resolution IPS display, this gives you about 401 pixels per inch. The display takes up about 71% of the front of the device as well. Meaning it’s not sporting the smallest bezels, but still fairly small. Powering the K6000 Pro, we’re looking at the MediaTek MT6753 octa-core processor, which is clocked at 1.3GHz, and that is paired with the Mali-T720 GPU. 3GB of DDR3 RAM is tossed in for good measure. Storage includes 32GB of internal memory, of which, about 24GB is available to the user. There is also a microSD card slot available, for expanding the storage capacity.

Cameras on the K6000 Pro include a 13-megapixel camera on the back. This is an OmniVision OV13850 sensor. It also sports an aperture of f/2.0. It does sport an interpolated resolution of 16MP, however. The front-facing camera is a 5-megapixel shooter, which has an interpolated resolution of 8MP. It is the OmniVision OV5670 sensor, and has an aperture size of f/2.2.

As far as Connectivity goes, we’re looking at GPS, A-GPS and GLONASS for location and tracking. WiFi includes 802.11 b/g/n. Bluetooth 4.0 is supported as well as A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile). Sensors included are the Proximity, Light, Accelerometer and Fingerprint sensors (more on those later). All of this is powered by a 6,000mAh non-removable battery.

Here are the bands and networks that the Oukitel K6000 Pro supports:

GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900

WCDMA 900, 2100

LTE 800, 900, 1800, 2100, 2600

In the Box

Inside the box, there is the usual suspects. Of course we have the K6000 Pro right there on top. We also have the wall adapter, and micro USB cables beneath that, with a USB OTG cable, allowing you to expand your storage on the Oukitel K6000 Pro by using a USB device. They aren’t high-end earbuds, but still better than getting nothing. Oukitel also includes a SIM ejection tool, since the back cover isn’t removable. Additionally, we have a clear TPU case included and a screen protector. Allowing you to protect your Oukitel K6000 Pro without needing to shell out even more money.

Hardware

The build quality of the Oukitel K6000 Pro is actually fairly good. It’s a metal build with a glass front. Now due to the larger battery inside, it is quite a bit thicker than most other smartphones. The K6000 Pro comes in at about 9.7mm thick, which is a big difference from the 7-8mm that most other smartphones are today. While on paper, it doesn’t seem like a huge difference, you’ll definitely notice it in the hand.

The metal frame of the K6000 Pro makes the device feel pretty high-end, even though Oukitel is asking a pretty low price for this smartphone. Oukitel has placed the micro USB port on the bottom of the phone, and many will say that it is upside-down. The volume rocker and power button are located on the right side, with the 3.5mm headphone jack on the top. The left side houses the micro SD and SIM card slot. Oukitel has the speaker on the back, with the fingerprint reader just below the camera. With this being a metal smartphone, there are some antenna lines, but they are pretty minimal. Although one thing that is a bit odd is that the lines aren’t the same on every corner of the phone. On the bottom there are two lines on each side. There’s one on the right side and two at the top. But none on the left side. This could be due to the positioning of the SIM card tray, but it gives it a bit of an odd look.

Oukitel offers this one in white, grey, and gold. We have the white model here, as you can probably tell, and because of that, you are able to see all of the sensors and such on the front of the device. So on the front, you see the front-facing camera on the left side, and then a cluster of sensors on the right side. Of course, the speaker grill is in the middle. Additionally, since Oukitel went with capacitive keys here, its tough to see them on this white model. Especially since they don’t illuminate. After a while you do get used to where the buttons are, but it can still be a bit of an annoyance.

While many smartphone makers are going for thinner and thinner smartphones, Oukitel appears to have listened to their customers. Giving everyone a slightly thicker smartphone with a larger battery. Something that everyone has been wanting. Having a thicker smartphone means that it is less likely to fall out of your hand, and it makes it feel more comfortable in your hand. And of course, a larger battery is always a good thing, in this day and age.

Performance

The MediaTek MT6753 has been a pretty popular processor among many smartphones in this price range. It’s an octa-core processor featuring eight Cortex-A53 cores all clocked at 1.3GHz. This is paired with the Mali-T720 GPU along with 3GB of RAM. Pretty respectable hardware, when you think about it. And during our time with the Oukitel K6000 Pro, it performed very well. There were a few slowdowns, but that could be attributed to apps and games acting a bit funny – as that does happen from time to time. Otherwise, the 3GB of RAM that is included was plenty to keep all of our apps and games open without needing to clear everything out of recents.

When it came to gameplay, everything was nice and smooth. Graphics looked pretty amazing on the display here as well. All in all, there really weren’t any issues with the performance of the Oukitel K6000 Pro. And that’s something we’re glad to see.

Display

As mentioned already, the K6000 Pro features a 5.5-inch panel with a 1080p resolution. It’s an IPS display with about 401 pixels per inch. Obviously this isn’t a QHD display here, so it won’t look too good in virtual reality. But for your normal day-to-day usage with your smartphone, it works out pretty well. The Oukitel K6000 Pro has a few display settings included as well, allowing you to tweak the way the display looks, so that it is to your liking. Something that we can all appreciate, seeing as not everyone wants a warm display, nor a cold one.

The brightness range on this panel is really quite good. It can go from very dim – great for using it at night or in dark settings – to being very bright. Of course, that’s great for using it outside in direct sunlight, where the Oukitel K6000 Pro performs quite well. We used it outside in direct sunlight and were able to still see and use the display just as we would indoors.

Speaker & Sound

The speaker found on the Oukitel K6000 Pro is on the backside of the device. Normally, we would frown upon that decision, but we found something surprising about this speaker. When you place the smartphone down on a table, the sound doesn’t become muffled, like many would expect. Instead the sound stays as crisp and clear as if you were holding the device. It’s pretty surprising, and something we really like to be honest. Additionally, when playing games, and your hand is over the speaker, it doesn’t muffle the sound at all. While we’d prefer front-facing speakers, this speaker isn’t bad at all.

When it comes to listening to music and other audio through the 3.5mm headphone jack, it plays just as well as you’d expect. Now you’re not getting any type of HiFi music here with the Oukitel K6000 Pro, but you do get some pretty decent sounding audio from the headphone jack. Of course, some of that is due to the headphones you use with the phone.

Fingerprint Sensor

Here on the Oukitel K6000 Pro, we have a fingerprint sensor on the backside of the device, below the camera. This fingerprint sensor does support Google’s Fingerprint API, meaning that you can use it to login to things like LastPass, Paypal and other apps that support it. Making the fingerprint sensor a whole lot more useful. The fingerprint sensor, surprisingly, does work very well. There were only a handful of times where the sensor had issues recognizing my finger and unlocking the device. I’d say about 97% of the time, the fingerprint sensor worked. Which is pretty good, to say the least.

Battery Life

Probably the most interesting part about this review, is the battery life. Oukitel’s K6000 Pro has a 6,000mAh battery. Now for most smartphones, that would be huge, but Oukitel does have a larger one – in the Oukitel K10000. We took the Oukitel K6000 Pro with us on vacation and the phone lasted around 3 days before needing to be recharged – of course that wasn’t on heavy usage really. But most of the time it could last around two days, and we were able to close in on 10 hours of on screen time, a few times. Really impressive, when you think about it.

Now where there’s a big battery in here, you’d expect there to be some sort of Quick Charge functionality, but there isn’t. Which means it does take an awfully long time to charge back up to 100%. Around 6 hours or more. So you’ll want to charge it while you’re asleep, that way when you wake up, it is fully charged.

We did run PC Mark on the Oukitel K6000 Pro, to see how well the battery would do. Unsurprisingly, it got a higher score than any other smartphone we’ve tested. According to PC Mark, it can get over 15 hours. While most others are around 9 hours, and a select few hitting 12.

Benchmarks

As usual, we ran Geekbench 3, AnTuTu, and 3D Mark on the Oukitel K6000 Pro, which you can see the results below. The device scored about where we expected it too, especially given the specs that it boasts.

Software

Oukitel is running Android 6.0 Marshmallow here on the K6000 Pro. And luckily, the device is running a stock version of Android. Meaning that you’re getting an experience that you would get from a Nexus, minus a few other things. You also get to experience Material Design just as Matias Duarte would want. There’s only a few changes that Oukitel made to the software here, and many of them can be changed by installing a third-party launcher.

One of the big changes here is the icons. Oukitel has a number of themes available, that can theme the icons on the device. Making it possible to change up the look without needing to install anything onto the device. The launcher is also slightly changed, but many users wouldn’t even notice. The app drawer does exist here, thankfully, but it is a vertical scrolling app drawer, like the Google Now Launcher. However it doesn’t show your most used apps at the top of the app drawer.

Otherwise, the software experience is pretty vanilla. And that’s a good thing. It means that Oukitel will be able to push out updates to the K6000 Pro pretty quickly, since they don’t need to implement all of their features into a new version of Android – which will be coming in the next few months with Android N.

Camera

The camera here on the Oukitel K6000 Pro is a 13-megapixel shooter – although it is interpolated to 16MP – and it actually does pretty well. As long as their is great lighting conditions, you’ll be amazed with the picture quality that the Oukitel K6000 Pro can provide. In low light, the camera performs decently. It’s a bit hit or miss, but to be honest, it performs better than most smartphones in this price range. Where the K6000 Pro really suffers is with moving things. There is a picture of a dog in the Flickr album below, and you’ll see that everything is clear, but because he is moving, he’s a bit blurry. That is primarily due to how slow the shutter is. Surprisingly, when you turn off the “zero shutter” feature in settings, it gets even slower. Normally, you’d think that would be the opposite. But the shutter can be quite slow, even in direct sunlight, which is a bit strange.

As far as the camera experience goes, it’s pretty good. Now the Oukitel K6000 Pro isn’t going to compete with the likes of the LG G5, HTC 10 or Samsung Galaxy S7, in the camera department, but it holds its own. The camera app is pretty simple, everything is basically where you’d expect it to be.

For those interested in viewing the full resolution samples taken with the Oukitel K6000 Pro, click on the Flickr album below.

The Good

Battery Life: The best battery life I’ve experienced on any phone that I have ever reviewed, hands down.

Display: While it’s not QHD, this 1080p IPS panel is still very good.

Build Quality: This phone is under $200. So to have a huge battery and a metal unibody, I was quite surprised with how good the build quality is here.

Software: We always love seeing stock Android on smartphones. It makes updating easier, and users are less confused on how to use the device.

The Bad

Capacitive keys: We’d prefer either on-screen buttons, or capacitive keys that actually light up. With this being a white-front smartphone, it’s tough to see the keys in daylight.

Slow Charging: Big battery is great, but having a big battery that charges very slow is not the best experience.

Wrap Up

In short, if you are looking for a smartphone with a huge battery, that will last you all day, if not two full days, than the Oukitel K6000 Pro is definitely the way to go. There’s not much to complain about when it comes to the Oukitel K6000 Pro. While it doesn’t have the most high-end specs, that you would see out of Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, Lenovo, and even Meizu and Xiaomi, the specs on the K6000 Pro will definitely stand up to flagships coming out this year and next.

Buy The Oukitel K6000 Pro