itel S16 Pro Unboxing and Review By Eric Okafor

Hey guys, it’s Eric here and this is the itel S16 Pro unboxing and review. 

It comes in this very bright red package, I think every unit sold here will have Olamide’s photo on it. Let’s take it out of the sleeve and see what we have in the box. 
When you open it up, you’re greeted with an envelope that houses the SIM ejection tool and a hard plastic case. This one is translucent. We’d try it on later.



We have the device wrapped in plastic, let’s take out the sticker on the front and on the back. 
This is the gradient green color, it also comes in dark purple. 
 
On the bottom compartment, We have a 5 watt charger, a micro USB cable and a single EarPod. This is clearly supposed to be the star of the show, I mean asides Olamide. very unexpected to be honest and listening to music on it is actually not bad at all.

You get some earbud tips in different sizes. 

Let’s go ahead and try that case on, tight fight, open at the bottom and has a matte feel to it. 
It also comes with a screen protector already applied. You can take it out and replace with a glass one instead. The S16 Pro only supports 2G and 3G.

There’s a 4G variant available in some regions, but I’m not sure if that’s coming here. On the front you have a 6.6 inch HD Plus TFT display with 20 by 9 aspect ratio. On the top left corner we have a punch hole that houses an 8 megapixel selfie shooter. 
On the back, you have an 8 megapixel triple Camera setup with flash. You also have a finger print sensor and some itel branding.



On the left you have a 3 in 1 tray that house is 2 nano SIMs and an SD card On the right you have a volume rocker and power button. 
On the top you have nothing

On the bottom you have a speaker, micro USB port, a microphone and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. 

The itel S16 Pro spots the stereotypical 2020 design with it’s wider camera layout but without the black color. The camera bump is tiny. The back and frame are made from plastic and is painted evenly to look like a unibody design.

The gradient color has this party light effect with visible patterns but it is not textured. Clearly this bright color is meant for young people. It’s neither heavy nor light. 

On the front, we get thick looking bezels and chin but the dot notch makes it hard to tell it apart from some more expensive phones. I think one of the first things to do is to turn off that smart brightness adjustment aka adaptive brightness because it doesn’t always give you the brightest viewing experience under direct sunlight.

Viewing angles however are below average. It is a 720p display and YouTube videos will be capped at 720p. Also colors aren’t the most vibrant here. All of which is to be expected in this price range. 
 What get 32 Gigs of storage and 2 gigs of ram.

You get 25 Gigs of available storage. 

We’re running on Android 10 Go edition. This is supposed to be a light version of Android that runs well without so much RAM but not sure why itel has lots of bloatware here, which kinda defeats the whole purpose.90% of them can be deleted and I suggest you do that coz you’re going to need all the memory you can get. The quick settings seems to be missing the Screen record feature but I discovered that you can get around that by pressing and holding the Power button and the volume up key. Using the volume down key with power button takes a regular screenshot.

Also, on the initial set up, you get some security questions that I haven’t seen before. Be sure to remember your answers, just in case. 
The S16 Pro uses the Spreadtrum UNISOC SC7731E CPU clocked at 1.3 GHZ and it’s the same one on the Nokia C1 that I reviewed. In terms of performance, I think this is one phone that can do only a handful of tasks without lag or hiccups so it’s not the super powerful, multi tasking, gaming beast. Actually you cannot do anything that is graphics intensive with ease and no split screen feature either, We’d talk about the gaming in a bit.

It handles things like web browsing, calls, texts, WhatsApp, and the lite version of Facebook really well but the rest of them like Instagram, twitter and even taking photos in quick succession require A LOT of patience. 
The fingerprint sensor speed is quite fair for this price point and it is accurate most of the time. The face unlock is slightly slower but works even in pitch darkness. Also it does not unlock with your side view so security wise, it’s actually better than most. Here’s how the speaker compares side by side the TECNO Pova’s.



When it comes to gaming, as usual I played *crickets* I mean I tried to play PUBG but it just didn’t run well enough to consider it playable. So yeah the S16 Pro is really really X1000 not meant for gaming. It didn’t run Temple Run 2 so that should give you an Idea of the kinds of games that would actually run on this guy. Games like Smash hit and jetpack joy ride are playable but it’s best to not expect to play any games on this phone. It is powered by a 4000mAh battery and I put it through my usual battery test.4 hours of Instagram and 3+hours on Facebook all on WiFi. This gave me 9 hours of screen on time with 9 percent left to spare.

We have seen 4000mAh last a lot longer. This will last the typical user a whole day but the standby is quite poor so you have to plug at night or risk waking up to a dead battery. Better still, plug this phone whenever you can coz it took me 4 long hours and 23 mins to charge from Zero to 100 percent. It does not support fast charging and there’s no getting around that. 
 
The S16 Pro’s camera interface is pretty simple but still somehow packs pro mode, which is totally unexpected from a device in this price range.

Let’s see some photos. Using the selfie camera outdoors, the results are actually quite good for an entry level device. It does lack details when you crop in and it has this greenish tint to it but this was a single take and the exposure is well balanced. 

With portrait mode, the background isn’t entirely blurred out but I can live with the margin for error compared to the blurring of my head or ear as most entry level phones do. 

The primary camera is a lot more detailed and you get better skin tones but the beauty feature, tho turned off is still blurring this out quite a bit.

Using portrait mode, leaves it looking even more beautified. The sense of depth is similar to that of the selfie camera. 
 I’d say that the entry level-ness of this camera is very obvious when you crop into any image and will not pass on social media as crispy unless you take it to Lightroom or snapseed. 

As for Dynamic range, it doesn’t really have the range. It may not have been a cloudy day but it was pretty sunny outside.



Macro Lens is pretty good and I checked, it’s a real dedicated lens. 

This is the result of a panoramic shot but I didn’t go full 360. 
Indoors, the outputs are exactly what you expect from entry level phones. Too soft on the primary lens and too white walker ash on the selfie lens. 

Portrait mode has a bit of that greenish oily effect that reminds me of Samsung J series from 2017.


 The screen flash is not going to cut its, you’d need a very very well lit room. It records videos in 720P for the front and back camera. The itel S16 pro is not the floor price 1GB RAM entry level phone that the Vanilla S16 is. It has double the storage and RAM + the design is nicer to look at but don’t let that fool you into thinking it is anywhere near a midrange phone. As in no dey make mouth.

For starters, this is not the upgrade for someone who’s already using a working low-end phone, it’s more or less a teenager’s first ever smartphone or an elderly person’s phone for calls, texts and WhatsApp or someone who isn’t at all social media savvy and spends most of their data on the web browser. The one thing itel offers that is actually unique and makes it worth considering is the fact that replacement parts are readily available, which means that you can use it for years or hand it down as the case may be, even if you’re clumsy. You can also check out some slightly more expensive phones on my channel. 
The itel S16 Pro is priced at 41,500 Naira which converts to 90 US dollars and it’s currently available on Jumia. I’d be leaving my affiliate link in the description.



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Source : Eric Okafor