Gionee has launched its new A-series in the form of A1 and A1 Plus Smartphones were launched at MWC 2017 held last month Launched at trade shows. Without waiting any longer, Gionee A1 has been launched in India. This smartphone has a 16 megapixel front camera and a big battery. The phone runs on Android 7.0 based Amigo OS. However, this phone has been launched in a category where other smartphones with similar specifications also fit.
Will Gionee A1 be able to compete with its rival smartphones coming in this price range? Know all the pros and cons of the phone in this review.
Gionee A1 Design
Metal bodies have now become a standard feature in most smartphones sold in India, even in the budget segment, and that’s a good thing. Metal makes the phone sturdy and also gives it a premium feel. The Gionee A1 uses A6000 aircraft-grade material that the company claims is used to make cars and planes. The curved edges and rear of the device also make it look attractive. The front of the phone is dominated by glass. The phone fits comfortably in the hand.
The phone has a fingerprint sensor integrated into the home button. There is also a capacitive rear and recent button. There is a volume and power button on the right side. Gionee has given a reddish tone to the power button which looks unique. There is a front camera just above the screen and there is also an LED flash, which Gionee calls ‘Selfie Flash’. The micro-USB charging port and speaker are at the bottom while the 3.5mm audio jack is at the top.
The rear of Gionee A1 looks familiar, as the rear of many smartphones launched recently has been seen to be similar. There are antenna lines at the top and bottom. Before this Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 ,ReviewSimilar antenna lines were also seen in the Moto G5 Plus ( ), which is available at a lower price than the Gionee A1. The camera is slightly protruding outwards, but it is not visible on the Moto G5 Plus (Review) Below the primary camera is a dual-LED flash and the Gionee logo. The logo is fitted in a circle. And it looks like a fingerprint reader. We first touched our fingers on the logo on the rear, as we are used to this location of the fingerprint. There is a Gionee written at the bottom on the rear.
Weighing 183 grams, Gionee A1 feels a bit heavy as its screen size is also not very big. Metal body redmi note 4 It has a 4100 mAh battery and weighs just 165 grams. Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime (167 g) and moto m (163 grams) also fall in the same category and weighs less than the Gionee A1.
The Gionee A1 comes with a charger, a micro-UAC cable, earphones, a transparent back cover, an instruction manual and a SIM ejector tool. Overall, we like the design of the phone. But it could have been more convenient to use if it weighed less.
Gionee A1 specifications and software
Gionee A1 has an octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 (MT6755) processor that runs at 2 GHz. The phone has 4 GB of RAM. This smartphone has 64 GB inbuilt storage which can be expanded up to 256 GB. This is a hybrid dual-SIM phone. 4G support is available on both SIMs but only on one slot at a time. Apart from this, features like VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and USB OTG are also available.
This handset has a 4010 mAh battery which the company claims will last up to two days. Gionee A1 comes with fast charging which is a good feature.
The Gionee A1 sports a 5.5-inch Full HD (1080×1920 pixels) display. In our opinion, this is one of the best displays you can get at this price point. The display is bright enough and is legible even in sunlight. Colours are well reproduced. Text and images look crisp. Viewing angles are not a problem when watching videos. However, the front of the phone is a bit of a magnet and we had to clean the screen several times during the review period.
The handset runs on Android 7.0 Nougat based Amigo 4.0 OS. Gionee’s own Amigo OS is quite updated and looks better than before. It also has many Nougat features. Users will get a chance to run multiple apps simultaneously with the split screen mode. The Settings app is also new, although there is no menu button in the top left corner.
Gionee has also provided some features like Smart Gestures in the phone. Smart Vibration lets you know of missed calls and messages when the phone is in standby mode. And a double tap wakes up the phone even if the power button is not within reach. The phone also has an Edge Bar feature for shortcuts to your favourite apps, which can be activated by swiping right or left on the home button. The phone comes with a lot of Gionee apps pre-installed in Amigo OS as before and there is no way to get rid of them. Theme Park and Mood Wallpaper apps give you the option to change the look of the UI. The phone has a G Store app for new apps, games and videos. Apart from this, Amazon, Xender, Hotoday, Messenger, Saavn, Swiftkey Keyboard and Truecaller Plus, Asphalt Nitro, Bubble Bash 3, Danger Dash and Rear Football come pre-installed.
Gionee A1 Camera
Gionee A1 is positioned as a selfie smartphone, so let’s start with that. The phone has a 16-megapixel front camera with autofocus and an LED flash. The camera app also features live filters like smoothening, whitening, slimming and eye enlarging to enhance the look of photos after taking them. Selfies come with vibrancy and detailing. Most of the time, selfies are great, although we noticed excessive color tone in the images which looks artificial. Regular selfies are better than HDR selfies. Low light photos are also good and the quality of photos from the front camera looks good in limited light. As per the company’s claim, the selfie flash feature works.
The 13-megapixel rear camera on the Gionee A1 comes with a dual-LED flash and aperture f 2.0. It uses a Sony IMX258 sensor. The camera app has several modes such as Night, Professional, Time-lapse, Slow-motion, Smart Scene and GIF. The Gionee A1 camera app has a translation feature. The rear camera can record videos up to 1080p and 720p and the quality is excellent.
The rear camera images have good colours but they are oversaturated. The camera also takes some time to focus. The quality of the images taken at night was good. However, we noticed some noise and motion blur when we zoomed in on them to full size. Overall, the front and rear camera of the Gionee A1 works well. However, we feel that it needs some improvement as photography is its main feature.
Gionee A1 performance
The Gionee A1 will not disappoint you in terms of performance and the octa-core processor handles most tasks well. The handset has 4GB of RAM and during our review, we found that 1.8GB of RAM was free most of the time. The fingerprint sensor on the Gionee A1 works very well.
Games like Asphalt 8: Airborne and Dead Effect 2 were played without any lag. And we didn’t face any issues while playing games or running apps. The 5.5-inch screen is good for watching movies and videos. And we enjoyed streaming shows on our test unit.
We were disappointed by the fact that the Gionee A1 overheated most of the time. After playing games for 30 minutes, it felt uncomfortable to hold. The phone also got hot when we used GPS for navigation, the camera app and talked on the phone for long periods of time. On several occasions, after getting hot, our unit restarted on its own. And this is not expected from a phone at this price. This issue spoiled our overall experience with the phone.
The Gionee A1 Max comes with audio enhancement which is claimed to improve the sound output from the speaker as well as the sound quality of the earphones. With high volumes, the Gionee A1 does not disappoint. The earphones that come with the phone are good. Call quality is also great and we did not face any issues with voice quality. We were impressed by the smartphone’s ability to connect to networks even in areas with slow connectivity and weak Wi-Fi signals.
The Gionee A1 also scored well in benchmark tests. But at this price point, we have seen other smartphones score better than the Gionee A1.
The battery performance of the Gionee A1 does not disappoint and is one of the biggest highlights of the phone. The handset packs a 4010mAh non-removable battery and supports fast charging. 20 minutes of charging gives you up to 40 percent battery and the phone can be charged up to 100 percent in less than 2 hours. In our HD video loop test, the battery lasted for 14 hours and 45 minutes. With normal usage, the phone lasted for over 36 hours. With moderate usage, the phone ran for 45-48 hours and still had 20 percent battery left.
Our verdict
The Gionee A1 is a good option at this price point and its excellent build and design won us over. Battery performance is excellent and the camera quality is also good. The heating issue is the biggest problem that customers will have to deal with while using the phone which is a bit uncomfortable. The phone runs on Android 7.0 Nougat which earns it slightly higher marks from us but the software is disappointing.
Gionee A1 will be sold on Amazon India and offline retail stores. The company has started taking pre-orders for Gionee A1 from March 31. And on every booking, the company is giving JBL headphones or Swiss Military Bluetooth speaker free with two years warranty.
Many smartphones launched recently have been made especially for selfie lovers. And Gionee A1 is another name in this list. This phone has been launched with the selfie camera. Vivo V5 Plus ,Review) which is priced at Rs 27,980. At the same time, the one which comes at a lower price of Rs 17,990 Oppo F1s ,Review) will also compete. Other rivals include Moto M and Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime ,Review), which come for less than Rs 20,000.