Gionee recently launched the successor of its highest selling phone, the F103, with the F103 Pro. Priced at Rs. 18,999 [New Price :15,999 Gionee F103 Pro Smartphone gets Price Cut], the F103 Pro offers some decent hardware with elegant design and build quality – all the while keeping the price competitive. Let’s find out if the phone is worth all your money.
Design: (Rating: 4.5/5)
The Gionee F103 Pro is easily one of the best-looking phones you can buy below Rs. 20,000. It sports a metallic frame with a removable plastic back. It’s light at 142gms and maintains reasonable thickness at 8.5mm. The design is ergonomic and feels comfortable in the hand — thanks to its compact form factor, slightly curved body and a 2.5D curved screen upfront.
Display: (Rating: 4/5)
The Gionee F103 Pro comes with a 5-inch IPS display with HD resolution delivering a pixel density of 294ppi. You will easily get 1080P displays at this price range, but the display panel that Gionee has put in this phone is a quality unit. The touch is responsive, the contrast and viewing angles are also decent, and most importantly offers accurate color reproduction. The brightness, however, is dim with average sunlight legibility.
Software: (Rating: 4.5/5)
While most of the midrange phones are still on Lollipop 5.1, the F103 Pro is running the latest Android OS in Marshmallow 6.0 which brings features such as battery saving doze mode, app permission, etc. Like other Gionee phones, the F103 Pro also features Amigo UI 3.2 layered on top of Android. There are a lot of features packed into Amigo UI; most of them are useful while some of them being gimmicky than anything else.
Like other Chinese phones, the Gionee F103 Pro also lacks app drawer so all your apps reside in the home screen. You also need to swipe from the bottom to get to the quick access panel. You can check out the UI screenshots here:
Performance: (Rating: 4/5)
The Gionee F103 Pro is one of the few phones under Rs.20, 000 to feature a whopping 3GB of RAM. Coupled with 1.3 GHz 64 bit quad-core MT6735 processor, the performance is smooth while browsing, chatting, opening apps, and multitasking. You can play high-end games on medium to low settings with ease, but the phone tends to heat up after longer playtime. The low to mid-end games, on the contract, runs smoothly without any hiccups. Overall, the phone performs fairly well for the price.
Camera: (Rating: 3.5/5)
The phone sports a 13MP rear camera with LED flash which is average in my opinion. It takes above average photos during daylight with sufficient detail while zooming, but it might not be enough for others. The noise level increases during low light condition as expected in this price range. On the software side, the camera offers HDR, face beauty, panorama, macro, and even a professional mode is baked into it with which you can change the aperture, ISO, and shutter speed to your liking.
The Front Facing camera is the highlight of the Gionee F103 Pro as the 5MP shooter is capable of taking excellent selfies for social media uploads and video chatting.
Connectivity: (Rating: 3.5/5)
The F103 Pro supports two SIM card with first SIM supporting 4G LTE (GSM) and the second SIM supporting 3G (GSM/CDMA). Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi (no dual band ac), Bluetooth, and GPS. The only missing link as far as connectivity is concerned is the lack of fingerprint scanner.
Battery: (Rating: 3/5)
The phone boasts a 2400mAh battery and combining it with energy efficient 64-bit processor and lower resolution 5-inch display, the battery life is still average. During my test, the phone lasted for a whole working day (10am to 5pm) before requiring a charge in the evening. It has 3 hours of onscreen time which is average and the phone also takes 2 hours to charge from 0 to 100 % since the phone lacks quick charge technology. But, if you are a power hungry user, you can get an extra battery pack since the phone features a user replaceable battery.
Conclusion:
Flagships are the best, but not everyone has the budget to get one and certainly not everyone needs flagship grade performance and camera. At a fraction of the price, you can have the Gionee F103 Pro and you will not miss out on too much. It ticks many boxes when it comes to built quality, display, performance, camera, and overall value for money.
