gWith ever evolving realm of smartphones, improvements on specs is a constant progression. Brands proclaim to have the best of a certain aspect, but, front camera and battery is something less heard of. Today we’ve got the new phone from Gionee, the Gionee A1 Plus which promises us both; a super selfie camera and a durable battery life. Let’s find out if the Gionee A1 Plus delivers what it has pledged.

SPECIFICATIONS OF GIONEE A1 PLUS:

• 6.0 inches (1080 x 1920) @367ppi
• Weight: 226 grams
• Amigo OS 4.0 on top of Android 7.0 Nougat
• MediaTek MT6757T Helio P25 Chipset
• Octa-core (4×2.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×1.4 GHz Cortex-A53) CPU
• Mali-T880MP2 GPU
• 4GB RAM
• 64GB Internal Storage, Expandable up to 256GB
• Dual 13 MP + 5 MP Rear Camera with f/2.0 aperture, phase detection autofocus
• 20MP Front Facing Camera with f/2.0 aperture
• Non-removable Li-Ion 4550 mAh battery with fast charging

Build:

The Gionee A1 Plus comes with a metal clad body with a hefty weight of 226grams. It looks pleasantly beautiful despite the common industrial design aesthetics. With 6-inch of display, the phone has a huge footprint which has been contributed by its thick top and bottom bezels. The phone feels chunky on the hand and it is impossible for single-handed usage. I really wished the phone was a little less heavy and the bezels were small as this could have really helped in making the phone handier.

Display:

Gionee A1 Plus comes with a 6-inch Full HD display with 367ppi. The display is stunning with bright and vibrant colors. You have the option to change the color composition and set it to be Warm or Cool. Watching high-resolution content and gaming is a joy on this display. There’s no color shift even viewing the display from a different perspective. The display gets bright enough to comfortably use the device outdoors in direct sunlight.

Performance:

With a high price tag and all the other great specs, we expect the phone to come with a powerful chipset. But that’s not the story here! Powering the Gionee A1Plus is the MediaTek’s Octa-Core Helio P25 Processor, where 4 energy efficient cores are clocked at 1.4GHz and four performance cores are clocked at 2.5GHz.

Considering its flagship status, opting for the Helio X20 would have been a better alternative. Even with that, for the daily usage, this phone won’t disappoint you as it crunches through everything you throw at it. The opening of apps are quick, playing high-end games with good frame rate is feasible and any task that requires high performance can be done. Although with its metal construct, playing high-end games for long hours didn’t result in noticeable heating.

The phone comes with 4GB of RAM. Gionee seems to have imposed strict memory management on this phone as most of the recent apps running in the background are killed quite early. Power Management seems to be at play as keeping running apps in the background consumes power. This action guarantees the Super Battery that Gionee promised with the phone. At most, you can switch to and fro between 2-4 apps with ease for a brief period.

Software:

Chinese UI are assuredly cluttered, most of them come with OEM’s own set of apps. Amigo UI based on Android 7.0 Nougat on the Gionee A1 Plus is no different in that prospect. It comes with its own Play Store(GStore), wallpaper app (Mood Wallpaper), calendar, notes and a whole load of Google Apps. I found most of them fairly useless so I froze them right away. And yeah, there’s an inbuilt option to freeze unwanted app! It also has no app drawer so starting with your first boot, your home screen is pretty much full of apps.

A1 Plus UI

1 of 8

Also, the quick toggles from the bottom are hard to get used to. Often, I’d just scroll the content on my display when summoning the toggles panel swiping up. Swiping down from the top will give you the notification panel. Diving inside Settings, there are few notable features like:

• Edge Bar: quick access to your important apps by swiping left or right on the fingerprint scanner.
• Eye Protection: cuts off blue light from the display by applying a yellow tint.
• Suspend button: floating bubble for navigation actions and shrinking the display for a one-handed mode.
• Power Manager: Switch between power saving modes.

And Chinese UI wouldn’t be complete without a System Manager app. The one in this phone lets you clean up the cache, scan for virus, and control networking.

The fingerprint scanner on the Gionee A1Plus is blazingly fast. Compared with the OnePlus 3, it was a tad faster without exception. As the fingerprint sensor also acts as a home button, it has to be hard pressed instead of touch to function. I found it really troublesome and wished it was touch enabled instead of a hard press.

Hardware:

The phone houses capacitive navigation keys, where the centered home button acts as a fingerprint sensor. On its sides, back and recent buttons have a minimal dot indicator. These buttons can also be swapped.

On the right side, it holds volume buttons and power button with tactile feedback. The power button has a distinct orange tint making it easier to turn on the phone on low light. On the bottom, it has micro USB port and speakers. Gionee A1 Plus comes with Maxx Audio enabled, so the audio experience with its speaker and earphone is good.

Camera:

Gionee market their phones as the Super Selfie phone and they are among few OEM’s that put effort into bringing forth a plausible selfie camera. Gionee A1 Plus houses a massive 20MP Camera on the front, which sounds superior compared to its primary 13+5MP Camera which doesn’t even sum up to 20! But the quality of photos has more to do with aperture, the size of the sensor and many aspects than just the megapixel count. So, putting the front camera to test, I had great results with it. The images were bright and natural, they contained plenty of sharpness and details to make them worthy of social media uploads.

At low light, the images look decent but they contain few grains and dark spots which the front flash fixes to an appreciable amount. The camera also comes with face beauty mode which I found ridiculous. It’ll revamp your face making it look unnatural. But despite that, looking at the camera’s output, the Gionee A1 Plus is worthy of the tag Super Selfie.

1 of 2

Dual Camera is not a rare scene on smartphones anymore. They serve different purpose ranging from wide angle shots, digital zoom and bokeh effect. The Dual Primary Camera (13MP+5MP) on the Gionee A1 Plus assists in taking images with Bokeh effect.

In general, photos have good dynamic range, colors are close to natural and the details are soft. The shutter speed is fast and the default setting gets you great results, so most of the time you can just pull out your phone, take the photo and walk away with a great result. Images at the low light are not that great with loads of grain and lack of sharpness.

For Bokeh photos, there’s portrait mode. You can adjust the aperture to maintain the level of depth on photos. The results were jumbled with the Portrait mode. With few photos, I had perfect bokeh on the subject where the subject’s outline was properly maintained and with others, the blur intruded the subject itself, going inside bounds. So, for the perfect photo, you might have to experiment with the portrait mode a few times.

1 of 6

The camera comes with a bunch of modes that will prove helpful. You have a dedicated professional mode which provides options to fine-tune shutter speed, White Balance, Exposure, and ISO. There’s also night mode, time-lapse, slow motion, GIF, card scanner and even translation. These features eliminate the need of third-party apps that provide similar functionality.

Connectivity:

For Connectivity, Gionee A1 Plus comes with dual nano-SIM tray with support for 4G LTE. It has standard connectivity options like WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC  and has USB OTG support. The phone also has got IR Blaster which is accompanied by the Peel Remote app. Sensors-wise it has got a compass, Proximity, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, and Magnetometer.

Battery:

Coming down to the second feature highlight of the phone, the Gionee A1 Plus comes with a befitting 4,550mAh battery. As we’ve mentioned earlier, the phone has been heavily optimized in terms of memory management and equipped with different power saving options to provide the best battery life possible. With regular use, the battery can last for two whole days. If you are a power user with constant engagement on the phone then it will provide 6 to 7 hours of screen on time. The phone comes with an 18W charger which charges the phone from 0 to 100% in little under 2hours.

Verdict:

Before looking into any aspects of the Gionee A1 Plus, first, you have to consider its size. Large phones are not for everyone, they are clunky and hard to manage. If you are cool with this aspect then you can begin to weigh in its pros and cons.

Pros of Gionee A1 Plus: 

• Big and Beautiful Display:

With a huge display, consuming content is more fun and interactive. Watching movies, and playing games is an absolute joy with this phone. Also, a large display provides you with options to get more creative. Editing videos, creating music and multitasking becomes seamlessly easy on a big display.

• Amazing Camera:

With a bold tagline of Super Camera, Gionee has managed to deliver what it has promised. Both the rear and front camera are well capable of producing great results. For Selfie Lovers, this is the phone you can’t go wrong with! Also, the added functionality of the camera enables you to be more innovative with your photos.

• Superb Battery Backup:

Carrying a huge phone basically, means sacrificing a proportionate amount of battery to your display. Gionee has managed to provide optimal battery backup with economic backlighting on its display, strict memory management and battery saving options. You can fully charge the device and forget about the battery for two whole days. Despite the durability of battery, the best part is how fast it gets juiced up. Even with heavy usage if you manage to drain your battery, you can fully back it up within 2 hours.

• Audio and Fingerprint Sensor:

Inaccurate fingerprint sensors are annoying! You don’t want to repeatedly force your finger to unlock the device only to get a fingerprint error. That’s not the story with the Gionee A1 Plus, it has one of the fastest fingerprint sensors I’ve used and it has never failed to recognize my fingerprint.

The phone also comes with Maxx Audio enabled making the audio experience much better via both loudspeaker and earphones.

Cons of Gionee A1 Plus: 

• Chipset:

For what it’s priced at, a high-end chipset would have been more sensible. It’s not that the phone is slow or anything but a more powerful SoC would have been more pragmatic. With a similar price tag, the OnePlus 3 provides the higher end Snapdragon 820. Even opting for a MediaTek’s Helio X20 would have made it just that better.

• Footprint and weight

The size of the phone is a personal preference and this might not be a con for everybody. But size plays a vital role as you’ll be using the device on daily basis. Usually, a handy and more manageable phone is better preferred.

With a large footprint, the phone is seemingly heavy.  Samsung’s C9 Pro with similar size and configuration is almost 40grams lighter than the Gionee A1 Plus. Along with size, the weight of the phone also determines the ease of use on daily basis.

So, to sum it up, different smartphone excels at different aspects. The Gionee A1 Plus delivers what it has promised for, an awesome camera and durable battery backup. But you’re getting more than just that, it has an amazing display, swift fingerprint sensor, and a premium build. For those who love big displays, admire taking lots of photos and want a solid battery life, then the Gionee A1 Plus would be a great pick. But if you want something portable which would deliberately have better performance then you might have to look at other alternatives.

Here are few alternatives of the Gionee A1 Plus:

OnePlus 3

• 5.5-inch Full HD Optic AMOLED display with 2.5D curved
• Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection
• 2.15GHz Quad-Core Snapdragon 820 64-bit processor with Adreno 530 GPU
• 6GB LPDDR4 RAM with 64GB (UFS 2.0) storage
• Android 7.1.1 (Nougat)
• Dual nano SIM slots
• 16-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, Sony IMX298 sensor, 1.12-micron pixel size, f/2.0 aperture, PDAF, OIS, 4K video recording at 30 fps, 720p slow motion at 120fps
• 8MP front-facing camera with Sony IMX179 sensor, 1.4-micron pixel size, f/2.0 aperture, 1080p video recording
• Dimensions: 152.7×74.7×7.35mm; Weight: 158g
• Fingerprint sensor
• Bottom-facing speaker, dual microphone for noise cancellation
• 4G LTE with VoLTE, WiFi 802.11ac dual-band (MIMO), Bluetooth 4.2, GPS + GLONASS, NFC, USB Type-C
• 3000mAh battery with Dash Charge
• Price: Rs. 39,999

Oppo F3

• 5.5-inch (1080 x 1920 pixels) Full HD 2.5D curved glass display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection
• 1.5 GHz Octa-Core MediaTek MT6750T 64-bit processor with Mali T860 GPU
• 4GB RAM, 64GB internal memory, expandable memory up to 128GB with microSD
• Dual SIM (nano + nano)
• Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow) with ColorOS 3.0
• 13MP rear camera with dual-tone LED Flash, PDAF, 1/3-inch sensor, 1.12um pixel size, f/2.2 aperture
• 16MP front-facing camera with 76.4-degree wide-angle lens, 1/3.1-inch sensor, f/2.0 aperture and secondary 8MP front camera with 120-degree wide-angle lens
• Fingerprint sensor
• Dimensions: 153.29×75.24×7.3mm; Weight: 153g
• 4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS
• 3200 mAh battery
• Price: Rs.32,990

Xiaomi Mi 5

• 5.15-inch (1920×1080 pixels) Full HD display with curved glass
• 1.8GHz Snapdragon 820 64-bit Quad-Core processor with Adreno 530 GPU
• 3GB LPDDR4 RAM with 32GB (UFS 2.0) internal storage
• Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) with MIUI 7
• Dual SIM (nano + nano)
• 16-megapixel rear camera with dual-tone LED flash, Sony IMX298 sensor, f/2.0 aperture, PDAF, 4-axis OIS, 4K video recording
• 4MP front-facing camera with 2um pixel size, f/2.0 aperture, 80-degree wide-angle lens
• Fingerprint scanner, Infrared sensor
• Dimensions: 144.55×69.2×7.25mm; Weight: 129g
• 4G LTE with VoLTE, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac dual-band (MIMO), Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, NFC, USB Type-C
• 3,000mAh (typical) / 2910mAh (minimum) built-in battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0
• Price: Rs.39,999

In the price range beyond 30,000 in Nepal, we, the customers, want a phone that is primarily focused on the performance. But, the mobile companies are doing just the opposite. They are producing phones secondarily focused on the performance and primarily focused on something else. So, we take on Gionee A1, primarily focused on selfie and battery, to find out if it impresses us or rather disappoints considering its price tag of Rs. 30,000.

Gionee A1 Review After 2 Weeks:

Gionee A1 Review After 3 months: 

Key Specs of Gionee A1:

• 5.5-inch (1920× 1080 pixels) Full HD in-cell display with 2.5D curved glass
• Gorilla Glass 3 on the front; Full Metal body on the back
• 1.8 GHz Octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 processor with Mali T860 GPU
• 4GB RAM, 64GB Internal memory, expandable memory up to 128GB with micro SD
• Android 7.0 (Nougat) with Amigo OS 3.5
• Dual Hybrid SIM (4G + 4G)
• 13MP rear camera with LED flash, PDAF, f/2.0 aperture, 1/3.0+” sensor, 5P lens
• 16MP front-facing camera, f/2.0 aperture, 1/3.06″ sensor, 5P lens, selfie flash
• Fingerprint sensor (embedded on the home button)
• 3.5mm audio jack, Waves MaxxAudio
• Dimensions: 154.5 x 76.5 x 8.5mm; Weight: 182g
• 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS
• Gyro Sensor
• 4010mAh battery with fast charging
• Color Option: Black, Gold, and White

Design

Gionee A1 is a stylish looking metal-clad phone with a design that is not so distinctive from the crowd. Yes, we’ve seen a lot of metal phones lately but the premium metal used in the phone can be realized once the phone lands on the palm. The phone is a bit heavy at 183gm and is noticeably thicker at 8.3mm. Despite its bulkiness, the phone feels good on the hands with slight curves around its edges and back. But honestly, I found the phone to be a little slippery in my everyday use. The unit I reviewed was a black one but still, it attracts noticeable smudges and fingerprints on its back. However, the power button and volume rockers on the right edge aren’t as tactile as I prefer them to be.

All in all, the phone has a lovable design but had it had a lesser weight to it, it definitely would have been a well-designed phone in its price range.

Display

The phone’s 5.5inch Full HD in-cell technology display is arguably the best one in the price range. It produces nearly accurate colors and has a good level of contrast too. The brightness is sufficient enough for the outdoor usages. The best part is the option to switch white balance among cool, neutral and warm.

I fell in love with the display from the very first time I turned the phone on and after two weeks of using, the feeling is just the same. As far as the display protection is concerned, it has an unspecified version of Corning Gorilla Glass. At the time of review, the glass got more than quite a few scratches so my recommendation is to apply the display protection that comes with the phone itself.

Performance

Under the hood, Gionee A1 comes with an Octa-Core MediaTek Helio P10 processor, backed by Mali-T860MP2 GPU and coupled with 4GB of RAM. This configuration isn’t the best in the price range. However, a moderate user might find this configuration to be good enough giving a smooth and responsive user experience. But once you start pushing the device with a couple of games and few other apps in the background, you can feel the device’s sluggishness. While playing few heavy titles, we noticed the frame drops and the phone got noticeably warmer in our gaming sessions. More on the heating issue, the phone kept getting warmer not just while gaming and stretched camera sessions but also on several other occasions. However, in real world use, the app loading and app switching were buttery smooth. Lastly, the fingerprint sensor is satisfyingly fast and accurate.

Camera

Coming to the cameras, it has a circular 13Megapixel unit with SONY IMX 258 on the back that slightly perpetuates. This primary camera is accompanied with dual tone LED flash. The camera performance when tested on different lighting conditions gave satisfying results. The photos taken outdoors came out well detailed with a good amount of saturation. The low light photos did have some noise but the camera has a night mode that helped in boosting the ambiance on low light photos. The HDR mode works well and gets triggered when needed if set on Auto.

Gionee A1 Rear Camera Samples

1 of 7

The camera app is a bit cluttered but supports different swiping gestures. Like, you can switch cameras by swiping from the bottom and swiping from the top reveals different camera modes like Time-lapse, slow motion, GIF, and others. You can switch between video, photo, face beauty, panorama and other camera modes by simply swiping from the left or right. For manual control, it has the Professional mode that lets you set shooting speed, exposure, ISO, White Balance and the focus on your own.

Since it’s a selfie-centric phone, it has a 16 MegaPixel front camera with f2.0 aperture. I made a decision based on selfies taken indoors, outdoors, with and without beautification and found out the phone to be pretty impressive for selfies. However, indoor selfies weren’t as detailed as the outdoor ones. And, I wish if the selfie unit came with autofocus instead of fixed focus. The phone also has a front firing flash that assisted a bit while taking photos in the night. But night selfies were a bit washed out and came with lesser details. For a beauty mode enthusiasts, this phone won’t disappoint. Plus, beautification can be enabled while taking videos and doing video calls.

Software

Gionee A1 UI Screenshots

1 of 10

The Gionee A1 boots on Android 7.0 nougat with Gionee’s own custom UI “Amigo OS” on top of it. So, this UI is far from stock Android and has been heavily customized. If you haven’t used a Gionee phone before then you might find the UI confusing at times, just like I did. If you are against bloatware, you’ll hate to see a bunch of pre-installed apps on the phone including 4 games, ADW launcher, UC Browser, along with few others. Luckily, most of them can be uninstalled. Personally, I find Amigo OS to be a bit cluttered and far from my liking. For instance, the settings menu has been heavily rearranged and I had a hard time remembering which is where. So I preferred searching for the settings other than going through the setting menu and sub menus.

Since the software is based on Android Nougat, you get all the Nougat sweetness like the split screen mode, quick reply from notifications and grouping of notifications from the same app. Additionally, the A1 has an edge bar functionality that can be accessed by swiping on the fingerprint sensor and it allows to launch your favorite apps and tasks. In addition, the phone also supports different smart gestures as well.

Battery

Gionee A1 Battery Performance

1 of 2

The A1 houses a 4010mAh battery that sounds pretty heavy on paper but in real world use, the battery life wasn’t as expected. Yes, there were times I got up to 5hours of screen on time but that was on a moderate use with no or short gaming session. The screen on time in this phone was a mixed bag since the results differed each day ranging from 3.5 hours to 5 hours. However, the charging time was one of the best aspects of this phone. Started charging from a dead battery, I could easily get 23% and 98% of charge in 15minutes and 90 minutes of time respectively. To fully charge the phone, it took me 1hour and 47minutes to be exact. So the phone’s fast charging capabilities are worth mentioning. The phone gets warmer even while charging, though the company claims just the opposite.

Verdict

Gionee A1 Gallery

1 of 4

To wind it up, there are a few points where Gionee A1 impressed us and at the same, there are few other where the phone disappoints. The phone’s display, camera, and fast charging capabilities did impress us but its performance, bulkiness and cluttered software seriously disappointed us. So, if you are a moderate user who’s after a phone with fast charging, good cameras, and great display then you can never go wrong buying a Gionee A1. But if it’s the phone’s performance that you prioritize the most then there are quite a few other options that you might be interested in.

I’ve some personal message to Gionee and that is,
“Dear Gionee, please stop with your love for MediaTek chipsets. I am personally looking forward to seeing a Gionee phone powered by more Capable Snapdragon chipset. For instance, you could have used a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 instead of Helio P10 that sounds pretty neck-to-neck on paper but in real world use, SD625 wins over Helio P10 big time.”

If you weren’t impressed by the Gionee A1, here are some other options you can consider:

ONEPLUS 3 

If you already have a budget of 33K, the best is to add 10K more and buy the OnePlus 3 instead which will checkmark all the boxes for a phone with the Snapdragon 820 performance worth the price.

Redmi Note 4

But if you’re tight on budget and don’t feel like adding money to your budget you can actually buy the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4SD instead and save some of your money. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4SD (4GB/64GB) is priced at 28,500 and has a much better performance with 14nm Snapdragon 625 as compared to Gionee A1.

Cool 1 Dual 

Coolpad’s Cool 1 dual is another phone to consider in the price range of around 30,000. This phone will easily address your needs if you prioritize on rear camera and gaming performance. Priced at Rs. 30,996, it comes with a dual 13MP rear camera and a powerful Snapdragon 652 processor.