Gionee launched the A1 and A1 Plus smartphones in its new A-series at the MWC 2017 trade show held last month. Without much wait, Gionee A1 has been launched in India. This smartphone has a 16 megapixel front camera and 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 shortcomings and advantages of the phone in the review.
Gionee A1 Design
Metal body has now become a standard feature in most smartphones sold in India, even in the budget segment, and that’s a good thing. While metal makes the phone stronger, it also gives a premium feel. A6000 aircraft-grade material has been used in Gionee A1 and the company claims that it is used in making cars and planes. The curved edges and rear of the device also make it look attractive. The front part of the phone is occupied by glass. The phone fits easily in the hand.
A fingerprint sensor has been integrated into the home button of the phone. Along with this, 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. Just above the screen is a front camera and 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 recent smartphones has also been seen similar. There are antenna lines at the top and bottom. Earlier, such antenna lines were also seen in Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (Review), which is available at a lower price than Gionee A1. The camera bulges slightly on the outside, but not like the Moto G5 Plus (Review). Below the primary camera there is a dual-LED flash and 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 only, because we have become accustomed to this place of fingerprints. There is a Gionee written at the bottom of the rear.
Weighing in at 183 grams, the Gionee A1 feels a bit heavy as its screen size is also not very big. The metal body Redmi Note 4 has a 4100 mAh battery and weighs only 165 grams. Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime (167 grams) and Moto M (163 grams) also fall in this category and weigh 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 liked the design of the phone. But if its weight was less then it could have been more convenient to use.
Gionee A1 specifications and software
The Gionee A1 is powered by an octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 (MT6755) processor clocked at 2 GHz. The phone has 4 GB 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 has claimed to last for two days. Gionee A1 comes with fast charging which is a nice feature.
Gionee A1 has a 5.5 inch full HD (1080×1920 pixels) display. In our opinion, this is one of the best displays available at this price. The display is quite bright and can be read even in sunlight. Colors are produced well. Text and photos look crisp. There is no problem with the viewing angle while watching videos. However, the front of the phone is like a magnet and we had to clean the phone’s screen repeatedly during the review period.
This handset runs on Android 7.0 Nougat based Amigo 4.0 OS. Gionee’s own Amigo OS has been significantly updated and looks better than before. It also has many Nougat features. Users will get the opportunity to run many different apps simultaneously through split screen mode. The Settings app is also new, although there’s 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 about missed calls and messages when the phone is in standby mode. And the phone becomes active only by double tapping, even if the power button is not within your reach. The phone also has an edge bar feature for shortcuts to your favorite apps, which can be activated by swiping left or right on the home button. Like before, many Gionee apps come pre-installed in Amigo OAS on the phone and there is no way to get rid of them. The Theme Park and Mood Wallpapers app gives 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 has been introduced in the market as a selfie smartphone, so let’s start with that. This phone has a 16-megapixel front camera with autofocus and an LED flash. The camera app also has live filters like smoothening, whitening, slimming and eye enlarging features to enhance the beauty of photos after taking them. Selfies come with vibrancy and detailing. Selfies are great most of the time, though we did notice excessive color tones in photos that looked artificial. HDR selfies are better than regular selfies. The pictures taken in low light are also good and the quality of the pictures coming from the front camera looks good in limited light. According to the company’s claim, the selfie flash feature works.
The 13-megapixel rear camera provided in Gionee A1 comes with a dual-LED flash and aperture F 2.0. Sony IMX258 sensor has been used in it. The camera app has multiple modes like Night, Professional, Time-lapse, Slow-motion, Smart Scene and GIF. The camera app of Gionee A1 has a translation feature. Video recording up to 1080 pixels and 720 pixels can be done with the rear camera and the quality is excellent.
The colors of the pictures coming from the rear camera are good but these pictures appear oversaturated. The camera also takes some time to focus. The quality of pictures taken at night was good. However, when zoomed to full size, we noticed some noise and motion blur. Overall, the front and rear cameras of Gionee A1 do a great job. However, we feel that it needs some improvement as its main feature is photography.
Gionee A1 Performance
Gionee A1 will not disappoint you in terms of performance and the octa-core processor does most of the work well. The handset has 4 GB RAM and during our review we found that 1.8 GB RAM remains free most of the time. The fingerprint sensor of Gionee A1 works very well.
We played games like Asphalt 8: Airborne and Dead Effect 2 without any problems. And we didn’t face any problems while playing games or running apps. The 5.5 inch screen is good for watching movies and videos. And we loved streaming the show on our test unit.
We were disappointed that the Gionee A1 got hot most of the time. Even after playing the game for 30 minutes, it felt uncomfortable to hold. The phone gets hot even when using GPS for navigation and camera app and while talking on the phone for a long time. After warming up several times, our unit restarted on its own. And this is not expected from a phone coming in this price. This problem spoiled our entire experience with the phone.
The Gionee A1 comes with MaxAudio enhancements that are claimed to improve the sound coming from the speaker as well as the earphones. With high volumes, the Gionee A1 doesn’t disappoint. The earphones that come with the phone are good. Call quality is also excellent and we did not face any problem in 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.
Gionee A1 also scored well in benchmark tests. But at this price point, we have also seen better scores than Gionee A1 in other smartphones.
The battery performance of Gionee A1 does not disappoint and this is one of the biggest features of the phone. The handset packs a 4010 mAh non-removable battery and supports fast charging. Up to 40 percent battery is available in 20 minutes of charging and the phone gets charged up to 100 percent in less than 2 hours. The phone’s battery lasted 14 hours and 45 minutes in our HD video loop test. At the same time, during normal use, the phone’s battery lasted for more than 36 hours. At the same time, even after running for 45-48 hours with slightly less usage, the battery of the phone remained up to 20 percent.
our decision
The Gionee A1 is a good option at this price point and its great build and design won us over. The battery performance is excellent and the camera quality is also good. Heating of the phone is the biggest problem and customers will have to face this problem while using the phone, which is a bit inconvenient. The phone runs on Android 7.0 Nougat which gives it slightly higher marks than ours 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 free JBL headphones or Swiss Military Bluetooth speaker with two years warranty.
Many recently launched smartphones have been specially designed for selfie lovers. And Gionee A1 is another name in this list. This phone will be challenged by Vivo V5 Plus (Review) which is priced at Rs 27,980. At the same time, Oppo F1S (Review), which comes in a lower price of Rs 17,990, will also give competition. Other rivals include the Moto M and Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime (Review), which also come in under Rs 20,000.