The last few years have seen Gionee stumble a bit in the Indian market thanks to companies like Xiaomi and Lenovo, who have completely transformed the budget and mid range market with extremely aggressively priced products.
Now the company aims to comeback strong and the Gionee A1 is the first weapon in its arsenal. The Gionee A1 is the company's latest flagship device and aims to appeal to selfie aficionados with its 16MP front camera with an LED flash.
With an aggressive price, decent specifications and great front camera chops, can the A1 help resuscitate Gionee and make it a formidable force in the Indian smartphone market? Let's find out.
Design
The Gionee A1 has a hefty, reassuring feel in the hand and comes with a body made primarily out of metal with a few plastic bits thrown in here and there to reduce cost as well as to help the phone deal with networks in a better way.
What would have worked wonders for the smartphone's design is if Gionee would have made the bezels a bit smaller. In its current iteration, the huge bezels make the A1 look a bit dated and take away from its premium feel.
On a positive note, the build quality is extremely reassuring and the phone feels solid and chunky. The back panel is made of polished metal which looks and feels premium. The top and bottom bits on the rear are made of plastic, which is acceptable given the phone's affordable price.
While many people may find the smartphone's thickness (8.3mm) a bit off putting, I like how it gives the smartphone a tank like feel in the hand. In a day and age where OEM's are trying to make their devices as thin and light as they can - and consequently making them extremely difficult to hold in the hand - the Gionee A1 comes off as a breath of fresh air.
The phone has curved edges, with the volume rocker and power button on the right edge, SIM card slot on the left and a single mono speaker on the bottom. The speaker is decent but gets very tinny and shrill at full volume. Stereo speakers have become the norm these days and are sorely missed.
The Gionee A1 comes with a physical home button flanked by two capacitive keys for multitasking and back. The fingerprint sensor is embedded into the home button and is pretty fast and accurate.
The physical home button though is a big letdown. The button is a bit too recessed and is difficult to press. Additionally, the ring around the home button is not finished very well and feels jagged and coarse.
All in all, while the Gionee A1 won't win any awards for its design or turn any heads, it is a solid and well built device that feels quite premium.
Display
The Gionee A1 has a 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED display which has great viewing angles and decent sunlight legibility. Like all AMOLED panels, the colors are punchy and vibrant and seem to 'pop' right off the screen. If you want more neutral and realistic color tones however, AMOLED is not the way to go.
On the hardware front, there are both hits as well as misses. While 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage is above average at this price point, the low-end MediaTek Helio P10 processor is strictly average at best.
The maximum brightness level is adequate but the lowest setting is a bit too bright and becomes an irritant at night. While the display will not blow you away or compete with any flagship, it is still one of the best displays in this price range and is one of the highlights of the device.
Performance
On the hardware front, there are both hits as well as misses. While 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage is above average at this price point, the low-end MediaTek Helio P10 processor is strictly average at best.
What works in the A1's favour is the fact that the software and hardware seem to optimised very well. This is a breath of fresh air amidst a sea of Android smartphones that tend to lag in spite of having powerful hardware. The Gionee A1 tackles day to day tasks like scrolling through the UI, clicking photos, web browsing, using social media apps with aplomb and does not give much cause to complain.
However, the weak processor does rear its ugly head in certain scenarios. Play heavy duty games such as Modern Combat 5 for long, open tons of tabs in Chrome and the phone does slow down eventually.
The smartphone's thermal management is also a bit iffy, with the device heating up under constant intensive use. While it does not become hot enough to become uncomfortable to hold, it is a bit disconcerting nonetheless.
Software
On the software front, The A1 runs on Gionee's own Amigo skin running atop Android 7.0 Nougat. While the software is decently optimised and runs without any major lags or slowdowns, it just looks and feels very odd.
The A1's user interface ends up looking like a peculiar mishmash of Android and iOS that doesn't really gel well. This is a trend amongst Chinese phone makers. Oppo, Vivo and Gionee have this weird habit of skinning Android in such a way that it ends up looking like a badly done iOS theme.
Taking an example from the world of music, the A1's software is like a tribute band playing homage to two of their favourite artists at the same time. That too two artists from entirely different genres. The end result - identity crisis.
Just like iOS, Amigo OS doesn't have an app drawer and Android's signature quick toggles are accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the display just like Apple's control center. There are some obvious Chinese to English translation mistakes as well, for ex: there is a small button on the upper right corner of the notification shade titled "Notice", which brings up app notification settings.
There are tons of pre-installed applications on board as well -- Peel Remote, UC Browser, G Store, 4 Gameloft games (trial versions no less), Hotoday, Xender and many more. Their utility ranges from slightly useful to utterly futile and they just come across as unneeded clutter. Additionally, the icons for some of Gionee's own apps feel very tacky.
While Gionee's Amigo 4 UI is optimised well and doesn't lag or slowdown, it looks unfinished, unpolished and like a mishmash of Android and iOS.
On the positive side, the A1 does come with a number of unique features such as Multi-Window mode, a pretty competent theme engine, Beautified Video and so on. While the usefulness of these features can be questioned, they are a nifty addition nonetheless.
I am very conflicted with the software of the Gionee A1. On one hand, it looks unfinished, unpolished and like a mishmash of Android and iOS. On the other hand, unlike many other skins such as LG's UI and Huawei's Emotion UI, it is optimised well and doesn't lag or slowdown.
This situation perplexes me greatly. If smartphones from Chinese manufacturers adopted stock or close to stock Android, they would become a force to be reckoned with as they already come with top notch hardware. If not stock Android, they should atleast take inspiration from Xioami, whose MIUI comes across as a polished and elegant skin with a unique identity of its own.
Battery life
Gionee's tagline for the A1 is "Super Selfie, Super Battery" and at least on the battery front, the tagline is quite accurate. The smartphone comes with a 4010mAh battery which will easily last you throughout the day, even with intensive use and gaming.
In the 7 days I used the A1 as my primary device, the smartphone effortlessly chugged on through the day with around 40 to 45 per cent of charge left by the end of the day. Mind you, I use my smartphone quite extensively and a lighter workload will see the device last two days without needing to be recharged.
Such solid battery life is quite remarkable in a day and age where smartphone don't even make it to the evening without needing to be topped up and is a big win for the Gionee A1.
Cameras
The Gionee A1 is marketed as a selfie phone. And with reason. The A1's 16MP front camera has an aperture of f/2.0 and is one of the best front shooters I have tested. Yes, you can find better options if you move up the price ladder, but at Rs 19,999, it holds its ground very well.
Photos taken are crisp, clear and full of detail. Noise is minimal, colors are well balanced and neutral and the autofocus works well.
For low light shots, Gionee has equipped the A1 with a front LED flash which works surprisingly well but does throw the colors off a bit. A dual LED flash would have made things even better. Without the flash, pictures are still very usable but do have a fair bit of noise and jaggedness.
The rear 13MP camera on the other hand is a different story. It does produce nice and vivid shots in well lit situations but struggles in low light and complex shots. In scenarios with multiple light sources, the exposure goes for a toss and the resultant image is very muddled.
The camera struggles to capture details in complex shots such as dense foliage. HDR mode is surprisingly competent and does make a tangible difference in situations with uneven lighting.
The camera app, while intuitive and simple to use, again comes off as a tacky homage to iOS. Videos top off at 1080p and are average at best due to the less than impressive stabilisation and microphone.
Should you buy it
The Gionee A1 has a lot going for it. Is has excellent battery life, a great front facing camera, a chunky and solid build, generous internal storage and a vivid display.
But things like the unpolished UI which feels like a strange mixture of Android and iOS, decidedly average rear camera, weak processor and uninspired looks weigh it down and prevent it from being a truly great device.
If battery life and the front camera rank highly in your smartphone wish list, the Gionee A1 is a great buy and will seldom give you cause to complain. For those who want their devices to have personality and pizzazz and value the rear camera more than the front shooter, the A1 will disappoint.
For a device that will also be sold offline, the A1 is priced quite aggressively at Rs 19,999 and is overall a solid comeback from Gionee.
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