The Gionee A1 is the latest smartphone by the Chinese company for the selfie lovers. It offers a 16-megapixel front camera with flash at just Rs 19,999. The smartphone has other interesting features like 5.5-inch FHD display and Android 7.0 Nougat running out of the box. Let’s check out how the camera performs and whether it’s worth buying.
Build and Design
The Gionee A1 comes with a metal unibody design with chamfered edges. The back part seems a bit slippery to hold. The big screen size and metal frames result in a bulky boldy which seems a bit hard to hold. Overall, the design is good but not very impressive to eyes.
The rear panel has Gionee logo in the middle along with the camera and flash which is aligned from the top. The Volume rocker key and the power button is present on the right while the SIM card tray is on the left. The 3.5mm socket is on the top while the micro USB port is at the bottom edge along with the speakers. The front panel has the home button which also serves as a fingerprint sensor.
Display
The smartphone offers a 5.5-inch FHD display with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, which seems quiet impressive. It offers great colour contrast and reproduction. The device can be seen under direct sunlight and with different viewing angles.
Hardware and Software
The smartphone runs on MediaTek’s Helio P10 (MT6755) octa-core processor with 4GB of RAM. It has 64GB of onboard storage with an 256GB external microSD card support. Out of 64GB storage, 48GB is free for the users. Whereas the 4GB RAM leaves around 1.5GB of free memory to use.
Talking about the software section, it runs on Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box. There is Gionee’s custom Amigo UI 4.0 on the top of it. It comes with lots of bloatwares like Truecaller, Swiftkey, Xender, G Store and many more. The UI seems good and has lots of customization and new features for the users like Split Screen, Maxx Audio, Themes options etc.
Performance
The touch response of the Gionee A1 is really impressive. It offers great usability and fast processing. The multitasking of the smartphone is excellent and I didn’t find any type of lag in it while using. Clicking on any app gives very quick response.
The gaming delivered by the phablet is good too. It handles small and high-end games easily. I played Dead Trigger 2 and Modern Combat 5 with ease. It doesn’t lag even once.
The benchmark score of the smartphone is also impressive. It scored 49223 in AnTuTu and 22605 in Quadrant Standard. It scored 60.0 in NenaMark2 while 708 (Single Core) and 2341 (Multi Core) in Geekbench.
The Fingerprint sensor also responds well. It unlock the smartphone very quickly. The 4G VoLTE connectivity is good and I didn’t found any type of distortion or drop in the network or call. The audio and video quality of the smartphone is pretty good.
Battery:
The Gionee A1 has 4,010mAh of battery which gives a full day backup even with heavy usage. With regular usage it can easily last up to two days. We can see that the smartphone usage has increased in recent years, so a good battery is one of the necessity nowadays. The battery life of the smartphone is really impressive.
Camera
The rear camera is of 13-megapixel and has a dual-tone flash. The camera captures decent images in the daylight. The captured images have an average amount of details. The colour reproduction also seems a bit low. The low light performance of smartphone struggles and the captured images has noise.
The front camera is of 16-megapixel and has front flash. The selfies have a good amount of sharpness and contrast. The details are also pretty good. Additionally, the camera app offers different beauty modes which enhances the photo quality.
There are several modes available in the camera app like Time Lapse, GIF, Slow Motion, Smart Scene, Pic Note and Night. Overall the camera quality is good on the front while the rear seems a bit low, but acceptable.
Gizmo-Verdict
At a price point of Rs 19,999, the Gionee A1 offers a great front camera. The 4,010mAh battery and the 4GB of RAM give additional advantage to the smartphone. However, its rear camera outputs average quality. If you want a good selfie smartphone, then you can go for it. However, it does face tough competition from the likes of selfie-centric OPPO F1s and vivo V5, as well as devices such as the ASUS ZenFone 3 and Moto G5 Plus.
