Gionee released a new addition to its “Selfiestan” series smartphone; Gionee A1 Plus. The predecessor was Gionee A1, which was also the selfie centric smartphone. The USP of the Gionee A1 Plus is also going to be the selfie camera, it comes with a 20 MP front facing camera and LED flash. Other than this the smartphone will feature a MediaTek processor and 4GB RAM.
Read gionee A1 review here
One more feature which brings his smartphone for the considerations is the battery, it comes with a 4550 mAh super battery and fast charging which also supports reverse charging. Gionee A1 Plus is going to be available for Rs. 26,999 for mocha gold or a gray version. Check out our review of this smartphone and see what’s good and what’s not.
Design
The design of the A1 plus is similar to its predecessor; A1 and carries a simple and inspired design from what every Chinese brand is doing right now. The A1 is all made of metal and because of it is a 6 inches display smartphone, it is a little hard to hold in one hand.
The screen is a little broader instead of being longer which also makes operating it with one hand a little hard. The front panel of the smartphone has the 6 inches screen with full HD resolution and 367 PPI pixel density. The top edge of the phone has the 3.5 mm audio port, left edge have the SIM card tray slot, right edge holds the power and volume rocker. The bottom edge got the micro USB port and speaker grill.
Specifications and Unboxing
Gionee A1 Plus comes in a big box with all the accessories you need with a smartphone. You’ll get the A1 Plus, charging brick, earphones, USB cable, SIM card tray ejection tool, screen protector, a clear case and warranty cards (2 years).
Gionee A1 Plus runs on Android 7.1 Nougat, layered with Amigo UI which is Gionee’s proprietary user interface for smartphones. The user interface is smooth and does not have an app drawer which is good according to some people (not for me).
The smartphone is powered by a MediaTek MT6757 SoC which is an octa-core processor with Mali T880 MP2 graphics processor. The internal storage is 64GB and RAM is 4GB, there are no variants of this smartphone, the storage is expandable up to 256GB using SD card slot.
Gionee first time installed a dual camera setup to its smartphone, Gionee A1 Plus comes with 13MP + 5MP camera setup for the back with dual LED dual tone flash. The front facing camera is a 20MP shooter with front LED flash. Both of the cameras lack stabilization technology of any kind. The aperture size of both cameras is f/2.0 which is not very good for low light photography.
Camera
Gionee A1 Plus is the first smartphone from Gionee with a dual camera setup on the back and 20MP selfie camera. The camera user interface is simple and comes with lots of modes like professional, panorama, night, translate and more. It also comes with a beauty mode feature which let you beautify the selfies right when you are capturing them.
The camera focuses fast and is capable of capturing pictures with depth and creates a bokeh effect. But the pictures come out very grainy in artificial or low light conditions, the bokeh effect is also inaccurate. The HDR mode did affect the pictures a bit but not much and the grains still can be seen in the pictures.
The selfies come out good but the 20MP shooter lacks to add details in selfies too. The pictures are grainy from the front facing camera and the flash adds nothing much to the pictures. It can capture Full HD 1080p videos at 30 frames per second, there is no hardware stabilization in the phone but the Anti Shaking feature works somewhat better than no stabilization.
Performance
The MediaTek MT6757 SoC clocked at 2.6 GHz yields good performance and multitasking. The apps launch faster and the web pages load faster too, apps stay in the background and you can switch to them anytime without single reload. The graphics heavy games run swiftly with no lags or stutter at all.
The Amigo UI is a smooth interface to work on and it is based on the latest Android 7.0 Nougat. It comes with all the features of Android 7.0 Nougat like the split view and battery and storage management. The whole user interface is inspired from MIUI and iOS, it comes with a control center and “home screen only” user interface.
All the other features are also working perfectly; the fingerprint sensor is accurate but not as fast as we saw on other flagship smartphones. The lag or delay which we see seems to be occurring because of the software part.
The bottom edge got two speaker grills along side with the micro USB port but only one of them actually works and the other grill part is only for decoration. Even if there is a single speaker, it sounds good and with no stuttering voice.
Battery Performance
The battery in the Gionee A1 Plus is 4550 mAh with fast charging, you will get a good amount of charge in just five minutes. The battery stays long for about 2 full days of intensive usage which includes graphics heavy games. The battery is capable of working for full 3 days of normal usage despite that the display is 6 inches.
Pros
- Large display
- Massive battery with reverse charging feature
- Good performance
- Great build quality
Cons
- Poor camera quality
- The display is a large for single hand operation (not actually a con)
- Fingerprint unlock show some delay
Verdict
Gionee A1 Plus is a good option for those who love to watch multimedia and play games. The display is large which makes it difficult for single handed usage but again, not a con for everyone. The battery is the most amazing part about this smartphone but if you really want a bigger display smartphone then there are more options in the market for this price.
