5 things to know about the Gionee A1 running Android Nougat, before you buy one

By Abhinav Pathak on Mar 24, 2017 06:14 PM

Gionee A1, the company's latest smartphone in India, now finally has a price after it was launched last week. It has been priced at Rs. 19999 and will be available for pre-order starting March 31st. Pre-booking gets you 2 years warranty along with a JBL headphone or a Swiss Military Bluetooth Speaker.

But there's a lot that needs to be said about the Gionee A1 before you buy one:

Still runs on the dated Helio P10 processor

The Gionee A1, although priced higher that the Moto G5 Plus, Redmi Note 4, still runs on the dated and quite less powerful Helio P10 processor which doesn't hold a candle in front of the Snapdragon 625 present in its competitors. Although 4GB RAM sounds good, but we have seen the likes of the YU Yunicorn fizzing out when it came to performance. The P10 is known to have an average GPU which cannot handle games at 1080p and ocassionally struggles to run even normal apps on your phone. Couple that with Gionee's heavy skin is a recipe for disaster.

Fingerprint Sensor, 64GB Storage and the 5.5-inch 1080p Display

Not all is bad though, the Gionee A1 comes with a 5.5-inch 1080p display with 2.5D curved glass on top. It seems to have good touch response. There's ample storage with 64GB inbuilt and a choice to expand with the hybrid SIM card slot and then there's a fast fingerprint sensor as well. The build quality is solid as well.

16MP Front Camera

There's definitely a requirement for great selfie-camera focused smartphones, the likes of Vivo and Oppo have been winning every battle with their offerings and Gionee has now thrown its gauntlet as well. The 16MP front camera on the A1 comes with f/2.0 aperture and 1/3.06 inch sensor along with a selfie flash. There are some neat beauty features which are appreciated by folks buying the phone for better selfie cameras. Then there's the 13MP rear camera with Sony IMX258 sensor, PDAF and f/2.0 aperture lens.

4010 mAh battery inside a 8.5mm thin shell and super fast charging

Gionee has packed a 4010 mAh battery on the A1, which can charge to 100% in about 2 hours time. Neat addition.

The Competition

Priced at Rs. 19999, the Gionee A1 isn't exactly the best bet you can make at this price point. The Lenovo Z2 Plus offers Snapdragon 820, solid battery life while the Redmi Note 4 and Moto G5 Plus offer all around performance and excellent value for money. The Honor 6X is still one of the best camera smartphones in its price point. But yes, the Gionee A1 may have a better selfie camera than all of these, even then there's the Oppo F1 Plus and Vivo V5 to choose from.