Not pocket-sized


Chinese Smartphone maker Gionee launched two of their flagships devices ~ Gionee A1 and A1 Plus at MWC (Mobile World Congress) 2017 this year. The Chinese tech giant released Gionee A1 in market some months ago, but they launched A1 Plus a few weeks back. It has a good display, impressive battery back-up and good selfiecamera. With all these features, the phone looks quite promising. But one setback of the device is its price ~ Rs.26,999. This makes it quite costly when compared with Oneplus, Honor devices, which are quite rich in features. Even the recently launched, Xiaomi Mi Max 2, which has the same screen size and battery life, costs Rs.10,000 less.

Design and features

The phone has a metallic body with round edges and curved sides. The phone's screen is 6-inche and is well-protected by a 2.5D curved Gorilla Glass 3. At 9mm thickness and 226 g weight, the Gionee A1 Plus is quite sturdy and a phone everybody would notice. The phone has two antennas bands ~ one at the top (back) and another at the bottom (back). There is a dual camera and dual LED flash. On the top edge of phone is a 3.5mm audio input and a USB charging port at the bottom edge along with a speaker grille.

The power key and volume rockers are placed on the right edge of the phone, while on the left side, one will find a dual-SIM slot. At the bottom bezel of the device is a single button for fingerprint scanner and home and a navigation key.

Coming to display, the Gionee A1 Plus has a 6-inch full-HD display with resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The display is bright and sharp; one won't face any problem using it outdoors or viewing from any angle.

Camera and battery

Gionee A1 Plus sports dualcamera set-up (rear) with a 13- megapixel (MP) sensor with f/2.0 aperture and a 5 MP fixedfocus sensor with f/2.2 aperture. The dual LED flash is for low light photography. The phone works well under bright lights but is not up to the mark in low light.

The photos taken in bright lights are quite impressive with good colour balance. The front camera is 20 MP fixed focus with f/2.0 aperture. The performance is good but creates some problem in the dark. When it comes to battery, the phone is equipped with a big 4,550 mAh non-removable battery.

Even in heavy usage, the battery, once charged, can last more than a day. The fast charging is like icing on the cake.

Specifications

Gionee A1 Plus is equipped with MediaTek Helio P25 processor, which features octa-core that runs at frequency shooting up to 2.6 GHz. It runs on Android Nougat under the Amigo 4 skin. It has 4 GB RAM and 64 GB internal storage, which can be expanded with microSD to up to 256 GB. But it supports a hybrid card slot, which means one can either use two SIMs or one SIM and a microSD.