Gionee M7 Power review: Battery-centric smartphone with 18:9 screen

Priced at Rs 16,999 and offering exceptional battery life and future-ready 18:9 aspect ratio screen, Gionee M7 Power competes with Nokia 6, Honor 9i, and LG Q6 Plus

With ultra-wide screen being one of the key features dominating the smartphone industry this year, Chinese handset maker Gionee has also jumped on the bandwagon. Its latest offering, the M7 Power smartphone, has ditched the 16:9 aspect ratio screen in favour of an 18:9 ‘FullView display’.

The aluminium-clad Gionee M7 Power, true to its name, is primarily a powerful smartphone with a mammoth 5,000 mAh battery. The 3D photo is another key feature differentiating it with competitors.

Business Standard reviewed the Gionee M7 Power to test its display, battery and camera capabilities, besides the overall smartphone performance. Here are our observations:

Display

The M7 Power boasts a 6-inch IPS HD screen in the 18:9 aspect ratio, covered with a 2.5D curved Gorilla Glass. The display looks bright and covers almost the entire front, though the top and bottom bezels are still prominent.

Gionee M7 Power

For a 6-inch screen, the HD resolution panel looks pixelated at times, especially while watching multimedia content. The text also doesn’t look sharp and might make avid readers a little wary. But the addition of a software-based reading mode does help reduce the blue light glare that strains eyes while reading.

Overall, the screen offers good contrast and sunlight legibility. The ultra-wide screen means an 85 per cent screen-to-body ratio assuring high display area and limited bezels.

Camera

The M7 Power sports a 13-megapixel rear camera and an 8MP front-facing selfie-camera. The primary camera comes equipped with several modes – text recognition, translation, slow-motion, time-lapse, professional, panorama, back light, card scanner and 3D photo.

Gionee M7 Power

The addition of a 3D Photo feature in the otherwise regular 13MP primary camera makes a difference. The 3D Photo feature allows users to capture a 3D picture that can be later viewed from different angles. The feature works as intended in most cases, but shows artificial stitching effects sometimes, ruining the 3D outlook.

Gionee M7 Power

Overall, the primary and selfie cameras are regular shooters delivering optimally in good daylight conditions but failing in low-light situations.

Battery

With a 5,000 mAh battery, the smartphone is a powerhouse that runs for more than a day. The phone, however, is full of pre-installed bloatware eating into precious internal storage and affecting the overall battery endurance.

Performance

The M7 Power is, foremost, a battery-centric device. Powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor, an octa-core SoC, the phone has 64 GB of internal memory and a 4GB RAM. The processor is no powerhouse and the result is visible while using the device. The phone performs basic tasks like calling, SMS, instant messages, social media and internet browsing with ease, but stutters while playing games or watching high-definition videos on YouTube for extended hours.

Gionee M7 Power

The phone boots the Android Nougat 7.1 operating system covered under the Amigo 5.0 theme. The theme offers several advantages over the stock Android, such as app clone feature, creating space for dual social media apps in phone. Other features include split screen, intelligent eye protection, smart gesture, black screen gesture, glove patterns.

Verdict

At a price of Rs 16,999, the Gionee M7 Power offers exceptional battery life, and a future-ready 18:9 aspect ratio screen. In its price segment, the phone competes with Nokia 6, Honor 9i, and LG Q6 Plus.