Gionee A1: All-round brilliance

Gionee's new offering couples a good camera with smart performance, writes Abhik Sen

Let me start with a confession: I’m not a selfie addict. Of course I do know what it means, and occasionally feature in some clicked by my wife,  but I’m surely not going to buy a phone for just that. Thus, when the Gionee A1 (Rs 19,999) came in for review, I took it as a challenge. 

If you’re used to stock Android, the Amigo interface (on top of Android Nougat) might need some getting used to. There are a lot of customisations and some bundled apps as well, but you have the option of uninstalling them if you want, unlike many other phones with bloatware. Setting up the phone was fast and I had my fingerprint mapped on the home button/fingerprint scanner in a jiffy. The user interface (UI) looks very good on the 5.5-inch Full HD screen, which took some time to adjust to the sunlight. Using the bundled earphones and my Apple Music subscription, I listened to a wide selection of music on my commute; the earphones, which are bass-heavy, performed very well. 

Soon, I was looking into the 16-megapixel (MP) front camera clicking pictures of my face. The face beauty feature came in handy to cut inches off my heavy face; other “enhancements” let me make my eyes bigger, my skin smoother and the skin tone lighter. A front LED flash lit up when I clicked selfies in a room with low light. The wide sweep of the A1’s front camera is good for clicking group selfies. The 13MP back camera performed very well when I clicked pictures outdoors; indoors, in well-lit conditions, the pictures turned out decent. But there was a fair amount of noise in low-light conditions. 

The UI makes optimum use of the 4GB memory, and yet, the phone crashed after a long video I shot. The fingerprint scanner is the fastest I’ve seen in this range and swiping on the home button activates some shortcuts. The phone had Asphalt Nitro pre-installed. I played a few rounds and was impressed, though the sound from the bottom edge speakers got muffled when I held the phone on landscape mode. There wasn’t any stutter in the game, even with some 17 apps open in the background. I also played Mario Run for nearly two hours and that’s when the phone started warming up. 

The A1 has a 4,010 mAh battery, and with heavy usage, I could get more than a day’s use. The battery management apps are also impressive, though it takes about two hours to fully charge the phone.

The Gionee A1 is meant for those who want a stylish phone for selfies and gaming. Its rivals may have better headline features, but this is a great all-round package.