In the past few months, Gionee has lost out to Chinese players like Xiaomi and Lenovo in India. The company though is on a mission to reclaim lost market share. It has already launched the Gionee A1 and A1 Plus in the market and is now set to launch the A1 Lite - a smartphone with its sights set clearly on the highly competitive mid-range market.
At a speculated price of Rs 14,999, the A1 Lite finds itself in a segment populated by heavy hitters such as the Moto G5 Plus and Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 - smartphones which are not only from big-ticket brand names but which also have received widespread critical acclaim. While the Gionee A1 carved a niche in quite a sparsely populated segment, the A1 Lite will have to do much more to stand out amongst such an all-star playfield.
Design wise, the Gionee A1 Lite looks very similar to its elder brother. Much like the A1, the A1 Lite is made primarily out of metal looks quite premium. The build quality is top notch - the smartphone feels solid and reassuring in the hand. In fact, it feels positively tank like. While the design is suave, it will not win any awards when it comes to originality or flair. The sizeable bezels are also disappointing - they look dated and detract from the premium feel.
The Gionee A1 Lite looks like a decent mid-range phone with an above average selfie camera that looks premium and is built well
The Gionee A1 Lite comes with a 5.3-inch 720p display with a pixel density of 277 ppi. The 720p resolution is a little disappointing especially considering the fact that most of its competitors come with fullHD panels. Low resolution aside, the colors are natural, viewing angles are on point and brightness seems fine.
The Gionee A1 Lite is powered by the octa-core MediaTek MT6753 processor clocked at 1.3GHz paired with the Mali - T720 GPU, 3GB of RAM and a 4,000mAh battery. Additionally, it comes with 32GB of internal storage expandable via a microSD card (of up to 128GB) and a rear mounted fingerprint sensor which works quite well.
While a full evaluation of the smartphone's performance will have to wait till the full review, initial impressions suggest that the weak CPU is holding the smartphone back in spite of optimised software and a decent amount of RAM. Also, the smartphone tends to get quite hot whenever It is pushed or whilst it is being charged which points towards poor thermal management. The battery life was pretty good in the limited time I had with the device with a full day of use pretty much guaranteed.
On the software front, the Gionee A1 Lite runs Amigo OS 4.0 running atop Android 7.0 Nougat. The skin is optimised fairly well and runs without any major lags and slowdowns. There are also a ton of features like a powerful theme engine, Amiclone, time-lapse and beautified video on board.
However, the look and feel leave much to be desired. The UI looks like a peculiar lovechild between Android and iOS. For example - the quick toggles for mobile data and Wi-Fi are accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the display just like Apple's control center. There is excessive bloat on board as well and the overall design looks a little old fashioned.
Initial impressions suggest that the weak CPU is holding the Gionee A1 Lite back
On the imaging front, the Gionee A1 Lite comes with a 13MP camera at the rear and a 20MP camera at the front which clearly gives away the fact that this smartphone is geared towards selfie aficionados. A detailed analysis will have to wait till the full review but in my limited use the front camera seems above average while the rear camera seems to be a bit behind the 8 ball. Images produced by the rear sensor were a little too noisy in low light situations. The front camera produced crisp and vivid images and was surprisingly usable in dimly lit scenarios.
While a full evaluation will have to wait till the full review, the Gionee A1 Lite looks like a decent mid-range smartphone with an above average selfie camera that looks premium and is built well. However, it exists in a very competitive segment populated by heavyweights and seems to have an underpowered CPU and unpolished software weighing it down.
No comments:
Post a Comment