A heavy battery phone
Camera: Front is fine, rear needs improvement
Battery: The best part
Performance: Average, heating issue
Design: Premium looking
Price: A little expensive
Chinese smartphone maker Gionee created a lot of buzz in the market and on social media when they came up with Gionee A1 a few months back. However, Gionee A1 Plus and the recently-launched Gionee A1 Lite haven’t witnessed the same fervor. Priced at Rs 14,999, Gionee A1 Lite has a premium design, a powerful battery and a good selfie camera. But the rear camera and performance of the device is not up to the mark. At the same time, heating issue could also let down the phone. Gionee should have worked on it as its counterparts like Lenovo and Xiaomi are giving better specifications and features at less price. If your priority is selfie and a powerful battery, go for this phone without any second thought. But if you are adding performance in your priority list, look for some other option.
Design and features
In terms of design, most of the features are aped from its previous version, Gionee A1. Overall, the phone looks slim and quite decent in a full metal body. It easily fits in the hand. The phone has white colour in front panel while the rear has all in golden colour. The camera, LED flash and senors are on the top of the front panel, while at the bottom are three capacitive touch buttons. The micro USB 2.0 port and 3.5 mm audio jack are at the bottom of the phone.
The rear side of the phone has camera with LED flash, below it is a finger print scanner and at the bottom is the speaker grill top. The volume rockers and power buttons are well placed on the right corner of the phone, while the left has a slot for nano sim card tray and microSD card. The display of the device is 5.3 inch HD (720X1280) IPS LCD and with a pixel density of 277 ppi. The display is not HD but it is bright and sharp.
Specifications
The device runs on Android 7.0 Nougat, powered by Mediatek MT6753 Octa-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A53 with Mali-T720MP3 GPU. A1 Lite has 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage which can be expanded by a microSD card. The performance of the phone is quite average. It starts creating glitches and gets slow when switching apps and opening multiple browsers. The phone also has heating issue.
Camera and battery
The phone has 20MP front camera and 13MP rear camera. The front camera works well, the picture comes quite bright and clean but it starts creating problem against the light or in low light. The only word for 13MP rear camera is it doesn’t justify its price. To compensate the disappointment, one would certainly like its massive 4,000mAh battery, it can last a whole day with a single charge.
Verdict
The front camera and battery of Gionee A1 Lite are really good but its performance and features don’t justify its price range
