With 2017, we saw a gradual shift of smartphone manufactures choosing a new aspect ration o 18:9, this resulted in narrower borders and a better screen to body ration on the smartphones. The bezel-less look was more appealing than the conservative designs which helped add innovation to the displays where the only possible enhancement was limited to increase in the screen resolution. Another newcomer to the 18:9 aspect ratio devices are the Gionee M7 power and this is a big bonus for consumers as technology trickles down to the lower price segment of devices.
This phone focuses on the battery as its major selling point doesn’t fail to satisfy its users on the grounds of the battery. In this review, we will highlight some of the best points of the laptop and cover all the aspects of it to see how well it stacks up with its competitors.
Design
The Gionee M7 Power has a big 6” inch display with an 18:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1440 x 720 pixels. The IPS panel on the device provides a better viewing experience and reproduces colors pretty well. The newer aspect ration helps the device have a very small trace of bezels towards the sides but fail to offer the same on the top and bottom of the device. Although the fingerprint sensor is very useful the positioning of it makes it a little difficult to reach as the device has a bigger screen.
The device has rounded corners to make the device easier to grip and the overall metal design has small plastic patches thereby eliminating the need for the antenna bands. The device has a single speaker beside the 3.5mm earphone jack and also a micro-USB port at the bottom of the device, the top of the device also has an IR blaster which lets you control most compatible electronic devices including your TV and AC.
Specifications and OS
The Gionee M7 Power is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 Chipset which is a Cortex A53 Octa-core processor and the device is aided by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage which can be further expanded to 256GB via a MicroSD card. The device has 2 Nano SIM slots of which one is shared with the microSD card making it a Hybrid slot. The device some with support for most wireless protocols including 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 4.1.
The software on the device is a skinned version of Android Nougat with Amigo 5.0 on top of it. The UI has been modified a little to offer an iOS tinge to it and you don’t get an app drawer similar to as in the iOS operating system. The Settings app is customized, and all the features are very well laid out based on the classification.
The device comes with several add-on features including App Clone which lets you use two accounts on the same app without having to switch accounts each time. Similar to the other Gionee smartphones, even this device comes with the gesture control built-in and you can double tap the screen or draw gestures to perform respective actions. Also, given the huge battery in the device, you can use the OTG Adapter to charge other devices.
The device comes with the significant amount of bloatware including UC News, Gaana, True caller, Flipkart and demos of a few games.
Performance
We’ve used the device quite a bit and throughout the usage, we never found any lag or hiccups. The processor pulled off almost everything that we threw at it without any struggle. The 4GB RAM in the device allows it to keep everything in the memory and most of the previously opened apps launch from memory and you can resume where you left off.
Although the device comes with the Snapdragon 400 series processor, the results aren’t that bad. We tried benchmarking the device and got Antutu score of 45,454 and Geekbench 4 returned a single core score of 684 and multicore score of 2588. With above average usage, we could use the device for an entire day and still be left with over 50 percent of the battery left in the end.
The device comes with a 13MP camera with s single LED Flash and an 8MP selfie camera. The camera app is pretty basic and has several shooting modes to ease the use. The device comes with a Face beauty mode to enhance selfies and it also has a Group Selfie and a card scanner mode to serve more specific purposes. There is also a professional mode in the device which lets you control more important features like the ISO and light metering. Gionee also has 2x zoom button which is done digitally as the device doesn’t have a telephoto lens
Camera
The camera is average, and the images taken in daylight have a good amount of detail in them, but as you start zooming into the pics you can slowly notice the drop-in image quality. The HDR does yield slightly better results but there’s a lot of scope for improvement when it comes to the light metering in the device and the device doesn’t do well in the low light conditions. Although the noise levels aren’t disturbing, the detail in the images is generally lost.
Coming to the selfies, the front camera is just about average and low light selfies return a very grainy result. Both the rear and the front camera support 1080p recording and have support for slow-motion video too. There is also a 3D capture mode which struggles to give optimal results and is more of a gimmick.
Final Verdict
The Gionee M7 Power is an excellent smartphone for the price and is available at 16,999. Although the device seems overpriced when compared to some good phones in this price, the device does keep up well and offers one of the best battery life. The only let down of the device is the camera which fails to keep up with the goods of Honor 7X and Xiaomi Mi A1.
