Gionee A1 Lite Review : More Power with Compact Size!

These days people are crazy about taking selfies. Everyone is just way too addictive towards taking there selfies in new and UN-natural ways. To take selfie they can go in any situation. I also love taking selfies but when you have a phone which is selfie-centric and tagline for the brand is defined as “Welcome to Selfiestan” then taking photos using that front-facing camera makes you addicted towards it. So, today we are having the latest device from Gionee i.e. Gionee A1 Lite, which was launched a few days back in India with the effective price of Rs. 14,999. The device is already available in there stores.

So, Let’s see how Gionee A1 Lite is going to perform in this real crucial world with this affordable pricing.

Design & Built

Gionee A1 Lite is available in two colors Black and Gold. When I first picked up the device in hand it feels really very light weight and way too comfortable for single hand use. I would say Gionee has really worked hard on their new device. Built quality of Gionee A1 Lite is really A1 with no complaints regarding it. Same quality that we get in Gionee A1 and Gionee A1 Plus, no compromise.

Starting with the front part of the phone at the top we get a 20-Megapixel Shooter beside it a LED flash which works as a moonlight flash. Beside that you get earpiece, different sensors and a no LED notification Light, in spite of LED Notification Front Flash works as a LED Notification if you enable it from setting panel, which is cool.

Sliding down you get a 5.3″ HD Display, with a added 2.5D Curved glass on top of it. They have also added a Gorilla Glass 3 protection on top of the display which make is better and more strong when we compare with other devices in same price bracket.

Below that you get back capacitive keys which don’t light up. We just have printed back keys and nothing much.

Now, coming to the down portion of the phone you get a Micro USB port besides that you get primary MIC and 3.5mm Audio jack.

Turning around to the top side here we get nothing.

Turning to the left side here we get here we get a very large sim tray slot which support dual nano sim and at the same time you can insert a MicroSD card in this that too for upto 32 GB. This device support a Dedicated MicroSD card slot which is really great in my scenario.

Rotating the phone to the right, here we get volume rockers and power-lock key which work well with no hazel. This time also Gionee has provided a patterned feel on power-lock key which is a small detailing fact about the phone built.

Coming to the back side of the the phone you get a 13-megapixel primary camera below that a single tone LED flash and besides that flash there is a hidden IR blaster which also has a great functionality which we see in LeEco device which is way better than MI device just because of added universal remote feature in it. Below that you get a fingerprint sensor which works well. below that Gionee branding and Loud speaker. According to me the placement of speaker is little bit odd.

Overall the device is made up of whole metal body construction and also has dedicated microSD card slot which is necessary these days.

Display

Gionee A1 Lite comes up with a 5.3-inch HD Display with the resolution of 720 x 1280 and pixel density of 277 ppi, which makes it look better. The colors are vibrant and dark. They are more towards the natural side and feels comfortable to eyes. White balance seems to bit high at high brightness rest you can control it manually by changing the display settings manually. The display can easily be used in very bright sunlight. There are different color profiles that you can choose as per your comfortability by going into the setting panel.

Auto-brightness work perfectly, and I have no complaints regarding the display. But still i was expecting a FHD display in this price range or at-least a amoled display.

Performance

The Gionee A1 Lite comes with MediaTek MT6753 which is paired with Mali-T720MP3 and a 3GB RAM. There we get 32GB of internal storage which can be expanded by up to 64GB using a microSD card slot which is a dedicated slot.

Even the device has Mediatek MT6753 processor it can some how handle all graphic intensive games such as GTA San Andreas, Bully, Batman, Nova 3 and much more, but at lower settings. Playing these games on higher setting will give you frame drops and sluggishness. The main objective of the phone is its built with great selfie camera.

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Some issue which I faced in the UI was apps get crashed, where i need restart the app to work on it. It is not always but few times in a week. The camera app sometime gets laggy while you are recording on FHD, but if you use a third party app to record videos, it works perfectly fine, this happen might be because in there default application they are providing many modes. Hope all these issues can be fixed by Gionee in there next OTA update.

We forgot to mention about the sensors which are available in Gionee A1 Lite, so I would say we have all the sensors which a person need a phone you can even use a VR on the phone with no hassle, not even a single sensor is removed from the device.

Camera

Starting with the most highlighted feature of Gionee A1 Lite i.e. its 20-megapixel selfie camera with LED flash which allows you to take brighter and better photos even in low-light. To add more effect the camera app comes with a ‘face beauty’ mode, which allows you to smoother your skin tone, removing wrinkles, slimming down your face and much more. Allowing you to have smoother and wrinkle-free selfies. This is not enough because it supports HDR mode in selfies.

I would say Gionee A1 Lite does take some good front facing photos in daylight as well as in no light. Rest, everyone is going to love the selfie’s taking from the front facing camera of Gionee.

Now coming to the rear camera, here we get a 13-megapixel sensor with LED flash. There are different modes which we get in the app like Pro mode, night mode, time lapse, slow motion, text recognition, and text translation and many other. The camera UI is very simple and easy to use, but sometime get laggy may be due to too much modes in single application which I have already explained earlier in the article.

As per my views, rear camera of Gionee A1 is a bit average and we cannot compare the same with other budget oriented devices because this phone is more towards offline-centric and not online centric. But, still It takes pretty good photos in good light but significantly get noise in low-light conditions.

Camera Samples

Software

The Gionee A1 Lite comes with Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box with their custom skin Amigo UI 4.0 on top of it. They have customized a whole lot of stuff in their UI, and I would say it is buttery smooth even after filling the whole 32GB internal storage, with games, movies, and songs. In Amigo UI we don’t get any app drawer or on screen buttons just like iPhone.

Overall, the UI is quite good, but the person who love stock then this device is not for you, you will get so many customization right in your hand out of the box. There are some minor bugs, but we can expect those bugs to be fixed by Gionee in next coming OTA updates.

Battery

Coming to the battery part of the phone here we are getting 4000 mAh battery. On moderate or even too high usage, the smartphone will easily last you 24 hour on a single charge, and even more, it depends on your usage. I was Using Jio Sim + 15 minutes approx gaming, continuous whatsapp, facebook and other social media, some selfies and at the end of the day the remaining battery was 55% which seems to be quite good for me. There we also get some energy saving modes which will further optimize your battery life. You can choose different battery modes between normal mode, power saving mode which reduces performance and finally an extreme mode which will switch off all the stuff and you will be able to use some basic features like phone, contact, messaging in it.

Verdict

Overall device is good and has its own pros and cons just like other devices. Nothing is perfect in the world.

Pros

• Battery
• Very Handy and Light weight
• Slim
• Selfie camera
• Front Flash
• Dedicated MicroSD card
• Built (Top-notch)

Cons

• UI (need updates and fixes)
• Display (Need at least FHD)
• Processor