When we talk about camera-centric smartphones especially when it boils around the selfie camera, the first three names which instantly pops up in our minds are Oppo, Gionee and Vivo. Thanks to their immense advertisement, these companies have managed to penetrate that youth audience of India who mistakenly is too much into selfies. While having a decent selfie camera on a smartphone is must have feature, these manufacturers shouldn’t just rely on just selfies. Oppo launched its yet another selfie-centric smartphone – Oppo F3. The device is priced at Rs 19,990 and will be up for grabs starting 13th May via Flipkart and various other offline stores. At this price point, Vivo recently launched its Vivo V5s and Gionee has also its trump card in the name of Gionee A1. With the gradual shift to online market, which of these can be a decent mid-range device which can certainly click good selfies for you? Let’s find out.
Design and Display
Following the grill, we hit the exteriors first. All these smartphones follow the same design language of a metal unibody built and most of them have surely taken a lot of inspiration from Apple. Starting with the Oppo F3, the new ‘Selfie Expert’ from the Chinese multinational retains a lot of it from the F1s in terms of design. We get an iPhone like design with the edges curving around the back along with some usual Oppo branding at the back. Oppo has only launched the Gold variant in India although there is also a Pink colour option.
Coming to the Vivo V5s, this one actually borrows the design from its elder sibling i.e. the Vivo V5 Plus. Yet another iPhone-like design, Vivo V5s will also not disappoint you for it is also built out of aluminium coming in Crown Gold and Matte Black colour options. The Antenna lines on this one resemble that to iPhone 7 while the rest of its all standard Vivo.
For the Gionee A1, things do get a little different as it follows a slightly different design. A curved back which slightly falls on the side and a camera module which resembles company’s S6 Pro, the Gionee A1 surely brings a little more freshness here. Further, the Matte Black colour variant wins it for us here even though Vivo V5s was close. However, don’t get us wrong as this segment purely lies on one’s own preference.
Winner: Gionee A1
In terms of display, the Gionee A1 and Oppo F3 close the fight with a 5.5-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) display while the Vivo V5s lags behind with a 5.5-inch HD 720p display.
However, the one on the Gionee A1 is an AMOLED panel while the other two comes with an IPS LCD screen so you need to set out your preferences in this segment as well. To make it easier for you, AMOLED displays tends to throw more vibrant colours while LCD panel will give you more natural colours. The brightness of the LCD display will be presumably more while the AMOLED panel will do save some of your battery. If you ask us, we would pick the Gionee A1 once again.
Winner: Gionee A1 or Oppo F3 (LCD)
Internal Specifications and Performance
While all these smartphones bank a lot on the camera, they are not that bad in terms of internal specifications as well. Both the Vivo V5s and Oppo F3 boasts MediaTek’s MT6750 Chipset which is an Octa-Core processor clocked at 1.5 GHz along with Mali-T860MP2 GPU. On the other hand, Gionee A1 raises the bar here with its MediaTek 6755 Helio P10 chipset which is an Octa-Core processor clocked at 2.0 GHz. We get the same GPU here, however.
All the three devices come with 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage which is expandable up to 256GB via microSD card. While the Oppo F3 Plus sports a dedicated microSD card slot, the Vivo V5s and Gionee A1 come with a hybrid Dual SIM slot.
We cannot give away a verdict on the performance as we are yet to test Vivo’s V5s and Oppo’s F3, however, based on the sheer spec sheet, Gionee A1 does come with a slightly powerful processor.
In terms of software, Gionee A1 again takes the lead with Android 7.0 Nougat layered with the company’s AmigoOS 4.0. Whereas, the Vivo V5s and Oppo F3 still runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with their respective skins on top.
Winner: Gionee A1
Camera
Ok so let’s talk about the camera now. All these phones come with some really high megapixel-d cameras both at the front and back, however, does it justify the actual performance? Well, to summarise, you will get some really good selfie shots from the cameras on these smartphones but don’t expect a flagship camera performance, especially when it comes to the rear camera.
Starting with the Gionee A1, the device features a 13-megapixel camera at the back with f/2.0 aperture, PDAF and LED flash while on the front, we have a 16-megapixel sensor with f/2.0 Aperture as well.
Meanwhile, Vivo V5s packs a 13-megapixel rear camera with f/2.2 aperture, PDAF and LED flash while the front-facing camera is a 20-megapixel sensor with f/2.0 aperture but the size of the sensor on this one is slightly bigger so you will be able to get in a little more background on this one.
Lastly, Oppo F3 comes with a 13-megapixel camera at the back with PDAF, OIS and LED flash and at the front, it comes with a dual camera setup with a combination of a 16-megapixel and an 8-megapixel sensor along with f/2.0 aperture.
Not getting carried away with a dual front facing camera, we will ask you to hold on for our detailed camera test of all these three smartphones before we give you our verdict. As of now, we do seem that the Optical Image Stabilization at the back and two cameras at the front on the Oppo F3 should do better.
Winner: Oppo F3 (On Paper)
Battery and Connectivity
Taking the connectivity first, all the three devices come with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth v4.0 (4.1 on Oppo F3), GPS with A-GPS and a microUSB 2.0 port. Don’t worry, all of the does sport a 3.5 mm Headphone jack and we also have a fingerprint scanner in all of them.
Whereas, in terms of battery, things again seem to fall in the A1’s court. Vivo V5s and Oppo F3 comes with a 3000 mAh and 3200 mAh non-removable battery respectively while the Gionee A1 sports a massive 4010 mAh battery with Fast charging support. So no second thoughts here as Gionee A1 wins this segment.
Winner: Gionee A1
Wrapping Up
Based on categorised winners, you must have judged that Gionee A1 is the better choice of the three. However, that doesn’t mean the other two are not a good pick especially the Oppo F3. We are yet to test the cameras on these devices so Oppo F3 might have an EDGE there.
Also, the Vivo V5s is priced at Rs 18,990 while the Gionee A1 is priced at Rs 19,999. Moreover, we faced a couple of issues with the Gionee A1’s software when we were reviewing the device but the company appears to have resolved those with an OTA update. So, our pick of these three would be Gionee A1.