Gionee has announced the launch of its first bezel-less smartphone, the M7 Power. The smartphone comes with a price tag of Rs Rs 16,999 and it will be available through offline and online channels.
The major highlight of the smartphone, apart from the FullView display, is the massive 5,000mAh battery. But, will it prove to the prophet to save Gionee’s Selfiestan? We had the chance to use the device for a while and here is our first impressions.
Design and Display
It is safe to say that the smartphone does bring some breath of fresh air in this overly similar-looking smartphone market. The first thing you will notice about the device is the bezel-less display which comes with an aspect ratio of 18:9. The top and bottom bezels are minimal, which is a welcome move. And once you flip the phone, you will see a textured finish at the back panel, which makes it quite different from what the competition has to offer. The textured finish also provides some good grips, which makes it easier to hold. The edges are made of metal, which adds some durability factor to it.
Quickly briefing about some design aesthetics, the front bears a selfie camera and earpiece at the top, while the navigation controls are on-screen and can be found at the base. The right houses volume rocker and power on/off button, while the left houses Dual-SIM slot. At the base, there is a Headphone jack along with micro USB port and a speaker grille, while the top bears an IR blaster.
The rear camera is situated at the top left corner of the back panel, which is accompanied by a LED flash. At the top center position, you will find a fingerprint sensor, which, in our opinion, is placed a bit on higher making it a bit difficult to reach. That said, the smartphone does give a sturdy look and it is indeed comfortable to hold.
Coming to the display, there is a 6-inch HD+ FullView display with a screen resolution of 1440 x 720 pixels and it bears an aspect ratio of 18:9. Considering the price point, the HD display could be seen as a down point here, especially, when a brand like Honor is giving you Full HD+ display with its Honor 9i. That said, the display still manages to deliver some punchy colors and the viewing angles are that great as you get to see yellowish tint on the display when viewed from a different angle. Further, some might find a bit too warm in nature.
Hardware and Software
Coming to the specifications, the Gionee M7 Power is powered by a 1.4GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 Processor along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 256GB via micro SD card slot. Once again, the smartphone seems to be a total underdog, in terms of sheer specifications, if we compare it with the likes of Honor 9i and more.
Coming to the software, the smartphone runs on Amigo 5.0 based on Android 7.1.1 Nougat. We still feel that this one department where Gionee really needs to work. The user interface comes loaded with a lot of bloatware, which kind of spoils the whole mood. We will talk about this in depth in our review.
Camera
On the camera front, the Gionee M7 Power features a 13-megapixel shooter with f/2.0 aperture, PDAF and LED flash, while for the front, there is an 8-megapixel shooter. The camera comes with different modes like Photo, Face Beauty, Card Scanner, Group Selfie, Panorama, Video and 3D Photo. Then there are text recognition, timelapse, night, picnote, professional, backlight, translation and slow-motion modes, which are fun to use.
During our initial testing, we found out the camera does a decent job in broad daylight, but there is a drop of quality when photos are clicked in the indoor lighting situation. The selfie camera does a decent job as well and we will test the camera in different lighting situation before giving our final verdict on the camera.
Battery and Connectivity
The major highlight of the device is the massive 5,000mAh battery and it also supports fast charging. This much battery would be enough to last two days comfortably, and we will brief you more in our review. On the connectivity front, it supports 4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS and dual-SIM support.