Gionee has been one of the successful smartphone makers from China that offer a variety of handsets focusing on different segments. The company’s ‘M’ or Marathon series focusses on endurance by offering chunky batteries that last longer than traditional Android smartphones. The new Marathon M5, the update for the M4, is the latest juice packing handset that features a 6,020mAh battery (two 3,010mAh) which means it can last quite a bit before you need to run to a charging point.
The overall design is refined and appealing if you don’t consider the weight. With a sturdy metal and plastic body, Gionee has managed to make the edges substantially slim at about 8.6mm, but it is bulky and really heavy. The display is a 5.5-inch AMOLED panel which means vivid colours and high contrast but the resolution is 720p HD which isn’t that sharp and feels just about alright.
A full HD resolution panel would’ve hit the right spot, but again lower pixels means less consumption of the battery. Since the handset has a uni-body design, there is a slot for inserting the SIM cards and also one to put a microSD card on the left and right edges. There is also an infra-red blaster port on the top which enables you to control some electronics around your house like a television or DTH set-top box through a pre-installed app. Quite a handy feature if you don’t like to shuffle remote controls.
The handset is powered by the same quad-core MediaTek processor which was used on the M4, but now you get 3GB of RAM and also a bump to 32GB of internal storage. The package sounds good and actually works very well. Running on Android 5.1 with Amigo 3.1 UI (user interface), you get a heavily customised Android experience. The quick setting panel slides out from the bottom rather than the traditional top to bottom which only shows the notifications. This takes some time to get used to especially if you’re coming from another Android device. There is a theme app and a store as well as options to customize the lock-screen wallpaper with a variety of downloadable ones.
One interesting app is Chameleon that basically uses the camera of the smartphone to pick a primary and a secondary colour and use that as a theme. Great for people who like to match their apparel with their smartphones. There also a system and performance enhancing app which lets you control your battery modes, clear system cache and more. The handset also supports gestures which can be used when the screen is locked by simply drawing alphabets to open apps.
Performance is satisfying as apps run very well, even the gaming experience is great with the handset capable of handling heavy resource hungry titles. The 3GB of RAM helps in handling multitasking and there are not noticeable lags during heavy usage. There are some issues with the UI though like no option for killing all apps at once and a longer route to open your favorite contacts, but these are minor issues which the company has confirmed to fix in the upcoming updates.
In the camera department you get a 13MP rear and a 5MP front combo. Both the cameras can take some good pictures in daylight but are not very impressive as low light and even indoor lighting leads to noise and loss of details. The front camera doesn’t offer auto-focus, so one has to be careful while taking selfies. The camera app offers some nice features though including a Pro-Mode to control your shutter speeds and ISO. Other noticeable features include Magic Focus which lets you take a picture and adjust the focus later and Ultra Pixel that doubles up the resolution of the rear camera. The cameras on the handset are fair and don’t offer anything huge in terms of photography.
The sweet deal is of course the battery. On a full charge the handset managed to churn out two days of battery backup which included a mix of 3G and Wi-Fi usage along with gaming, social media apps, music and browsing the internet. If you use the handset cautiously you can get close to two and a half days maybe even three. The bundled charger juices up the handset in a couple of hours. Gionee claims that thanks to the large battery, one can even charge other handsets and devices using a simple OTG cable.
For about Rs. 18,000 the Marathon is not only a worthy upgrade for the M4, but is also an excellent option if you sick of charging your smartphone all the time. The only few concerns might be the weight and a slightly heavy user interface, but as a tradeoff you get 2-3 days of battery life and a smooth performance package. Lenovo has the Vibe P1 coming at a similar range, but the Marathon M5 is definitely a better option here.
