Imagine a phone that’s smart and doesn’t make you look stupid by making you carry additional power banks. Imagine a phone that keeps on going for a minimum of two days, even as you work, surf or play. Now imagine not having to shell out a bomb for it. Sounds like a dream? Then that would make the Gionee M5 Marathon a dream come true.
What’s Good?
Gionee has recently set up its manufacturing hub in India and we believe the company’s figured out what an Indian smartphone user needs the most – a slim phone and a good battery life. Gionee has time and again proved its competence in both those areas.
Now, with the Marathon M5, Gionee has addressed all battery concerns and has made the phone future-proof as well. The Marathon M5 packs in a 6,020mAh battery. Yes, you read that right. In our tests, with regular Internet connectivity (both 3G and WiFi), games and YouTube videos, the phone lasted a little over two days, which is pretty amazing.
The dual-SIM 4G smartphone runs on Android 5.1 and has a custom Amigo 3.1 UI overlaid. It comes with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage onboard, expandable to 128GB via a microSD card. The smartphone has a Quad-Core 1.3 GHz AArch64 processor.
Another brilliant part of the smartphone is its build quality. It’s a metallic phone which oozes premium from all edges. The design aesthetics resemble those of HTC or Huawei, but the market is getting saturated with similarly designed smartphones. The smartphone manages to maintain its thickness at par with the competition, and feels quite thin at 8.55 mm, even after housing that huge battery.
We also appreciate the performance that this smartphone manages in the camera section. It clicks decent photographs with quick focus and minimal lag and natural colours. There’s a 13-megapixel camera at the rear and a 5-megapixel snapper at the front. The night shots are a little grainy, but the pictures don’t turn out bad.
The Marathon M5 runs smoothly. It doesn’t lag, freeze, or crash applications even while multitasking. This makes the gameplay experience highly enjoyable on this smartphone.
Key Specifications: Gionee Marathon M5
- Display: 5.5-inch HD Display with Gorilla Glass 3
- Processor: 1.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor
- RAM: 3GB
- Rear Camera: 13MP Camera
- Front Camera: 5MP Camera
- Operating System: Android 5.1 (Lollipop) with Amigo 3.1 overlaid
Storage: 32GB, expandable to 128GB via microSD card - Battery: 6,020 mAh
- Price: Rs 17,999
What’s Bad?
As a consequence of the extra juice in the battery, the smartphone ends up being very heavy: It weighs around 500 grams.
The Marathon M5 features a 5.5-inch display which has a resolution of 1280x720 pixels and a Super AMOLED display. The colours appear to be a bit saturated and with a pixel density of around 227ppi, the sharpness does get affected. We would have liked to see a Full-HD 1080p screen on this, which would have definitely enhanced the viewing experience.
We have a small complaint with the sound department as well. First of all, the phone’s speakers are at the back of the smartphone which muffles the sound when it’s placed right side up. Even with this design, the highest volume should have been more.
Why Buy It?
Available at Rs 17,999, it makes sense to go for this if you want to charge the phone, and forget about it as you go through your day. The phone has an Infrared blaster as well, which allows it to be used as a universal remote control. We managed to control a lot of our appliances with it, and it configured seamlessly.
The Marathon M5 also has a lot of customisation options embedded in the Amigo UI, such as Chameleon which can change the colour of the phone’s UI according to the major colours in the camera’s viewfinder – pretty cool, eh?
This is a fun device made for a lot of work and play and for those who are constantly on the move. The competition has to catch up in the specifications war. The Gionee Marathon M5 emerges as the winner at the end of this long race for now.
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