Gionee has launched the Marathon M5 with a 6020mAh battery that is capable of charging two phones. The M5 is priced at Rs. 17,999 and will be exclusively available on Flipkart
Earlier in August Gionee launched the Marathon M4 with a relatively large 5000mAh battery. We wondered who would need more than that since a 5000mAh battery can easily last anyone an entire day! However, Gionee assumes we could do with some more juice powering our smartphones. So here it is, the Gionee Marathon M5 with a humongous 6020 mAh battery. While the phone was launched earlier this year in China, today it sees an India launch. We got to spend some time with the device at the launch event and here are our first Impressions of the Gionee Marathon M5.
Let's kick off things with the design and build quality. The new phone gets an all new metal cum plastic design. It is not particularly good looking and we have seen a similar design scheme from various smartphone makers, but at the end of the day it's a functional design. That said, the chamfered metal sides do add a bit of premium touch to the design, which is worth noting. Lifting the phone, we realised the weight of the large battery pack. At 211 grams it is a heavy phone, making it the heaviest smartphone in the Indian market. All this weight and smart choice of materials make it quite sturdy.
The 5.5-inch 720p HD display is about half an inch bigger than the one on the Marathon M4 and Gionee is now using an AMOLED panel. This translates into very good blacks and vibrant colours overall. It is bright and there is minimal shift in colours even at extreme angles. The display is a bit reflective and that hinders outdoor visibility. In the UI section there are no surprises and the phone is running Gionee’s Amigo UI 3.1 which is layered on top of Android Lollipop 5.1. No Marshmallow yet. The newest version of the Amigo UI does come with some old and some new software tricks which we will test once we get the phone for review.
The performance of the phone is handled by a Mediatek MT6735 SoC. This quad-core SoC was earlier seen on the Meizu M2 and felt quite capable at that time. Navigation through the UI was quite smooth but heavier tasks such as graphics intensive games are likely to take a toll on the processor. We won't comment on the performance any further as the phone needs to be tested to determine that. The phone has 32GB of built-in storage and 3GB of RAM (which has become common in smartphones these days).
Moving on to the main feature of the phone – the huge 6020 mAh battery. This mammoth of a battery is actually made up of two batteries joined together. The company says that it will give about 4 days of usage and we won't dismiss those claims as it certainly showcases the potential to deliver. The AMOLED panel will certainly help with battery life. Other major plus of having this large battery pack is that it can charge two other devices via the reverse charging feature which is certainly appreciated. We will put all these features through their paces once we get the device for review.
Lastly, the camera. The phone has a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front facing camera. Our initial impressions are that the images produced are good and images taken in dimly lit conditions appear reasonably detailed as well. Colour saturation looks decent too but we will reserve our views on the overall camera quality for our final review. The Gionee Marathon M5 is priced at Rs. 17,999 and will be available exclusively via Flipkart.
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Hardik Singh
Light at the top, this odd looking creature lives under the heavy medication of video games. View Full Profile
