Nov 28, 2013 03:10 PM
3902 Views
After my Nokia Pureview 808 died in its sleep after 1 year 1 month of usage, I was looking out to buy another phone. Decided there is no point buying costly phones if ones like the best of Nokia goes kaput and cannot be rectified in the Nokia Authorized Service Centers(checked in 2 of them, just in case…they had it for weeks and gave it back saying it cannot be rectified. They quoted repair bill of? 9500 and that too with no surety that the phone will be repaired) and set a budget of 10K. Did research on multiple websites(gogi.in, igyaan.in, tech2.in and multiple others).
Navigating through the 100s of options currently available, somehow Gionee Gpad G2 caught my eye, and then I started comparing this with the other options and then ended by buying it too.
The interesting features of the Gionee Gpad G2 are:
1) Just like most other current phones, it is also a quad core phone based on MTK6589 with good graphics. While MTK is not known for good development support /custom ROMs, the provided ROM itself is very good and meets most requirements.
2) The killer difference? 3000mAH battery
3) 8mp camera, 32gb expandable(micro sd card) memory in addition to standard 4GB system memory, 1 GB RAM, Android 4.1 Jelly bean, dual sim, freebies like flip cover provided in the box, 5.3 inches screen, good resolution screen
Now that I have the phone for about 2 months my observations are:
1) Extremely good battery life? lasts 2-3 days easily with my usage, I am partly on WLAN and sometimes switch off the WLAN.(Have installed Juice Defender software, which also helps)
2) Struggled to get root access to phone, is done now though.
3) All apps can be easily installed, working well.
4) Fast
5) Reliable – never shut down on me or behaved erratically.(the behaviour is like the iphone in this regard, thanks to project butter, I guess. Big change for me, coming from Symbian/Nokia 808).
6) The flip cover provided is good, and the phone comes back to life when the cover is opened. Not sure of technology used, is that magnetic or light sensors at play?
7) Screen is good indoors, outdoors viewing is not great and need to try hard and peer at it from multiple angles to see the details on the phone screen clearly
8) Dual sim works. One of the sims(normal SIM) is only 2G though, the micro SIM is 3G.
9) GPS works
10) The camera is pathetic, especially since I come from the Nokia 808, which was probably the best camera phone in the business(41 mega pixel, et al).
11) My biggest gripe is that everytime I close the cover, the screen locks. I wish there was a way to turn this off. Especially since I have a 8 digit screen password(required by my company as a security measure, since I also sync up and view mails for my company account through the phone) and it is a pain typing 8 digits every time. Also I notice when pressing at a few points on the left side(not specifically the power button) the phone just locks the screen and I have to enter the password again. Probably this is my single biggest gripe(the second would be the camera).
I believe the phone is no longer available, I consider myself lucky to have bought one when it lasted. This has been replaced with the inferior Gionee Gpad G3, and I wonder why the company replaces one product with an inferior one. Anyways, I don’t understand all the ways of the world. All I wanted to say is that I feel this is the best phone under 10K(I used ebay.in to buy, got a coupon discount which reduced the price to below 10K) and will recommend it fully currently(nowadays phones have notoriously short shelf life, something better may come tomorrow) over comparable phones from every other company – including Xolo / Micromax / Wickedleak/Karbonn and others. The phones from bigger companies like the Samsungs/LGs are all in a different price range, and they have their quirks too. Just my 2 cents. Cheers.
