Gionee has launched what it says is the thinnest smartphone in the market. But, behind its svelte shape and impressive build quality, does the S5.1 have what it takes to crack a competitive market?
The first impression of the S5.1, when you hold one in your hand, is that of quality and good fit-and-finish. At a thickness of just 5.1mm, and a weight of under a hundred grams, the S5.1 feels rather impressive and what contributes to the same is that there is no plastic on the exterior surfaces of the phone. So, with only metal and glass surfaces visible, it looks and feels quite premium compared to any of its competitors. In fact, in its white and gold coloured version, the phone has a striking resemblance to the iPhone 6.
Fitted with a 5-inch HD display (720x1080p), the screen of the S5.1 is quite impressive, even though it is a bit saturated, but thankfully is not oversaturated to the eextent that it looks garish. In fact, the saturation means that the visuals of the screen are quite impressive, making it a pretty good device to watch videos, and is quite possibly the best screen offered on a phone priced under the twenty thousand rupee mark.
Hardware wise, the S5.1 comes fitted with a 1.7GHz Octa-core processor and 16GB of in-built storage along with 1GB of ram. And here is where a couple of weaker aspects of phone appear. The limited ram means that if there are too any apps open at the same time, the phone tends to slow down and become laggy, which is also because while the S5.1 runs Kitkat 4.4, the custom Amigo 2.0 skin that it runs has a lot of bloatware installed by default and slows the phone down. So, if you get the S5.1, our advice would be to get rid of the bloatware as quickly as possible as that makes the phone much faster and convenient to use. The other issue is the limited storage space, which unfortunately is non-expandable as there is no SD card slot.
However, the 8MP rear camera of the S5.1 works fairly well and produces decent pictures, but is not so effective in low-light conditions, while the 5MP front camera is pretty good for taking selfies. A big advantage of the S5.1 though is the 2,050mAh battery which gives it quite impressive battery backup. It is easy to get more than a full day’s usage on a single charge and if used moderately, it can last even longer than that.
So, despite a few shortcoming with the custom skin and limited RAM, the S5.1 performs quite well in day-to-day use. And it does have the advantages of good build quality, nice screen and impressive battery life. We think it is one of the nicer phones available in the market at the under twenty thousand rupee price point.
