Gionee has had a great success in India in the first year of its launch and brought in some great devices like the Elife E7, Elife S5.5, S5.1 and more. Not only in the premium segment, Gionee also commands a good share in the budget category in the Pioneer and Marathon series. We recently reviewed the Marathon M3 and now we have the brand new budget smartphone, the Pioneer P6.
The phone comes with a 5 inch FWVGA display and is powered by 1.3Ghz Quad core processor with 1GB RAM. There is 8GB internal storage available which is expandable via micro SD card. On the imaging front, the device sports a 5MP rear camera with flash and a front 2MP camera with LED flash. The device runs Android 4.4 KitKat and here is the unboxing and the first impressions on the device.
Related Reading: Gionee Pioneer P6 Unboxing
Design and Build:
While the design of Gionee Pioneer P6 is typical of the budget smartphones, it does give pretty good feel when using. Gionee has made sure that the weight and thickness is kept to lower level and this makes the device comfortable to use. The device has curved edges all around and resembles a lot like the Huawei Honor Holly (Review). The device has an all round plastic body and there is a metallic strip around the edges to give a premium feel.
Although the plastic finishing is glossy, there is a brushed finishing over the rear panel which gives a good impression. The rear panel also has a curvy design which means holding the device is easy. The rear panel also houses the Gionee logo which has a projected look and also the 5MP rear camera. The rear camera has a metallic rim around it giving additional protection. The speaker is located at the bottom.
The power and volume keys are on the right side, while the 3.5mm jack is on the top and micro USB charging slot at the top. The front panel has the 5.0 display at FWVGA resolution, three capacitive buttons at the bottom and front facing 2MP camera along with flash. Overall, the Gionee Pioneer P6 has decent design and build quality.
Display:
The phone has a 5.0 inch FWVGA display (854 X480 pixels) and this is one of the biggest disappointments with the device. While most of the phones in the budget or less than Rs 10000 category have moved to HD displays (or even qHD), Gionee Pioneer P6 with FWVGA display misses out. On the 5 inch display, the pixelations are very much evident and the quality is way too low. The touch response is pretty good on the device. The brightness levels of the display is good and so the sunlight readability is pretty decent.
The display is also a fingerprint magnet, so might need to clean it frequently.
Software and Performance:
Gionee Pioneer P6 runs Android KitKat 4.4 out of the box and has the custom Amigo UI on top of it. While the UI has a completely different look when compared to Amigo UI on Gionee’s premium brand and it comes with an app launcher. When we reviewed the Gionee Marathon M3, we mentioned that Amigo UI was laggy and was not optimized. With Pioneer P6, Gionee has done some work in optimizing the UI.
Similar to other Gionee phone, the phone also comes with themes and effects to customize the desktop.
But the major problem with the device is the amount of bloatware it ships with. There are tons of unnecessary apps and games which are included (most of them in trial version) and this takes up a lot of storage as well. We are not really sure why Gionee still sticks with pre-loading software. The notification center is more or less like other Gionee phones with KitKat.
Since the phone has a app launcher, there are couple of useful options like hiding applications and also there is support for gestures. But sadly there is only one gesture supported on the device. The phone is powered by a 1.3Ghz Quad core processor with 1GB RAM and the performance of the device was fairly good. We didn’t notice any considerable lag or issues with general usage.
The phone comes with 8GB internal storage and comes with lots of apps and games bundled which takes up a lot of memory.
One of the biggest issues with the device is the gaming performance. With a low resolution display, a lot of high end games like Asphalt 8 Airborne were unplayable. At the same time, low end games like Subway Surfers and Temple run works, but again the display resolution was way too low. Related Watching: Gionee Pioneer P6 Gaming Review
The call quality on the phone was pretty good and the speakers were really great. The phone does not supports USB OTG out of the box which is kind of surprising when most of the Gionee phones have USB OTG support.
Camera:
Gionee Pioneer P6 comes with a 5MP rear camera with LED flash and a 2MP front facing camera with LED flash. The camera has a similar interface like the Gionee Elife E7 and E7 Mini. There are options like Face beauty, Panorama(Horizontal & Vertical), Eraser, Face detection, Geo-tagging, Touch focus, 99 snaps in one click, Gesture Shot, Smile Shot.
While the competition offers 8MP and 13MP in this price category, Gionee is offering only 5MP on the Pioneer P6. But having said that the camera performs pretty decent in daylight conditions with good color reproduction. But the sharpness levels are way too low for the photos. The phone can record videos in 1080p and again the quality is nothing much to write about.
Overall, we would have ideally liked an 8MP shooter in this price point. Here are some of the camera samples from the phone.
Battery Life:
The phone ships with a 1950mAh battery and the capacity is decent for a budget smartphone. The battery performance of the device was also pretty good on average usage and you could get day long battery life with the device. Since the display resolution is low, the battery usage by 5.0 inch display is pretty low. You can also limit the CPU performance and get more battery life.
Verdict:
Priced at around Rs 8500, the Gionee Pioneer P6 misses out with the competition on multiple aspects including a low resolution display and low camera. The phone has decent design and good build quality with decent performance. If you are looking for a phone in less than 10k pricing, then we also suggest you to check out Redmi Note, Yu Yureka and also the Lava Iris X8 which offer better specs.
Gionee Pioneer P6 is a useless phone. The battery can’t hold charge for couple of hours. Sent for servicing and came back with same screwed up battery. The Mobile store in Mani Square Mall, Kolkata is also not helpful in changing the set though they suggested Gioneee over Samsung. Wasted 10,000 rupees. Should have bought Samsung.