I recently managed to get my hands on a Gionee Pioneer P4, a rather entry-midrange offering from the international brand. It’s a bit refreshing considering many of the phones I’ve been handling as of late have had at least 5 inch screens. I’ll be using it as my main phone in the days to come, but in the meantime, check out my first impressions after taking the Gionee P4 out of the box.
Screen, Build Quality and Design
The Gionee P4 is refreshingly pocketable with its 4.5 inch screen. The body is quite solid and even though the back is removable, there’s hardly any discernible creaking when you press down on the sides. The design couldn’t be less generic though, but at least the matte finish isn’t that much of a fingerprint magnet.
You get a fairly standard layout from the front of the device. There’s the earpiece above the screen along with the front camera to the left, as well as the proximity and light sensors to the right. There’s a three button layout for the capacitive navigation buttons that run a long the bottom of the screen. And if you look really closely, you’ll also find the microphone pinhole at the edge.
On the left of the P4, there aren’t any hardware buttons or other features, but on the right, you’ll find the power/lock button and volume rocker. This will probably make taking screenshots a little tricky.
The 3.5mm headset jack is the lone hardware feature at the top.
At the bottom is the micro USB port for charging the device or transferring files.
On the back is the 5mp autofocus camera with LED flash. There’s also the Gionee branding toward the bottom with the loudspeaker right below it.
Benchmarks
While benchmark scores aren’t the best at depicting real-world performance, they’re still pretty useful for getting a good idea of a device’s capabilities, especially when comparing them to other handsets. I ran my favorite benchmarking apps to see how well the Gionee Pioneer P4 performs. Check the results out below.
The benchmark scores are certainly very promising. You’re getting close to the same performance as the Samsung Galaxy S3 for a fraction of the price of even a secondhand unit. But what’s especially promising is the Gionee P4’s potential gaming performance. It scored a whopping 60.9fps in Nenamark 2!
First Impressions
The Gionee P4 is far from a head-turner, but despite it’s entry-level pricing at Php6,999, it promises to be a very capable handset. It should even breeze through the most graphically-intensive games thanks to its comparatively powerful chipset and a screen that won’t task the GPU that much. Still, it’s best to put the Gionee P4 to the test before assuming anything, which is exactly what I’ll be doing before posting a full review in the next few days 🙂
Gionee P4 Specs
- 4.5″ FWVGA TFT display (480 x 854 resolution, 218ppi)
- 1.3GHz quad core MediaTek MT6582 processor
- Mali 400 GPU
- Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean
- 1GB RAM
- 8GB ROM
- 5mp rear-facing autofocus camera with LED flash
- 2mp front camera
- 3.75G/HSPA+
- WiFi b/g/n
- Bluetooth 4.0
- GPS with A-GPS
- Dual SIM/dual standby
- 1,800mAH battery
- Price: Php6,999
at that price, nobody will consider it.
i dunno. true, the screen is a little too low reso, but you’re getting the mt6582 cpu, 1gb ram, 8gb storage for the price.
i don’t know about that….the mt6582 is supposedly a low-cost quad. With the slew of bigger quad’s out there, I don’t see any reason why smart buyers will go for this. I mean right now, there’s the Rio, Spectrum and new budget quad’s from O+, Starmobile. Throw in tablets like the Engage 8 Quad+ and CM Navigator, and the market really gets very slim for this product. Really, I think the issue here is how Gionee priced it. IMHO, why place a product in a level where it has very little chance of success.
its because it’s gionee. gionee has a reputation in their products because they are an international brand.