Review: Gionee Marathon M4

Gionee Marathon M4

Most smartphones last just a day on a single charge. No matter how affordable or expensive the phone, users always end up looking for better battery life. Manufacturers, in turn, have tried to pack in big batteries and apps that control battery use, but these don’t always yield the desired result.

Gionee’s Marathon M4 (Rs.15,499) packs in a mammoth 5,000 mAh battery. But is it really better than the big battery phones we have seen earlier?

Thick and bulky

It’s thick and bulky yet looks good. The matte finish and the curved back feel very comfortable in the hand.

The Marathon M4 has been designed well. It tips the scales at 176g, which puts it in the “heavy” category. Despite being 10.2mm thick, the phone is easy to hold. The removable back panel comes in white and black colour options.

While there is nothing eye-catching about it except its size, it is not a bad device to look at. The only other big battery phone that we found even remotely appealing to look at is the much more expensive Motorola Moto Turbo (Rs.41,999), which comes with a 3,900 mAh battery.

The latest Android

The phone runs on Android 5.0 with Gionee’s custom UI Amigo 3.0, which offers plenty of themes and a game store.

The phone runs on Android 5.0 (Lollipop) with Gionee’s Amigo 3.0 user interface. While the colourful icons and customizations are value additions, the interface feels a bit difficult to get around initially. It seems to take up a lot of RAM, just like Xiaomi’s MIUI interface.

There are gesture controls such as a double tap to switch on the display, or moving the hand over the screen to change images in the gallery. There is an app called Chameleon that lets you take a picture of any surface and transforms it right away into lively wallpaper. It also has Amigo Paper, which carries hundreds of theme-based wallpapers, based on movies, people, cars and animals. The Game Zone has downloadable games which are rather basic, but free.

Natural and impressive display

While the rivals offer sharper display, no one can deny that M4’s display handles colours very well.

The phone comes with a 5-inch 1,280x720-pixel AMOLED display. It scores well in readability and media-viewing tests. The viewing angles are good. The colours look natural and realistic, though not always look rich. It is not a very bright display, which affects readability in direct sunlight.

Surprisingly smooth and efficient

The Marathon M4 runs the new MediaTek MT6735 quad-core processor, clocking at 1.3 GHz, and is paired with 2 GB RAM. Interestingly, the performance didn’t give us any reason to grumble, handling everything that we threw at it quite smoothly. We did notice a slight delay while switching from one app to another, but that is more to do with the Amigo UI’s resource-intensive nature, something that can be solved by a simple software update if Gionee tries. The phone handled games like Real Racing 3 without any hiccups and back-panel heating.

An average camera

It can take good shots in daylight but you need really steady hands or the results will be blurry.

The phone comes with an 8-megapixel camera. It is an average camera that works well in bright light. If the lighting is good, it captures details and colours brilliantly. But the lack of image stabilization means that even the slightest movement can result in out-of-focus images. The other major downside is that adjusting the focus requires multiple taps on the screen. The front camera is good for sharing selfies on social networking platforms.

Battery that lasts

Marathon M4’s main highlight is the big 5,000mAh battery that is fixed with the back panel.

The phone’s 5,000 mAh battery, the main attraction, won’t let you down. It lasts just over two days on a single charge. If you are one of those demanding users who watch movies and play games for 2-3 hours every day on their phone, you probably will not have to carry a power bank and charging cable with you.

Verdict

As far as big battery phones are concerned, the Marathon M4 is a reliable performer. And it delivers on the battery. At this price, some users may opt for the Xiaomi Mi4 (Rs.14,999), which offers a sharper display and a better camera. But, remember, that battery won’t last as long.

Abhijit Ahaskar

Topics: Gionee Marathon M4Gionee Marathon M4 reviewSmartphoneAndroid 5.0 LollipopXiaomi Mi4

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