Gionee Gpad G2 Full Review

Build Quality And Design

The phone is aesthetically pleasing and looks quite similar to the Micromax Canvas Doodle from the front. A massive 5.3-inch qHD display dominates the front of the device with three touch capacitive buttons underneath it. The phone, as expected, is made up entirely of plastic, with a chrome-like bezel running around the side of the device. There is a volume rocker on the right side which offers decent tactile feedback.

The back panel has a glossy finish, and we feel that it might be prone to scratches. Other than the camera, there is a speaker grill on the bottom right corner of the back panel, and the Gionee logo in the middle. Though one thing to note is that the G2 is quite heavy and prolonged usage might become uncomfortable for some.

Overall the build quality is impressive and the Gionee Gpad G2 has a nice solid feel to it.

Specifications And Hardware

The Gionee GPad G2 is powered by 1.2GHz quad-core processor along with PowerVR SGX544 GPU. Internally, the phablet packs in a 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, which can be expanded by another 32GB via a microSD card.

It is a dual-SIM phablet, which supports GSM on both the SIMs. The other connectivity options include 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and aGPS. 

The Gionee GPad G2 has an impressive 5.3 inch IPS display with qHD (540 x 960 pixel) resolution display which translates to 240ppi.

Display And Multimedia 

The screen of the Gionee Gpad G2 is really impressive, viewing angles are decent and colour reproduction is vivid and deep. A 240 pixel density makes for fairly crisp text as well. While there are no complaints with things like video playback, reading text and watching movies, outdoor visibility is poor due to the highly reflective screen. That is one are where Gionee could have done better.

Gaming is wonderful on this phone! We were able to play games like Virtual Tennis and Dead Trigger without any issues, but we did encounter some choppiness and lag while playing The Dark Knight Rises (expected!). 

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Audio on the Gione Gpad G2 is loud. Very loud. While that may seem like a good thing, and it is to an extent, it leads to vibration of the phone on high volumes. This can be very irritating, especially while playing games which involve lots of sound effects. 

The in-built browser is decent enough, with all the standard options available. There is a slight choppiness to its kinetic scrolling though. 

Software And User Interface

The Gionee Gpad G2 runs on Android 4.1.2 with slight modifications to the User Interface. You have a themes option from where you can select the skin that is applied, including an “Android Theme”. 

It has a few extra apps like Change, which enable single click change of themes and wallpapers.

Phone and Networks

The phone call capability of the Gionee Gpad G2 is good, networks are solid and Phone calls are stable. The dialler is the standard Android dialler, the one seen on Nexus devices.

Messaging is also a breeze thanks to the responsive touchscreen and the way keys are laid out. You can swap out the keyboard with some alternatives from the Android marketplace, we even tried swype and it works great.

Camera

The Gionee Gpad G2 comes with an 8 megapixel camera at the back with single LED flash with features like face detection, auto-focus etc.

Images though seem a little dull and grainy. Outdoor images come out really well, with nice focus and background blur in macro shots. Indoor and low light images are nothing special.  

Video quality was decent, with nice continuous focus and occasional over-exposure our only concern. 

Sample Shots : 

Performance

Under the hood, the Gionee Gpad G2 runs on 1.2GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6589 processor along with PowerVR SGX544 GPU. While there were occasional lags while navigating through menus, the overall performance was quite satisfying. 

One thing to note though that occasionally the screen went blank and a Blackberry style battery pull was required to make it work again. We hope that was just an issue with our device.

It scored an impressive 12,890 in AnTuTu and 3892 in Quadrant. 

Conclusion

While everyone is sceptical when it comes to the quality of Chinese manufacturers, we were really pleased with the Gionee Gpad G2. It is fast, snappy and feature loaded. An average camera and occasional lagging are the only disadvantages of the device.

Overall, we would recommend the Gionee Gpad G2 to anybody who wants a feature loaded budget phablet with a nice screen.