Gionee S Plus Hands-on, First Impressions

Gionee is back in the game here in the Philippines and along with its new distributor comes fresh Android smartphones for the local market. One of them is the Gionee S Plus, an AMOLED-touting handset with 3GB of RAM and octa-core chipset. It’s also one of the few to have a USB Type-C port.

The Gionee S Plus sports a fairly large 5.5-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. That’s about the standard pixel count for most handsets in this range but at 5.5 inches, it’s a bit stretched resulting to a so-so pixel density of 267ppi. As expected from AMOLED panels, the contrast ratio is virtually infinite and the colors are vibrant.

The construction of the handset is pretty basic with its polycarbonate shell but it feels solid on hand. Up front are the display, front camera, earpiece, sensors, and unlit capacitive keys. The Gorilla Glass 3 doesn’t occupy the whole front as it is flanked by strips of matte plastic. The volume keys and power/lock button are positioned on the right leaving the left side blank. On top is the 3.5mm jack while at the bottom are the reversible Type-C port and the microphone.

Flip it over and you’ll be greeted by a glossy back panel. I’m personally not a fan of these types of covers as they are a magnet of fingerprints and grease marks. Here we have the primary 13-megapixel camera together with its LED flash. There’s also a shiny Gionee logo plus the loudspeaker grille.

The first few hours of usage with S Plus is fluid and hiccup-free. So far, there are no performance issues with UI navigation, web browsing and it was able to handle simultaneous Play Store updates with a breeze thanks to the 3GB of RAM. Running the show here is Amigo OS 3.0, which is Gionee’s own skin over Android 5.1 Lollipop. It’s one of the skins that take away the app tray, making the device’s UI look like iOS, but with home screen widgets.

A quick Antutu Benchmark 6.0 assessment gives the S Plus a score of 37,653.

Gionee S Plus specifications:
5.5-inch AMOLED display (1280 x 720 pixels), 267ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 3
1.3GHz MediaTek MT6753 octa-core processor
Mali-T720 MP3 GPU
3GB RAM
16GB internal storage
Expandable via microSD, up to 128GB
13-megapixel autofocus rear camera w/ LED flash
5-megapixel front-facing camera
Dual SIM / Dual Standby
4G LTE Cat4
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
GPS w/ A-GPS
FM Radio
USB Type-C
3150mAh Li-Ion battery
Android 5.1 Lollipop (Amigo OS 3.1)
155 x 76.4 x 7.5mm
158g

We will be taking the Gionee S Plus for a spin, so be sure to watch out for our review. It will be available in the local market for Php9,999. There’s an included soft case and screen protector in the package, giving you a headstart to keep the S Plus free from unwanted marks.