After launching the Gionee X1s selfie-centric smartphone in India last month, Chinese smartphone manufacturer Gionee on Tuesday expanded its product portfolio with the launch of an another selfie-focused smartphone, christened as “Gionee X1s” in the Indian tech market. Carried a price tag of Rs. 12,999, the new Gionee X1s will be made available for purchase in India starting September 21 (Thursday) via all leading offline retail stores across the country in Gold and Black colour options. Besides this, the Shenzhen-based company also announced its partnership with Bharti Airtel to offer Airtel subscribers an additional 10GB additional data per month for 6 months (up to 6 recharges) on any data recharge of 1GB. Additionally, Gionee has also partnered with Paytm to offer customers two Paytm cashback vouchers worth Rs. 250 each on the purchase of the Gionee X1s smartphone. Each voucher will ensure Rs 250 cashback into the customer’s Paytm wallet on a minimum shopping of Rs 350 via the Paytm Mall app.
In terms of design, the Gionee X1s comes with a metal unibody design with metal edges, meaning that the device sports a relatively premium build quality. The new smartphone also features a trio of capacitive navigation touch buttons for back, Home screen and multitasking. The device also features a rear-mounted fingerprint recognition button for biometric security, that is housed in the middle of the back panel of the handset. The volume up-down keys and the power/lock buttons are all placed on the right-hand edge of the smartphone, while a 3.5mm audio socket is placed on the very top edge of the smartphone. The speaker grill is seen at the rear end, while a micro USB charging port is placed on the very bottom edge of the smartphone. The rear panel houses a 13MP rear camera setup with a LED flash module, a fingerprint recognition button and the speaker grills (at the rear end), while the top front panel features a 16MP selfie camera with selfie flash, sensors and an earpiece.
In terms of specifications, the Gionee X1s comes equipped with a 5.2-inch HD IPS display with a screen resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels and a scratch resistance 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection on top of the display. Under the hood, the smartphone is powered by a 1.5GHz MediaTek MT6737T quad-core processor clubbed with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of native storage, which can be further expanded up to 256GB via a dedicated microSD card slot. Talking about its software front, the Gionee X1s runs company’s proprietary Amigo 4.0 custom UI skin, based on Google’s Android 7.0 Nougat operating system. As we mentioned the smartphone also features a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, which unlocks the device just within 0.3 seconds.
For photography enthusiasts, the new Gionee X1s features a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus, an f/2.0 aperture and an LED flash module. On the front, the handset houses a 16-megapixel front-facing shooter with a selfie flash for capturing bright selfies even in low light conditions. The selfie camera also supports features like Beautified Video and Face Beauty 2.0 to enhance the images. The X1s combines IR remote and flash together to help control the home appliances.
In terms of connectivity, the dual-SIM Gionee X1s offers various connectivity options that include 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 (b/g/n), hotspot, Bluetooth, GPS/A-GPS, FM Radio, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a microUSB 2.0 port for charging and other connectivity. On the battery front, the Gionee X1s comes packed with a denser 4,000mAh non-removable battery. Sensors on the smartphone include an Accelerometer, Ambient light sensor, Proximity sensor, Fingerprint (rear-mounted) sensor and Gyroscope sensor. Dimensionally, the handset measures at 150.4 x 73.5 x 8.8 mm and weighs 166 grams.
