User Review Gionee L800 : The Anti Smartphone review

Kindly ignore the floral pink bedsheet

15/10/15: 2 pm

The feeling is amazing. I am in New Delhi. I am atleast 1800 km's away from my hometown .
My phone has just shown a "Low battery" alert. Yet I have this crazy smile plastered on my face. I did not even bring a charger to Delhi. It has been 10 days since I have charged my phone.

10 days away from the wall outlet. It is funny warm fuzzy feeling.

Away from all the lightening cables I have bought and discarded. Away from ugly fat lemon battery cases. Away from franco who promises to make my phone faster yet battery friendly. Away from Battery stats and SOT screenshots.
And the phone is not dead yet. It finally gasps and gives up around 5 pm in the evening. Cutting me off as I sit in a convention hall . Yet the last 10 days have somehow eased the pangs of tech withdrawal.

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4/10/2015

I had just sold of my 2 year old iphone 5c to a buyer with cash in his pockets,a certain Walter Isaacson book on his desk and golden bitten off apples in his eyes for a very decent sum.But I have to leave for the capital the next morning . So on the way back I visit a local shop. Gionee L800 recommended by shopkeeper is bought and paid for in 5 minutes. On the way back I also visit an Airtel shop. Hurray! No more easy to loose nano sims!

In the Box:

- Phone
- 3000 Mah battery
- USB Cable plus charger adapter
- cheap looking case
- earphones/mic

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Accepts mini Sim (standard sized SIM)
Supports G, E . No 3G , No Wifi

Cost paid: Rs 2200/- B/M shop
.

While It will not stay like this forever and eventually I will have to buy a smartphone (mostly a dual sim android), I did get a Gionee L800 as a backup phone.


Getting Physical

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It is fairly tall, thick yet narrow phone which feels oddly very nice to hold and talk to. (Don't get any wrong ideas here).
It has a decent sized QVGA screen upfront, which is visible in daylight.
I got a black one (Again, hold the wolf whistles ;) ) , But I hear a lighter color is also available.
Charges via micro USB which is cool because there are some budget phones floating around that charge via mini USB which is irritating.
Also has a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the right place at the top along with a flashlight.


They keypad and DPad are good, clicky and respond well. There is no touch screen here and the phone is better for the lack of it. Holding the 0 key activates a rather weak flashlight.

User Interface

Sorry guys, no screenshots in this UI review. ;)

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- It is one of the latter generation chinese feature phones. It has a grid based user interface with decent animations(which cannot be tuned off).
- UI is very fast and responsive.
- Supports java apps, although it does come with opera mini preinstalled which works very fine if you have to look up something super urgent.

-Internal memory is very low,It is in Kilobytes.
There is no contacts sync support in the traditional way, What you can do is put all your Vcard files on the micro SD and then import it from there into your phonebook. I was pretty surprised that this feature was supported.it did take me 10 minutes but I soon had all my contacts on the dumb phone.
- It has preinstalled apps for facebook which I did not try as I don't have an account.

- Bluetooth works nicely and paired easily with my car stereo. Unfortunately It asks my permission to connect everytime I sit in my car. Iphones/Androids used do this automatically

- Alert! no whatsapp.

- has a decent alarm clock with 5 slots

- has a semi decent profile system a-la Nokia of yesteryears



Network,call quality and other basics

No reception issues. Call quality is fine volume wise but the quality itself of the earpiece is a bit metallic. If I had an equalizer option I would have increased the treble and decreased the base.
Speakerphone in true Shenzen style is exceptionally good.

Battery life is the killer feature. I make around an hour of calls everyday , keep two sims active and it easily lasts me a week, sometimes more. Bluetooth is always on. I do expect the battery life to improve after a few more charge discharge cycles.
I have had the phone for a month and I have charged it only 3-4 times, so yes it might improve further.

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Dual sim dual standby phone. I dont exactly know what happens when I am talking on one SIM and a call comes on second. I dont have as many admirers as such.
But you have the option to switch off your work sim when you come back after a long hard day at work., and yet keep the other one active.

If you have any other specific questions please feel free to ask.

regards,
aka.

some other useful features

- It has a sound recorder. It can also record phone calls .Without beeps.
- It has a FM tuner
- It has an ancient MP3 player and a camera out of a 2004 phone.

just discovered the following

- Like some other phones, this phone has a feature where it can charge other gadgets while using a usb on the go cable. That is pretty ordinary stuff.
But what if you have a wifi only Ipad which you want to take online on the go.?
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Mind you , you need one of those newer wingle devices from huawei which are pretty cheap, and not all combinations of dongle,cable and phone are not guaranteed to work with each other.


Pro's

- Great battery life
- charges pretty fast(I use a Nexus 7 adapter)
- good reception and calls
- great speakerphone
- Gionee service centres atleast in our area are a cut above Xiaomi/Lenevo/MMX/Spice

Cons

- Typing Lag while typing sms(you will eventually give up)
- No contacts sync(see the review for a work around)
- pathetic internal storage( a basic microSD can be inserted to use features like call recorder)

Gionee is doing some great things. Although It is not covered much by the western press in general, and thus is not hyped as much as others like one plus.
When the hottest chinese phone manufacturer is taking design cues from your phones, you know you are gold.
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/techno...-strikingly-thin-steeply-priced/1/433698.html

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loved the review haha
how quick is the messaging option? registration of the keys? basic phones nowadays (the early Nokia B&W phones didnt have such an issue :D) are slow for typing (for someone like me) but if it can take 7-8 140 of 140 characters at a stretch without lagging or slowing down its awesome. my mom also uses a lemon basic phone with a huge battery backup which lasts for days and she also makes long calls frequently but the phone has that slow typing issue. not sure if this is a common feature on all basic chinese phones :/
 
@iPwnz
Yes the typing lag is still present as I think most of these phones are base on the same mediatek solution. Typing Twitter messages will be a futile exercise on it I guess
While I don't do much messaging,the lag rears its ugly head when you enter and try to search contacts,
But there is a silver lining. The Dialer supports contacts search (both for stored names and phone numbers) and unlike the alphabetical keyboard, the Dialer search is pretty fast. The search includes both first name and the last name.
Works pretty similar to how the android L Dialer behaves.

Also you have a "favourite contacts" widget in which I have placed my contacts to mitigate the issues.
Unfortunately the widgets cannot be disabled.
 
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I have gifted this mobile to my Mom last year. Working flawlessly since then. Battery will last for 10 to 15 days minimum based on her usage.
 
Thanks for the review. I have a friend who has this phone as a backup phone which has oodles of battery life which he says last for over a week easily. Looking at this review, I'd like to believe that might just be the case. I'd like to know how bad the lag is for typing SMS. Does it only happen because one is a really fast typer, or is the phone just that slow?
 
Very good review, the laggy interface is a let down, more so when you're accompanying it with a high end Smartphone. I recently downgraded to a dumb phone for my calling and SMS needs.

I am using Samsung Metro 360 which is very excellent second phone, it doesn't have any major lag issues like Chinese phones, Excellent call reception and voice quality also the UI is much refined, fast & intuitive.
Battery lasts upto 72hrs charges pretty fast as it's 1000mah.
If you want a lag free dumb phone with intuitive UI for calling and messaging needs; it's best alternative to Nokia 225 etc.
 
No the typing is very slow.
Mind you the UI itself that is the phone OS works nice and fast.
But the phone struggles to catch up with you when you start typing.
With time you get adjusted

And yes Samsung phones (feature phones) are speed demons by comparison
 
The lagging becomes more pronounced with the accompanying high end Smartphone, if you switch between two phones several times a day it becomes irritating.
That's why I'd recommend Samsung feature phone instead of others because they're pretty fast ; battery life is good at max 3 days.
 
HELP!
I purchased this phone yesterday n while I was going through this I saw that there was no way to lock my keypad with a password. I really don't wish someone to go through my phone. Is there any way or an app to lock my keypad with a password?
It's a kind request seeking help.
Thank you!
 
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