Gionee was once one of the top Indian smartphone best sellers, however, it has been losing its share of the market in the past few years due to the proliferation of bigger and better brands. Gionee was one of the first Chinese brands that bet on the Indian market. The brand was put on hold for some years but returned last year with new smartphones in India and China. The company focuses on the low-end market and is trying to catch customers by offering cheap devices with durable batteries. This week they’ll release a new smartphone in China, the Gionee M3. The device has an old MediaTek chip but offers a huge 5,000mAh battery, up to 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of Storage.
The Gionee M3 comes with a 6.53-inch panel with HD+ resolution and a waterdrop notch and an 8MP selfie snapper. Powered by a MediaTek Helio P60 chipset. It has 4 ARM Cortex-A73 cores clocked at up to 2.0GHz plus four ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at up to 2.0GHz.
The phone comes with either 6GB or 8GB of RAM. The storage is between 128GB and 256GB of storage. The latter is only available with an 8GB RAM model. Although the chipset is modest, the RAM and Storage amount is amazing for a budget smartphone.
In the back, we have an Octagon from camera model and comprises four shooters. The main camera is a 16MP primary camera, the secondary module is a 5MP ultrawide snapper. We also have two additional 2MP modules probably for macro and depth sensing. The phone draws power from a 5,000mAh battery that offers support for 18W fast-charging. The dimensions are 163.2mm x 75.9 mm x 9.3 mm. The device weighs in at 201 grams. The phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack, USB-C port, and microSD card support.
PRICING AND AVAILABILITY
The Gionee M3 is available in Black, Green, Sky, and Gray colorways. The pricing starts at CNY 899 ($137) for the model with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of Internal Storage. The intermediary model has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage and sells for CNY 959 (~$147). The “high-tier” option comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and will set you back by CNY 1,059 (~$162). There’s no official word from Gionee if the M3 will reach other markets. However, we may still see it coming to India later this year.
