Chinese smartphone maker Gionee's Marathon M5 is literally a force to recon with when it comes to mid-ranged mobile phones. It might cost more than its competition like the Lenovo Vibe S1 and Micromax Canvas 5, but does provide the extra value for money.
First glance
Speaking purely about the looks, Gionee Marathon M5 does not seem very impressive. It comes across as bulky to carry and feels so in the hands. It is more in the category of a phablet with the 5.5-inch gorilla glass screen. The phone weighs like a brick at 211 grams with the massive 6,020 mAh battery. But, coming to think of it, most of us end up carrying a power bank with our smartphone. Combine the two and you would end up getting a total weight of around what the Gionee Marathon M5 weighs, if not more.
Marathon M5 has nothing special about the AMOLED display with its 720 x 1280 pixels (267 ppi) resolution, which is not what a phone in its price range would have. But, the 13MP rear camera produces a decent depth in the photos which is courtesy of the f/2 focal length of the lens. On the other side the 5MP selfie camera is just average. Geo-tagging, touch focus, face/smile detection, panorama, HDR are the other features of the camera and it shoots a 1080p 30fps video. Low light is not ideal for taking photos with the cameras on the Gionee Marathon M5.
Hardware and performance
Gionee Marathon M5 runs Android Lollipop 5.1, which is customized to have all the apps on the home screen. This smartphone lacks an app drawer and comes with a lot of bloatware like demo games and apps, which hog a lot of storage. Nevertheless, these are removable so you can clean them up for good if you want to.
Moving on the firepower, Gionee's Marathon M5 is powered by a Quad-core 1.3 GHz processor that is supported by 3 GB RAM, which is rare in this category. This is another aspect of the phone that makes it a heavyweight, because this combo makes the phone lag free. This is evident from the smooth transition of screens on the home. It also performs well beyond that. The Gionee Marathon M5 does not break a sweat when running power hungry games like Injustice: Gods Among Us and Mortal Kombat X. We loved every bit of the experience and were amazed to see the battery not draining as quickly as seen on some of its competition.
Like its competitors it does not engage all four cores at the same time. The next four cores wake up when a heavy game or app is being played. It has an internal memory of 32 GB, which is enough to install big games and store abundant photos or videos. Marathon M5 supports a microSD of upto 128 GB that is more or at par with any of its competitors.
The non-removable battery of Gionee Marathon M5 performs marvellously, which lasts for a fabulous 3 days with extensive use. Moving on to the sound quality, this machine lacks a bit. The loudspeaker is loud, but the smartphone was unable to deliver good bass and treble.
The Marathon M5 by Gionee supports 2G, 3G as well as 4G connections and has FM radio as well. It supports the 'smart awake' feature, which basically means that on drawing a pattern of the unlit screen the users can directly turn on the corresponding app, without pressing the power button.
Verdict
Gionee Marathon M5 is a definite heavyweight of a phone under the sub Rs 20,000 category, but lacks in the categories of camera, sound and design. Yet it outperforms others thanks to its superb battery life, processing power and storage capacity. It is a justified buy for the pricetag of Rs 17,999.
