Gionee came to MWC 2016 to show off its brand new S8 smartphone alongwith a change in its branding. The new Logo with the tag line "Make Smiles" will now be used by Gionee globally.
Coming back to the Gionee S8, it is packing some serious hardware. You have a 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED display here with 3D Touch similar to the iPhone 6s and can understand the difference between a touch, tap and press. The screen-to-body ratio has been improved as well, at about 74.9% you can getting a far more compact device with that large display.
Under the hood is MediaTek's Helio P10 (MT6755) processor with 8-cores clocked at 1.95GHz. Graphics are handled by the Mali-T8860 MP2 GPU. You have 4GB RAM on the device with 64GB internal storage right out of the box, which can be further expanded with up to a 128GB microSD card. There are 2 SIM slots on the device and its the second hybrid Nano-SIM card slot, which can be used to expand storage. Gionee has given one neat addition here, you can use two WhatsApp accounts on this phone.
Now, for a change the Gionee S8 also comes with a home button, which as we all know doubles up as a fingerprint sensor. The company claims its one of the fastest sensors out there with a 0.1 second response time and recognition time of 0.38 seconds. Then there's the patented full-loop antenna design whch makes the hideous antenna bands invisible. All in all the full-metal smartphone from Gionee looks stunning.
But a smartphone these days is not complete without talking about its cameras. There is a 16MP rear camera with f/1.8 aperture to allow more light in, resulting in better low-light photography and wider dynamic range. You have both PDAF and Laser AutoFocus available here, but how good they work in conjunction with each other is something we would have to see for ourselves. Accompanying that is an 8MP front-facing shooter for selfies.
Pricing and Availability
The Gionee S8 will come in Grey, Gold and Rose Gold color options priced at 449 Euros (about $495 or Rs. 34,000) and will be available by the end of March 2016.
