Gionee Pioneer P4 Review: It’s an affordable gaming device!

I’ve been using this phone for days and I’m very impress with it. The Gionee Pioneer P4 sports a midrange specifications and a simple design but I’m very impress with its performance and simplistic but easy to understand UI. You know what, just read on and check out what I think of the Gionee Pioneer P4.

If you’ve checked out my first impressions of the phone, yes, the Gionee Pioneer P4 is very solid despite having a plastic construction . The build and design quality of the phone is one of the things that you would like in this phone. The Gionee Pioneer P4 just fits right in our hand and the buttons were well placed. The weight and the dimensions of the phone feels just right too.

The Gionee Pioneer P4 has a 4.5″ FWVGA display. Again, the display size feels just right for me. If you’re looking for a phablet, probably you won’t be getting this one but for me, 4.5″ is already enough for gaming and browsing the internet. The tall display might be just FWVGA but the outdoor visibility of this phone was good and of course, having a smaller resolution on the display means lesser power needed by the processor to render objects on games and applications.

Inside the Gionee Pioneer P4 is a MT6582 processor paired with 1 GB of RAM. That chipset is very common to affordable smartphones but what makes this phone different from most phones is the 8 GB internal storage of Gionee Pioneer P4. You can use around 4 GB of the 8GB internal storage of Gionee Pioneer P4. And yes folks, there’s a Dual Sim card slot on the Gionee Pioneer P4. If you are using a Micro Sim card then you might be happy using the Gionee Pioneer P4 because this phone supports both micro sim and mini sim.

The battery of the phone is rated at 1800mAh and thanks to the FWVGA display, it doesn’t need much power unlike HD displays. The Gionee Pioneer P4 was able to last up to a normal day of average gaming and browsing. Yes, it could last longer than half a day. You know what, Gionee Pioneer P4 lasted longer than I expected.  Oh and the audio quality, the Gionee Pioneer P4 is just fine. I’m not impress nor disappointed with its audio quality but I hope they could make it more louder.

The Gionee Pioneer P4 has an Amigo UI but unlike the Gionee Elife E7, this one has an app drawer and you could put widgets on the homescreen. I prefer this launcher over the Gionee Elife E7’s Amigo UI but I still feel the Elife E7’s launcher is much more cleaner and neat looking. Nonetheless, The Gionee Pioneer P4’s interface is still an eyecandy. Most of the features that are included in the Gionee Pioneer P4 are very useful like the Guest Mode and the Quick power saving mode. Another thing that I love in the Gionee Pioneer P4 is that the Amigo UI in it is very easy to grasp. If you’re a first time Android user, you’ll find the Gionee Pioneer P4’s interface user-friendly

With Guest mode, you’ll be able to hide call logs, messages, albums, and notes on your phone. You know, that would be very useful if someone wants to borrow your phone for a while and you don’t want to show some of your pictures or messages. It’s not a killer feature but it’s very nice to see this feature on a mid range phone.

The Gionee Pioneer P4 is powered by Android 4.2.2 which I think is just fine for me and I didn’t expect the Gionee Pioneer P4 would be powered by Android 4.4 Kitkat because it is just a mid-range smartphone. Gionee has tweaked most of its UI but that doesn’t sacrifice its performance and the Gionee Pioneer P4 is still fast and smooth. Another cool feature of the Gionee Pioneer P4 is the ability to change themes however, there are only a few themes that are available.

The Gionee Pioneer P4 is an affordable smartphone meant for gaming. I tried Antutu on this smartphone and the phone got a high score of 16959. That score is quite high for its specifications. There’s an MT6582 processor inside and a 1 GB of RAM and I’m impress with its performance. I’ve tried different games and to my surprise, all of them worked. I tried games like NBA2k14, Edge of Tomorrow and Dead Trigger 2

In NBA2k14, the graphics was good and playable as expected while in Dead Trigger 2, the game was smoother and I didn’t experience any slowdowns in this game. Despite having a 4.5″ display, It’s very fun to play an FPS game on the Gionee Pioneer P4 because of its taller display. I find it more convenient to play a game on a taller display because the buttons doesn’t block the first person view that much.

I was surprised that the Gionee Pioneer P4 was able to play Edge of Tomorrow. This game is not optimized to work on a MediaTek device and so far, only Gionee Pioneer P4 was able to play this game. The game was playable although the game wasn’t that smooth. But hey, this is the only MediaTek device I reviewed that was able to play this game.

The Gionee Pioneer P4 has a 5 megapixel rear camera with LED flash. The camera of Gionee was great too and I notice that the phone can shoot really fast and the colors produced was really great. And yes, the photos were sharp. However, at lowlight conditions, the images are a little bit grainy. Here are some sample shots.

The Gionee Pioneer P4 is one great phone. It’s not the best phone in the market but I would definitely get this smartphone if my budget is at P7,000. Why? I like the build quality of the phone, there’s an 8 GB of storage and the MT6582 processor with 1 GB of RAM is already enough for me.

The Gionee Pioneer P4 is now available for P6,999.

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