Gionee Smartphones is the global leader in mobile manufacturing and design. It announced the launch of its latest addition to it Marathon portfolio of devices. The Marathon series is known for possessing unusual battery capacities and the Marathon M5 Lite is the lighter version of the earlier released Marathon M5. It is powered by a huge 4000 mAh Li- Po battery, the M5 Lite has a standby time 450 hr or a 32.7 hour of talk time and it comes at a price of INR 12,999.
Gionee Marathon M5 Lite Specifications
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Gionee Marathon M5 Lite Unboxing
Gionee has used a basic looking white box to pack the Marathon M5 Lite. The top has got no graphics, only the device name and Gionee branding is seen. The sides have the photos of the device. At bottom, you will find the device specifications, highlights and other handset details.
Opening the box, you will find the handset packed inside a poly cover on the top. Right below the handset is the kit that contains user manual and SIM ejection tool. Rest of the box components are placed at the bottom.
Gionee Marathon M5 Lite Box Contents
The contents found inside the Marathon M5 Lite box are: –
- Marathon M5 Lite Smartphone
- USB 2.0 Cable
- Pair of headset
- Quick start guide
- Travel adaptor
- Protective Cover
- Screen guard
- SIM ejector tool
Physical Overview
The Gionee Marathon M5 Lite comes packed in a plastic body which feels really solid due to the weight of the battery. It has a candy bar form factor with 5 inch display, 8.5 mm thickness and 182 kg of weight. These dimensions make it easy to hold and use with one hand. It has a metallic finish at the back and sides, buttons are also made of plastic but feel pretty durable.
The front has the 5inch IPS display with black borders and thin sides. You will find the speaker mesh on the top with the front camera and proximity and ambient light sensors on each side. The navigation buttons are on the chin of the phone and they are not backlit.
The volume rocker and lock/power keys are on the top of the right side.
3.5 m audio jack is located on the top.
At the bottom, there is a micro USB port and the speaker dedicated mic.
The camera is at the top left corner with a single LED flash.
The speaker grill is at the bottom.
Gionee Marathon M5 Lite Photo Gallery
User Interface
On the software front, the Marathon M5 Lite runs the Amigo 3.1 user interface which is a heavily skinned version of Android Lollipop 5.1. It is a single which means the apps are spread out across multiple home screens, which looks messy. Gionee installs a lot of bloatware including few utility apps and games, but the good part is that you can remove these apps if you don’t like them. The notifications panel only gives you notifications while the rest of the shortcuts and toggle switches are placed in the control center which can be accessed with a swipe up from the bottom.
There are a lot more tweaks in the UI, we will be posting a complete tips and tricks of the Amigo UI very soon.
Gaming Performance
The Gionee Marathon M5 Lite is a stunner when it comes to gaming. We did not expect such gaming capabilities from a device with such an affordable price tag. It is powered by an Quad-Core MediaTek MT6735 clocked at 1.3 GHz, has 3GB of RAM. For better graphic performance it has the Mali-T720MP2 GPU.
We installed Modern Combat 5 and Dead Trigger 2 on this device. Surprisingly, the phone handles demanding games pretty well, and we barely had any lag or drops in frame rate while playing Dead Trigger 2. Modern Combat 5 was running smoothly in the beginning but while the game proceeded, we noticed some glitches in between busy graphics. The gaming experience was good on this device, considering the hardware and price.
Note: – The gaming tests were done under an atmospheric temperature of 19 degree Celsius.
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Marathon M5 Lite comes with a hefty battery that does get warm while charging, but as far as gaming is concerned, we did not face any unusual heating during our gaming tests. The max temperature that we noticed was 38 degree Celsius after 20 minutes of continuous gameplay.
Marathon M5 Lite Performance and Benchmark Scores
General interface and app performance of the device is good, basic tasks like browsing, chatting or watching videos is done smoothly. We did not encounter any noticeable slutter during our testing, switching between apps, opening of apps and swiping through screens was smooth.
The benchmark scores of the Gionee Marathon M5 Lite are:
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Verdict
The Gionee Marathon M5 Lite competes with the Lenovo Vibe P1m nd Asus Zenfone Max. It has a decent set of specs on paper but the perofmrance in real life is really smooth. Gaming on this device is satisfactory, games like Nova 3 may not feel like fluid but light weight games are easily playable. The looks and build quality is just like its elder sibling the Marathon M5 but this one is easier to use due to the small screen. At INR 12,999, it is a good choice for buyers.
