Gionee Pioneer P2S review – ultra slim dual core smartphone

The Gionee P2S is a smart looking handset with a ultra slim body. It is a dual SIM handset that comes powered by MediaTek dual core processor. This handset is available for a price of approx Rs. 6,500. This is definitely not a very good handset for the price, to know more, check the review.

Inside the Box: The box pack contains the Pioneer P2S handset, 2 screen guards, battery of 1600 mAh capacity, service centre list, warranty card, user guide, data cable, travel charger and earphone. SAR value: 0.67 W/kg @ 1G head and 0.70 W/kg @ 1g body.

OS, Design and, Display
The Gionee Pioneer P2S runs on Amigo User Interface (based on Android 4.2.2). The handset is slim with a 9.08mm thickness. It has got a curvy body and the back is with matte finish – soft to touch. Look wise the handset does give a premium feel.

The power button and the volume rockers are placed on the right, micro USB port is at the bottom and 3.5mm audio jack on the top. Build quality is pretty good. This is a dual SIM handset the SIM slot 2 is a normal SIM and SIM 1 is Micro SIM.

The screen is 4 inches with WVGA (800 x 480 pixels) resolution. Viewing angles are good and touch is smooth and responsive. There are 5 sensors – accelerometer, proximity, orientation, light and magnetic.

Memory and Storage
The Pioneer P2S comes with 512MB RAM of which 226MB is available on the first boot. There is 4GB ROM – 1.19GB is the internal storage and 1GB is the space of apps of which 846MB is available. Apps can be installed on the external storage. OTG did not work.

Performance
The P2S houses the 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6572 dual core chipset coupled with Mali 400 MP GPU. The performance is good but you can feel the handset lagging at times (probably cause of the Amigo UI, also depending on the effects you might have selected).

Benchmark Scores

App Result
Quadrant 3252
Antutu 10395
Vellamo HTML5 (1730) Metal (480)
Nenamark 2 41.0fps
Multi Touch 5 point

Camera and Entertainment
The rear camera is 5MP auto focus with flash and front camera is VGA. The still camera quality is good, could have been better. Rear camera can shoot 720p videos at 29fps. Video quality is also good enough. Front camera is below average.

I tried playing 1080p videos using MX player. It worked well in H/W mode, but in S/W mode the frame dropped and audio was out of sync.

Gaming
Apps can be installed on the external storage, I installed the Modern combat 4 and Asphalt 8. The game play is not that smooth. In MC4 you can clearly see the game lagging and the Asphalt 8 is playable in very low visual quality.

Others
I did not find any issues with 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. Sound is loud and clear.

Battery
The P2S comes with 1600 mAh battery. Battery does not heat up much the maximum temperature was 39 degrees. I used it for 33 minutes running benchmark apps and playing the two games, battery dropped by 15%. I also played a video clip in a loop with Wi-Fi on and brightness set to maximum for about 58 minutes, battery dropped by 18%.

Battery backup: If you are using heavy applications it will last for 3 to 4 hours and video playback time is over 5 hours.

Verdict
Though the Gionee Pioneer P2S looks good and pretty slim, the hardware is not that powerful. The hardware lags when it comes to high end gaming. Moreover the price of approx Rs. 6,500 does not really make it a good buy as there are a good number of handsets with better specifications and about the same price available in the market.

The P2S probably is the only handset that comes with 5 sensors (including the magnetic sensor) in the price range.

Pioneer P2S Image Gallery

Sample Images shot using the P2S handset

Front Camera

Gionee Pioneer P2S handset and gaming review