A writer once wrote: ‘The human body is the best work of art.’ And then years passed before people could really show what the words were really trying to say. And then almost everyone with a smartphone in his or her hands wanted to show the world that selfies, coolfies, and welfies have the power to help anyone at any age understand what a cool, hip, and utterly desi state of mind means. The front cameras of most smartphones have been helping everyone from the twenty-somethings to the sixty-somethings prove that the mantra of staying young is showing the world that part of your mind that never really ages.
The selfie-sutras to staying young through selfies would be:
- Go for a smartphone that has a powerful front camera.
- The front camera flash must not be harsh because you do not need flattened output. The flash must spread evenly and softly.
- The battery shouldn’t be a cause to make your selfie-incursions stressful.
- The screen resolution should not show you a merit-starved output.
- The UI in the phone must function with subtle taps and not severe finger hammering.
- The colours displayed must be nothing less than awesome.
- Lots of filters and other camera features must be there to help you conserve time and energy that you would waste if you went through the app route to edit results.
- The camera storage capability should not disappoint.
Selfies, let me emphasize here, are not just for the young but for those who wish to stay young… and smartphone researchers have been working hard on this concept. They have been improving the front camera, giving it features that weren’t there just a couple of years ago, and making #selfiestan as real a place as a ripe imagination can concoct. And in this serious happiness research, the team from Gionee seems to have marched ahead with their Gionee A1 smartphone.
A great selfie isn’t only about switching to the front camera, aiming, and tapping… it has intrinsic connections with the rest of the technology that a smartphone has been endowed with. Yes, a 16MP front camera helps but then when you are in the middle of a blitz of selfie clicks, you also need a phone that has a powerful battery that charges ultra-fast. The Gionee A1 has a 4010 mAh battery that wouldn’t disappoint. The screen resolution, a fast access to the camera with a safer fingerprint unlocking, and an OS like the Android 7.0 Nougat Amigo 4.0 add up to the sort of selfie-ready and selfie-friendly smartphone that the Gionee A1 certainly boasts of. Selfies aren’t an act of narcissism but have blended rather well with the socio-cultural shift that the emergence of social media platforms has thrust upon us. In fact, Arvind R Vohra, Country CEO & MD, Gionee India remarked during the launch of this device that, ‘today’s generation views the world from their front camera. They live for creating and celebrating experiences out of moments.’
Consumer intelligence has been increasing and it is no longer possible for companies to push a device that doesn’t have a good camera, a great battery, super performance, and a huge list of features that can be used to make life so much easier. When you have a smartphone in your hands, you certainly wish to go beyond clicking sharp and clear pictures at night or create GIFs, slow motion clips, and time-lapses… there are times when you want to scan codes, do a bit of text recognition, scan visiting cards and store them for use later, translate text from other languages. I remember when I was clicking a selfie I noticed that the background had a billboard that seemed to say something important in a language that I did not understand. The Gionee A1 helped me translate this message fast and I knew that there was a Bangla restaurant behind that sold the yummiest Sandesh in Delhi. To add to the advantages of this smartphone, let me quote Alok Shrivastava, Director – Business Intelligence and Planning, Gionee India, who said, ‘The A1 will offer advanced selfie capabilities, uninterrupted charge, the latest Android 7.0 experience and a full metal body giving a super smartphone experience to its users.’
But let me focus on selfies just a bit more… the 16MP front camera is accompanied by a customized selfie flash to spread light onto faces more evenly and softly. Gionee claims that independent facial enhancement algorithm automatically detects a user’s face and applies custom beauty settings. Powered by 4-cell technology, the front camera captures more light than before resulting clearer. This is astounding indeed!
Just to run you through a few other impressive features of the Gionee A1, let me add that the ultrafast charging feature here gives a 2 hour talk-time in barely 300 seconds, that is, in 5 minutes. The A1 runs on an Octa-Core 64 bit process that gives better performance and less power consumption. Powered by a 4GB RAM, The A1 enables smooth multitasking and easy operation, while 64GB internal storage (Expandable up to 256GB) provides all the storage space that selfie-lovers dream of. The fingerprint scanner is fast and unlocks the phone in 0.2 seconds and so a selfie mood doesn’t have to fade away because of a lag here. By the way, even moist fingers are sensed and interpreted effectively. There is the usual ‘edgebar’ that seems to be present in most phones today and this is what users must activate to access apps faster. The A1 has a full metal body made out of A6000 aircraft grade material that is used in making premium cars and aircrafts… though this is no reason for selfie-lovers to keep dropping their phone. I will advise you to always be careful while handling phones.
This is one phone that will not leave you bored and waiting for something new to happen. You have that power in your hands because you know that even one selfie can change your destiny!
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Gionee A1 – a snapshot of specifications
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Gionee A1… the #selfiestan boss today
Clicking pictures with the Gionee A1 is a creative pleasure
There is so much more to explore in a smartphone today… do user really make their phones do all that their phones can do?
Gionee A1 — could be your passport to a younger world!
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Arvind Passey
15 April 2017
