Gionee M3, the successor to the company’s Marathon M2 smartphone, will be priced around Rs 13,000 when the phone is officially released next week.
In comparison, the Gionee M2 was priced at Rs 10,990 at launch.
The M3 is already available from sellers at Rs 13,990. However, according to our sources, the official price will be closer to Rs 13,000.
In fact, at Rs 14,000, the Gionee M3 is unlikely to hold any appeal, except to people who can charge their phone only once in three days and cannot carry a power bank.
Other than the massive 5,000 mAh battery, the M3 has very little that sets it apart from the RedMi 1S (Rs 6,000) and the Honor Holly (Rs 7,000).
The Gionee M3 comes with a 5-inch 720p HD display, a 1.3 GHz Mediatek quad-core processor, an 8 MP camera at the back and a 2 MP shooter at the front.
The dual SIM phone also has 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage memory.
The biggest advantage of the M3 is the battery, which is 2.5 times the size of the one found in the Huawei Honor Holly.
If you switch the phone to 2G only, you can talk for over 50 hours on a single charge, or non-stop for two days and two nights. If charge it once and leave it on without using it, it will last for over a month before you need to charge it again.
Without the battery though, the phone should be bought for no more than Rs 8,000.
It will be widely available on e-commerce sites and elsewhere starting this weekend, when we expect the price to decline to around Rs 12,990 or so.