G'Five President G10: Promises

A president makes promises to the people. Hope-filled promises, promises of making your career run smoother and entertaining you to possibly even making breakfast and tying up your shoelaces. So when a phone is called President, we couldn't help but draw a similar analogy.

The G'Five President G10 is a recent entry into our market offering excellent specs that promise very good value for money despite the ridiculous name. How good? For starters the phone comes boxed in a faux wooden packaging that's become quite the cool norm these days. Open the box and you get the set along with the customary headphones, mini charger and an extra: the flip cover and extra screen protector.

The phone itself is quite smart. We were given the pearl white set. The satin finish on the back resists fingerprints and smudges quite well. The handset design isn't revolutionary; it follows the safe trend by going with the flow. Some might even call it dull. The edges are curved like Samsung's S4 making it easy to slide quickly in and out of a jeans pocket. No snags help this big phone easily pass our 'Pocket Test'.  How big? That's a 5.7inch HD display powered by a Quad Core MTK6589 1.5GHz processor. There's only 1GB of RAM but the older 4.2 Jellybean OS doesn't feel stressed by it. The 32GB of built in storage space. All that makes for standard yet impressive numbers. How does it all work in real life?

The phone is easy to hold in the hand despite being a little hefty but it makes all the regular browsing and checking for likes quite easy. Most HD games run smooth with very little frame rate lag only in the very high end games. We hooked up on a new game called Car X Drift Racing. It has a slightly steep learning curve with full manual controls and we taxed the phone's battery as well as processing power while trying out the game for hours on end. The big sharp screen is a perfect company for long trips when in need of movie entertainment. And the big 2500mAh battery lasts easily more than a day on average usage. Being a removable battery, you can plunk is another when you need extra juice.

The OS is standard Android with a lightly skinned theme providing a hexagonal shape to all the standard icons. The good thing is it comes with very little bloatware. No unnecessary software was added from the factory. You add your own apps as you see fit and that should keep the performance snappy. Speaking of which, to ensure everything goes smooth, we suggest updating Facebook app before signing in to see what everyone else is doing.

The functionality is raised by adding Dual SIM capability. The voice call was standard fare with sound transmitting and emitting clearly on both ends. The camera is a 13MP unit on the back and a 5MP unit up front. There's a 'zerolag' shutter option that cuts down on the lag time by focusing much quickly on whatever is up front. It's a hit-and miss affair. We suggest you leave it on regular autofocus when taking group shots or pictures of things that aren't moving too fast. The camera features are interestingly extensive offering quite a bit of manual adjustments. With decent light, the camera is a capable shooter for a phone and an above average video recorder. The bigger sensor for the front camera means selfies are better than the usual crop. So Oscar selfies? Yeah, let's take more of those and finally kill the trend. We've run Skype calls side by side on a PC and the images came out sharp and clear.

VERDICT

The President G10 offers all the standard support you expect from a smartphone these days at a price you can't beat. Our performance tests showed it came in just under the Samsung S3 and the Nexus 4. Both of those are computing powerhouses even now and the comparison shows the G10 falling into quite a good rating. In terms of camera image quality, it's quite ahead of the Nexus 4. At 16,990/- taka, that's excellent value for money for something that offers a little of everything. In the end, most of what this President promises is actually delivered. Can't say that about the real one.

SPECS

OS: Android Jelly Bean 4.2
Display: 5.7 inches, FHD, IPS
CPU: Quad Core 1.5 GHz
RAM: 1GB, ROM: 32GB
Camera: Rear 13 MP AF, Front 5 MP,
Sensors: Accelerometer, Proximity, Light, E-Compass etc.
Battery: 2500mAh

Price: Tk. 16,990/- (as on 9/1/2014)