Most phones, irrespective of their price, tend to suffer from anaemic battery life, but there are few phones which come stuffed with huge batteries and thus offer good battery back up. Two such phones in the budget segment are the Gionee Marathon M4, which is priced at Rs 11,399, and the Asus Zenfone Max that costs Rs 9,999.
But which one of them offers the maximum value for money? Let’s find out.
Design
At 10.1mm thickness (dimension 144.7 x 71.2 x 10.2 mm) and 176g weight, the Gionee Marathon M4 is one of the heaviest and thickest phone in the market now. But these days curvier phones are no more the untouchables. Many do love such curvy devices as these are easier to handle.
The Marathon M4 has got a removable plastic back panel beneath which lies two SIM card slots, the micro SD card slot and a battery which is not removable though. The phone has a metal frame and thus should be a bit tough as well.
The Asus Zenfone Max is equally thick and in fact is much heavier. It measures 77.5 x 156 x 10.55 mm and weighs 202 grams with the battery. Look wise, it scores few more points over the Marathon M4 with its thicker metal side panels which adds extra bling to the phone. The concentric circle design of its bezel in the front (below the display) also makes it a bit more stylish than the Gionee smartphone. It has a faux leather finishing for its back panel compared to the matte finish plastic back panel of the Gionee handset.
Display
The Asus Zenfone Max has a 5.5 inch HD (720 x 1280) IPS display. It is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 4.
The Gionee Marathon M4 has a 5 inch HD AMOLED Display with a Resolution of 720 x 1280. It seems that it doesn’t have any protection (Corning Gorilla Glass or Asahi Dragon Trail)
The larger size and the protection of the Asus Zenfone Max makes it the winner here. Regardless of what kind of Screen protection your phone has, we recommend that you invest in a tempered glass protector.
Processor and Memory
The Gionee Marathon M4 runs a quad-core 1.3 GHz MediaTek Processor which runs with 2 GB of RAM. The Internal Memory stands at 16 GB to which you can add another 32 GB via a microSD card.
The Asus Zenfone Max is armed with a quad-core Snapdragon 410 which is clocked at 1.2 GHZ. The phone has 2 GB of RAM, and 8 GB of internal storage, to which you can add another 128 GB via a microSD card.
Both these phones run similar processors and have the same RAM. The differentiator is the higher storage of the Asus Zenfone Max.
Software
The Asus Zenfone Max runs on Android Lollipop (5.1) operating system and it has Asus’ ZenUI interface which claims to have more than 1000 features that improve upon the standard Android interface.
The Gionee Marathon M4 too runs on Android Lollipop with Gionee’s Amigo OS which is has few customisations of its own and is quite easy to use.
Battery
The Gionee Marathon M4 has a 5000 mAh battery which can provide up to 18 hours of Talk time or 400 hours of standby, both on 3G. The Asus Zenfone Max also has a 5000 mAh battery, which claims to offer 37.63 hours of talktime or 914 hours of standby (network not revealed).
Logically speaking, the Asus Zenfone Max should have offered lower back up as it has a bigger display.
Camera
Gionee Marathon M4 has an 8 Megapixel primary camera, with auto-focus, flash, face detection, panorama, geo-tagging, and video recording. In its front lies a 5 megapixel fixed focus camera for video calling and selfie taking, etc.
The Asus Zenfone Max is armed with a 13 megapixel rear auto focus camera which has F2.0 aperture, dual colour LED flash light backing, HDR, GIF, Time Lapse, Smart Remove, Time Rewind and Manual Mode features.
Zenfone Max’s front 5 megapixel camera also has F2.0 Aperture with HDR, auto focus, GIF, Selife Panorama (up to 140 degree), and Time Lapse camera modes.
So here, the Asus Zenfone Max seems to be the winner as not only it offers higher rear camera resolution but it also has more camera features and most importantly it offers an auto focus front camera.
Connectivity
Both the phones come with two SIM card slots and offer 4G connectivity as well. The Asus Zenfone Max has WiFi (b/g/n), USB OTG, Bluetooth 4.0 A2DP, WiFi Direct and a micro USB port. It has GPS with AGPS, GLONASS and BDS for navigation.
The Marathon M4 too offers WiFi (b/g/n), WiFi Direct, WiFi Hotspot, GPS with A-GPS, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP and micro USB port with OTG functionality.
Wrapping up
The Asus Zenfone Max has a larger screen and better cameras. It has the same battery as the Gionee phone. Design wise too, the Zenfone Max looks much better. It has higher external storage as well. In short, the Asus Zenfone Max, despite being the cheaper device, offers better features and thus is the winner in this contest.