The Gionee GN5006L has just surfaced on TENAA (China’s equivalent to the FCC), which essentially means that the device has been certified for a release in the Chinese smartphone market. This handset’s design, specs, and the time of its appearance on TENAA suggest that we might be looking at the Gionee Steel 3, a new smartphone in the company’s ‘Steel’ series of smartphones.
The Gionee GN5006L is made out of metal, as you can see in the gallery down below, and what’s interesting here, is that this phone does not sport a fingerprint scanner. The fingerprint scanner is not visible on the phone’s front or back sides, and it’s almost certainly not included in the power / lock key either. There’s actually a good reason for that, the Gionee GN5006L is an entry-level smartphone, so Gionee simply opted to cut costs and release it as it is, without a fingerprint scanner. This handset seems to sport rather thin bezels, though we still do not know how thick will its black bars be, so we’ll have to wait until we see a phone with a powered on display. Gionee’s branding is present on both the front and back sides of this handset, and all of the phone’s physical buttons are included on the right-hand side of its body. A loudspeaker is placed in the lower portion of this phone’s back side, and chances are that its SIM card tray can be accessed from the left.
The Gionee GN5006L will arrive with a 5.5-inch HD+ (1440 x 720) display, 2GB / 3GB of RAM and 16GB / 32GB of expandable storage. This handset will be fueled by an octa-core SoC clocked at 1.4GHz, and even though TENAA does not mention what SoC is this exactly, we’re probably looking at the Snapdragon 435 here. Android 7.1.1 Nougat will come out of the box here, with Gionee’s custom UI on top of it, of course. A 4,000mAh non-removable battery will also be a part of this package, while you will get an 8-megapixel snapper on both the phone’s front and back sides. The Gionee GN5006L will arrive in Black, Blue and Gold color variants, while the device will measure 144.7 x 69.8 x 8.5mm, and weigh 170 grams. Gionee is expected to release 8 ‘bezel-free’ smartphones on November 26, and the Gionee GN5006L could be one of them.
