As always, Chinese smartphone manufacturers lead the charge to push all the new market trends into the mainstream, including dual cameras, “FullView” screens and even facial recognition.

But while a couple of very ambitious OEMs from around those parts seem to believe they can legitimately take on the likes of the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy Note 8, many others just want to stand out with a killer quality – pricing ratio.

Case in point, the $420 or so (CNY 2,799) Gionee M7, which is by no means the world’s most powerful or eye-catching “all-screen” device. There’s a little more bezel surrounding this 6-inch AMOLED display than you may have expected, but on the bright side, the resolution is fairly decent, at 2160 x 1080 pixels, producing an increasingly popular 18:9 (or 2:1) aspect ratio.

Interestingly enough, the M7 already adopts the upper mid-range Helio P30 processor MediaTek literally just introduced a few weeks back, pairing the respectable octa-core silicon (clocked at up to 2.3GHz) with a copious 6GB RAM.

You also get plentiful 64GB internal storage space, expandable via microSD, as well as a 16 + 8MP dual rear shooter setup, single 8MP selfie cam, and impressive 4000mAh battery capacity. Which is made even more impressive by the 7.2mm wasp waist of the Gionee M7.

Meanwhile, believe it or not, the Gionee M7 Power packs a larger yet 5000mAh cell squeezed into an 8.6mm thin body. Priced at the rough equivalent of $300 (1,999 yuan), this thing obviously cuts a few corners, downgrading the 6-inch “FullView” display resolution to 1440 x 720 pixels.

Then you have “just” 4 gigs of RAM, a humbler Snapdragon 435 SoC, single 13MP rear camera and… the same 8MP front shooter, fingerprint sensor and skinned Android 7.1.1 Nougat software as the “regular” M7. Why oh why isn’t Gionee considering going for Western glory?