Earlier this month Gionee launched the Gionee Elife S7 in India. The device was launched in India for Rs. 24,999. The S7 is expected to go on sale in India this month. The device was launched at a big event in Hyderabad. We went hands on the device and here are our first impressions for the device.
Almost a year ago, Gionee launched its first smartphone in its Slim series called as Gionee Elife S5.5. The device was just 5.5mm thick which made it slimmest smartphone in the world.
Later the company launched yet another device called as Elife S5.1. It was just 5.1mm thick, which was again slimmest smartphone in the world. But this time Gionee could not keep the record for long time as Vivo launched its X5Max, which was 4.75mm thick.
A year later after launching first smartphone, Gionee has launched another device in Slim series dubbed as Gionee S7. The Chinese company wanted to deliver the smartphone without any compromises on the specifications for the slimmer design thus launched the device with 5.5mm thickness.
The smartphone comes with a metallic frame and has a unique U shaped curved design on its sides. The U shape design gives better grip to the device and it becomes easier to hold. The front and rear part of the device are coated with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection which makes it scratch resistant.
There is a 3.5mm jack, mic and speaker grills in the lower part of the device. The right side of the device has a power button and a volume rocker. The left side has dual 4G enabled sim card slots. Sadly there is no MicroSD card slot. It’s dimensions are 139.8 x 67.4 x 5.5 mm.
The phone flaunts a 5.2 inch Full HD (1920×1080 pixels) Super AMOLED screen. The screen is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The display of Elife S7 is sharp and gives good viewing angle. The screen has a pixel density of 424 ppi.
It is powered by a 64 bit 1.7 GHz Octa Core MediaTek MT6752 Processor coupled with 2GB of RAM. Gionee has used latest 67 series of MediaTek processor which is one the best series of processor from the chip maker. It is a high-end processor which delivers top-notch performance. In a short period, I didn’t experienced any lags. For Gaming and Graphics, it comes with a Mali-T760MP2 GPU.
On the camera front, The device uses a 13 Megapixel Sony IMX214 sensor on the rear camera. It features Autofocus and LED flash. In the world of selfies, the S7 packs a 8 Megapixel front shooter.
Storage is one place where Gionee Elife S7 disappoints us. It comes with only 16 GB inbuilt storage out of which only 10 GB memory is usable. And on top of that the phone doesn’t come with an option to expand its storage.
Gionee Elife S7 comes with a 2,700mAh non removable battery. The battery provides 15.5 hours of talktime on 3G network and 20 hours of talktime on 4G network. Gionee has claimed that the device comes with power cooling but in a very short span of time, I felt the device little hotter. At the time of the launch, the software was not final so we expect that the heating issues will be resolved when the device hit the stores. The device is equipped with connectivity options like 4G, LTE, 3G, GPRS/EDGE, Wi-Fi, GPS/AGPS, GLONASS, Wi-Fi Direct, WLAN, Bluetooth, USB OTG, and Micro-USB.
On the Software front, Elife S7 runs on latest Android 5.0 Lollipop with a layer of Gionee’s Amigo 3.0 UI. The device comes with many features added by Gionee in the Amigo OS. The smartphone comes in Black, White, Maldives Blue colors.
Overall the device is good at this price point. Rest all things I will save for the detailed review of the Gionee Elife S7. The device will go on sale in India for Rs. 24,999 soon.
