Gionee is back with another slim smartphone, Elife S7. This time the company promises that its new phone won't be just another anorexic device and will also offer improved performance and new features. Does the phone live up to the promise? We try to find out in our review...
Build and design
Just like its two predecessors, the Elife S7 sports a super-sleek form factor and feels premium and solidly-built thanks to the use of materials like glass and magnesium alloy.
You have to give it to Gionee for managing to reduce the thickness of the phone to just 5.5mm and squeezing in hardware components. It sports a unibody design so you can't remove the battery. Another sacrifice that the company made was that it did not include a microSD card slot to keep the phone slim.
The S7 doesn't only look sleek but also the ridged frame that holds the phone is made of metal with inserts for antenna at the top and bottom edges. We got a blue coloured phone as our review unit which looks like sea green.
The front features the 5.2-inch Super AMOLED display, the front camera and the sensor array. There are no capacitive buttons for navigation as the software incorporates on-screen buttons.
The all-glass back has a glossy finish and features the camera lens and an LED flash at the top left. It's amazing how the camera lens and flash are flush with the body and don't stick out. Even the back has Gorilla Glass 3 protection to guard against scratches. However, we feel a matte finish rear would have been more helpful to go with the thinness and for better grip. The phone slips easily if you keep it on a soft surface with the slightest incline.
There's minimal branding at the back. The right edge sports the colour coordinated metal volume rocker and power keys that offer good tactile feedback and look nice. The left edge houses dual micro-sim card tray. The 3.5mm headset jack is at the bottom edge along with the micro-USB port and a speaker grill.
Overall, the phone not only looks super sleek but also feels durable with its metal frame.
Display
Gionee S5.5 sports a 5.2-inch Full-HD Super AMOLED display that offers vivid albeit over-saturated colours. However, the black levels are very good and the display looks gorgeous with black themed apps and wallpapers. It comes with Gorilla Glass Class 3 coating to guard against scratches.
Brightness levels are great and we didn't encounter any problems using the phone in sunlight. Even the viewing angles are pretty good. We'll not hesitate to say that it's one of the best displays we've seen recently, if you can overlook the over-saturated colours.
It's not optimized for one hand use especially if you have small hands. Touch response was great.
Software
Gionee Elife S7 runs Amigo 3.0 based on Android 5.0 Lollipop. We've loved Gionee's mid-range phones but always complained about lag-ridden, unoptimized software. It appears Gionee has paid heed to our feedback and made improvements. The software is now more responsive than ever and the UI also looks pretty good.
Gionee has subtly incorporated elements from Android 5.0 including Material design for its native apps, used a lot of pastel colours and retained the Lollipop app switcher with different browser tabs appearing as different apps. The phone has onscreen navigation keys and you can change the position of the back key to your liking. However, the notification drawer is slightly different and the settings shortcut toggles are placed in an iOS Control Center-like pull-up tray. It's even called Control Center! This menu is a bit unintuitive as there are no visual cues to highlight the feature. Also, unlike iOS the menu is hidden between the three navigation buttons.
Just like most Chinese phones with custom software, Amigo 3.0 doesn't have a separate app launcher by default. The home screen and app launcher are one though this can be changed by using a different theme or third party launcher. Six themes are available but you can't download additional themes. The phone offers an interesting app called Chameleon that makes use of the its camera to select a colour drom your surroundings and make it the default app colour for native apps. For instance, if you see a blue flower that you like, you can point the phone's camera towards it and select the colour. You can then have all system apps use the same colour theme.
The latest version of the OS also adds widget support, which is a welcome change though the process is slightly cumbersome.
The Elife S7 also offers sensor-controlled smart gestures that let you unlock the phone, browse through home screens and images and control video, with a wave of the hand. It also supports double tap to unlock and alphabet gestures to launch apps when one draws a particular letter on the lock screen. These features are not new but worked withiut any problems. There's also a Suspend floating soft button that can be enabled through the settings. This button houses the shortcut keys for back and home in addition to screen lock and menu buttons.
The software still has its quirks but Gionee has done a good job of optimizimg it for the hardware and the overall experience was much better than the last two Elife phones.
Camera
Gionee Elife S7 comes with a 13MP rear camera and an 8MP front-facing camera. The camera app offers simple and professional modes with the latter offering controls for granular settings. The camera features Image+ technology through which it can capture 6 pictures in about 1 second and compose a single picture by combining them, adjusting the brightness and image noise.
It also features Magic focus similar to Nokia's re-focus mode to change the focus of the image after it's shot.
During our use, we found the camera to be slightly underwhelming although Gionee has consolidated its different camera apps into one.
Pictures shot in daylight had decent level of detail but came out over-exposed (in Auto mode). Colours were slightly oversaturated. Low-light shots came out well, though these had some noise. The front camera captures good quality selfies and the Beauty mode really enhances them. It's also good for video chats.
Performance
Gionee Elife S7 is powered by a 1.7GHz MediaTek MT6752 octa-core processor and 2GB RAM. The phone boasts of powerful hardware and its performance was comparable to other premium mid-rangers. We did not encounter any major lag while using multiple apps and playing games. Scrolling was also pretty smooth.
In synthetic benchmarks, the phone scored 44,645 in Antutu, 15,698 in Quadrant, and 61.9 in Nenamark 2 benchmark tests. In most of these tests the phone lags behind the Xiaomi Mi 4 and OnePlus One. But we'd not recommend a phone based solely on benchmarks as real world performance can be different at times.
Another department where the phone excels is battery backup. The phone comes with a 2700mAh battery, and easily sails through one and a half days with moderate to heavy use.
The phone comes with 16GB storage (about 10GB of which is usable), but unfortunately, it doesn't sport a microSD card slot. This means you'll need to live with the limited storage capacity of the phone. Gionee must do something about this if it has to take Indian market seriously.
We were able to play most video and audio files on the phone without encountering problems. The phone offers good call quality and signal reception. It was able to lock to GPS without any hiccups. The phone supports both Indian 4G bands but we could not test 4G connectivity as there's no live LTE network in New Delhi.
The external speaker on the phone offers loud sound output.
Gaming
The phone is able to handle graphics-rich games without any hiccups. However, we noticed that the phone gets heated up within a few minutes of playing graphics-heavy games.
We were able to play games like Looney Tunes Dash, Asphalt 8 (with visual details set to 100%) and Riptide GP 2 without
encountering any problems.
Verdict
With the Elife S7, Gionee has certainly made strides in making a well rounded slim phone. The company has ironed out software issues that plague its other devices and even the battery life is stellar. Of course the phone looks and feels super sleek, the only problem being its slippery and fragile body. The meagre 16GB storage capacity and the lack of a microSD card slot is a big bummer though.
Does it offer good value for your money? Unfortunately, at a price of nearly Rs 25,000, we feel there are better phones available in the market.
Build and design
Just like its two predecessors, the Elife S7 sports a super-sleek form factor and feels premium and solidly-built thanks to the use of materials like glass and magnesium alloy.
You have to give it to Gionee for managing to reduce the thickness of the phone to just 5.5mm and squeezing in hardware components. It sports a unibody design so you can't remove the battery. Another sacrifice that the company made was that it did not include a microSD card slot to keep the phone slim.
The S7 doesn't only look sleek but also the ridged frame that holds the phone is made of metal with inserts for antenna at the top and bottom edges. We got a blue coloured phone as our review unit which looks like sea green.
The front features the 5.2-inch Super AMOLED display, the front camera and the sensor array. There are no capacitive buttons for navigation as the software incorporates on-screen buttons.
The all-glass back has a glossy finish and features the camera lens and an LED flash at the top left. It's amazing how the camera lens and flash are flush with the body and don't stick out. Even the back has Gorilla Glass 3 protection to guard against scratches. However, we feel a matte finish rear would have been more helpful to go with the thinness and for better grip. The phone slips easily if you keep it on a soft surface with the slightest incline.
There's minimal branding at the back. The right edge sports the colour coordinated metal volume rocker and power keys that offer good tactile feedback and look nice. The left edge houses dual micro-sim card tray. The 3.5mm headset jack is at the bottom edge along with the micro-USB port and a speaker grill.
Overall, the phone not only looks super sleek but also feels durable with its metal frame.
Display
Gionee S5.5 sports a 5.2-inch Full-HD Super AMOLED display that offers vivid albeit over-saturated colours. However, the black levels are very good and the display looks gorgeous with black themed apps and wallpapers. It comes with Gorilla Glass Class 3 coating to guard against scratches.
Brightness levels are great and we didn't encounter any problems using the phone in sunlight. Even the viewing angles are pretty good. We'll not hesitate to say that it's one of the best displays we've seen recently, if you can overlook the over-saturated colours.
It's not optimized for one hand use especially if you have small hands. Touch response was great.
Software
Gionee Elife S7 runs Amigo 3.0 based on Android 5.0 Lollipop. We've loved Gionee's mid-range phones but always complained about lag-ridden, unoptimized software. It appears Gionee has paid heed to our feedback and made improvements. The software is now more responsive than ever and the UI also looks pretty good.
Gionee has subtly incorporated elements from Android 5.0 including Material design for its native apps, used a lot of pastel colours and retained the Lollipop app switcher with different browser tabs appearing as different apps. The phone has onscreen navigation keys and you can change the position of the back key to your liking. However, the notification drawer is slightly different and the settings shortcut toggles are placed in an iOS Control Center-like pull-up tray. It's even called Control Center! This menu is a bit unintuitive as there are no visual cues to highlight the feature. Also, unlike iOS the menu is hidden between the three navigation buttons.
Just like most Chinese phones with custom software, Amigo 3.0 doesn't have a separate app launcher by default. The home screen and app launcher are one though this can be changed by using a different theme or third party launcher. Six themes are available but you can't download additional themes. The phone offers an interesting app called Chameleon that makes use of the its camera to select a colour drom your surroundings and make it the default app colour for native apps. For instance, if you see a blue flower that you like, you can point the phone's camera towards it and select the colour. You can then have all system apps use the same colour theme.
The latest version of the OS also adds widget support, which is a welcome change though the process is slightly cumbersome.
The Elife S7 also offers sensor-controlled smart gestures that let you unlock the phone, browse through home screens and images and control video, with a wave of the hand. It also supports double tap to unlock and alphabet gestures to launch apps when one draws a particular letter on the lock screen. These features are not new but worked withiut any problems. There's also a Suspend floating soft button that can be enabled through the settings. This button houses the shortcut keys for back and home in addition to screen lock and menu buttons.
The software still has its quirks but Gionee has done a good job of optimizimg it for the hardware and the overall experience was much better than the last two Elife phones.
Camera
Gionee Elife S7 comes with a 13MP rear camera and an 8MP front-facing camera. The camera app offers simple and professional modes with the latter offering controls for granular settings. The camera features Image+ technology through which it can capture 6 pictures in about 1 second and compose a single picture by combining them, adjusting the brightness and image noise.
It also features Magic focus similar to Nokia's re-focus mode to change the focus of the image after it's shot.
During our use, we found the camera to be slightly underwhelming although Gionee has consolidated its different camera apps into one.
Pictures shot in daylight had decent level of detail but came out over-exposed (in Auto mode). Colours were slightly oversaturated. Low-light shots came out well, though these had some noise. The front camera captures good quality selfies and the Beauty mode really enhances them. It's also good for video chats.
Performance
Gionee Elife S7 is powered by a 1.7GHz MediaTek MT6752 octa-core processor and 2GB RAM. The phone boasts of powerful hardware and its performance was comparable to other premium mid-rangers. We did not encounter any major lag while using multiple apps and playing games. Scrolling was also pretty smooth.
In synthetic benchmarks, the phone scored 44,645 in Antutu, 15,698 in Quadrant, and 61.9 in Nenamark 2 benchmark tests. In most of these tests the phone lags behind the Xiaomi Mi 4 and OnePlus One. But we'd not recommend a phone based solely on benchmarks as real world performance can be different at times.
Another department where the phone excels is battery backup. The phone comes with a 2700mAh battery, and easily sails through one and a half days with moderate to heavy use.
The phone comes with 16GB storage (about 10GB of which is usable), but unfortunately, it doesn't sport a microSD card slot. This means you'll need to live with the limited storage capacity of the phone. Gionee must do something about this if it has to take Indian market seriously.
We were able to play most video and audio files on the phone without encountering problems. The phone offers good call quality and signal reception. It was able to lock to GPS without any hiccups. The phone supports both Indian 4G bands but we could not test 4G connectivity as there's no live LTE network in New Delhi.
The external speaker on the phone offers loud sound output.
Gaming
The phone is able to handle graphics-rich games without any hiccups. However, we noticed that the phone gets heated up within a few minutes of playing graphics-heavy games.
We were able to play games like Looney Tunes Dash, Asphalt 8 (with visual details set to 100%) and Riptide GP 2 without
encountering any problems.
Verdict
With the Elife S7, Gionee has certainly made strides in making a well rounded slim phone. The company has ironed out software issues that plague its other devices and even the battery life is stellar. Of course the phone looks and feels super sleek, the only problem being its slippery and fragile body. The meagre 16GB storage capacity and the lack of a microSD card slot is a big bummer though.
Does it offer good value for your money? Unfortunately, at a price of nearly Rs 25,000, we feel there are better phones available in the market.
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