Ever since the original Moto RAZR V3 came out 10 years ago, the smartphone industry has had a strange obsession with skinny phones. Not because shaving a millimeter or two off a device will give it more functionality, but because it's an effective marketing tactic. In emerging markets in particular, slimmer phones at slimmer prices enjoy a distinct advantage. Gionee, a handset maker based in China, isn't very well known, but it's looking to make a name for itself with devices like the $375 Elife S5.5. At 5.55mm thick, this svelte beauty currently claims the title for the thinnest smartphone on the market. To put that in perspective, that's a full two millimeters skinnier than the iPhone 5s. I spent a few days with the device to see if thinner really is better.
Mobile Geeks videotaped a hands-on review of the Gionee Elife S5.5:
Sporting a chamfered magnesium frame with Gorilla Glass 3 panels on both front and back, the Elife is a beautiful phone with much better build quality than I expected. It features flat sides with angular edges, which -- along with its sleek form factor -- makes for a stylish design that's fun to look at. It's comfortable, but the slim size doesn't play a role in making it any more so than fatter devices. Durability is typically a concern for extremely slim devices, but being thinner doesn't seem to make a difference here: I'm convinced this handset can hold up as well as any other smartphone comprised of similar materials. (That said, you'll still need to be careful with the glass, since it's scratch-resistant, but not shatterproof.) At 4.69 ounces (133g), the Elife also has enough heft to give it a premium feel without being too heavy or too light.
The Elife's camera is a tad thicker than the rest of the device, but Gionee smartly designed the bump to complement the phone's minimal design rather than sticking out like a sore thumb. The 13-megapixel module and LED flash are nestled on the top-left corner of the back, with chamfered and angled edges that drop down to meet up with the glass. Of course, this makes it so the back isn't completely flat when you lay it down, but on a positive note, this prevents sound coming out of the rear speaker from getting muffled.
Along with a thinner frame -- and a lower price point -- comes less room to go all-out on specs. It only comes with 16GB of internal storage space and no microSD slot; it features HSPA+ (either 850/1900/2100 or 900/1900/2100, depending on market), but no LTE connectivity, which likely won't be a problem in most emerging markets for now. There's also no NFC; and the non-replaceable battery is fairly small, at 2,300mAh.
The 5-inch, 1080p Super AMOLED display comes with a pixel density of 441 ppi and features excellent viewing angles. All told, the panel is similar to what's used on the Samsung Galaxy S4, which means you're going to get saturated colors and deep blacks. It's not nearly as bright as most flagships I've played with recently, but it's easily viewable in direct sunlight (provided the brightness is above 85 percent).
Under the hood, the Elife uses an octa-core MediaTek chipset, which, despite its eight cores, is more mid-range than high-end component. And its performance reflects this: Animations and transitions are a bit choppy; the screen sometimes has problems responding to finger input; and gaming is hit-or-miss thanks to some frame skips. Otherwise, though, the performance is smooth enough. Its biggest issue, which is amplified by the phone's slim build, is that the processor runs so hot that the glass surface is almost impossible to hold while playing games. (You'll also want to refrain from holding it up to your face for a few minutes until it cools down a bit.) The 2,300mAh battery is not very impressive, either; on most days, I struggled to make it through a full day on a single charge.
On the software front, the Elife runs Android 4.4 KitKat with a custom user interface called Amigo OS. It's very similar to other Chinese Android options in that it doesn't have an app tray, so all of my apps were scattered on the home panels, à la iOS. You can access Google Play Services as well, ensuring that you'll be able to sync your Google accounts if you want. However, after a few days with the new OS, I was ready to switch over from Amigo to the Google Now Launcher, which is now available for most Android devices and is much closer to a pure Android experience on the front, but features Gionee customizations everywhere else (such as the lock screen and notification tray).
The Elife is only available in a handful of countries including India and China, but the manufacturer has partnered with other brands to create carbon-copied versions of the device. You can get the Blu Vivo IV in the US, for instance, the Allview X2 Soul in Europe and the Bara 1 in Taiwan, all of which have essentially the same chassis and spec sheet. (Pricing varies, but the Vivo IV is $300.)
Thin phones have their fair share of trade-offs. On one hand, the Elife is a sleek, elegant device. On the other, its slim design comes at the expense of battery life, heat dissipation, storage space and other specs. It's also just as comfortable and usable as most flagship smartphones that have two to three millimeters of extra padding (although it can be tougher to pick up when it's lying on a table or desk). Even so, additional thinness doesn't make a difference to the in-hand experience. And yet, there are strong indications that Gionee will soon come out with an even thinner device soon; if it does, the company will keep its claim to the thinnest phone on the market. But at what cost?
COMMENTARY: The nice folks at NDTV Gadgets were able to get their hands on a Gionee Elife S5.5 smartphone and prepared this review:
Look and Feel
The Gionee Elife S5.5 could give professional supermodels a run for their money. At 5.6mm, this phone is the slimmest one we've ever seen. On top of that, it is lightweight at 135g. Despite the anorexic physical attributes, the S5.5 is a sturdily built device and can handle a few falls thanks to the magnesium alloy material used for the construction. Exuding premium quality, this Gionee phone definitely beats the pants off much of the competition in its price range, and even looks better than a few flagships we've seen (we're looking at you, Samsung).
On the right edge of the Elife S5.5 is the micro-SIM card tray, and on the left edge are the power button and volume rocker. The slightly raised physical buttons feel soft when pressed, which is good. The bottom edge has a 3.5mm audio jack while the top edge features a Micro-USB port for charging. Right above the screen is the front camera and an invisible array of sensors. The unibody design means that the phone has a non-removable battery.
The rear of the device is almost as reflective as a mirror. Slightly raised to accommodate the optics, the rear camera and flash are devoid of any protection. As a result, they are susceptible to scratches. One more problem with the glossy exterior is that attracts smudges very easily.
Features and Specifications
The Elife S5.5 is beautiful and powerful too, at least on paper. Under the hood is a Mediatek MT6589 octa-core processor clocked at 1.7GHz, with integrated Mali 450MP4 graphics. There's 2GB of RAM supporting it. Only around 9GB of the 16GB of internal storage is available to users, which isn't much at all considering there is no support for memory cards.
There is a single slot for a micro-SIM card, which of course can connect to 3G networks. Unlike a lot of other phones with the same specifications in this price range, the Elife S5.5 has incorporated Bluetooth 4.0, which is good. The 13-megapixel rear camera can also shoot videos at a resolution of 1980x1080. Just like the HTC Desire 816 we recently reviewed, the S5.5 also has a 5-megapixel front camera.
This is probably one of the very few smartphones with a full-HD resolution screen at this price level, and we think it looks fantastic. At 5 inches with a density of 467ppi, pixellation is not a problem at all. Blacks are deep and colours pop a bit too much - fans of over-saturated images won't be disappointed at all, but regular reds looked like bright orange during our testing, which to us is a bit of overkill.
Software
Potent hardware is of no use if the software doesn't keep up, which is why it is important that manufacturers trying to fork Android ensure that both hardware and software work together to deliver a good user experience. This is unfortunately where Gionee falters.
Gionee's custom "Color OS" UI runs on top of the now-dated Android 4.2.2 (Jellybean). We've discussed the various problems of this software at length in our review of the Elife E7. The same problems persist in this phone as well - wasted space, a single-screen view of all apps, a cluttered settings panel in the notification slider, options that can't be found without multiple taps, and much more.
Even if we can look past all the problems plaguing the software, the theme itself is a bit of an eyesore. The fact that themes can be changed is not much help either, since all the three options that are available are just as bad as each other. The quality and value of the default apps, including six games, are also debatable. Fortunately, we could delete some of them. The only saving grace in this mess was the intuitive keyboard.
We appreciate Gionee's attempt at differentiation, but Color OS needs more work for it to be user-friendly. Until then, we are heading to the Play Store to find a replacement launcher.
Camera
Since the quality of photographs captured by the Gionee Elife E7 impressed us we had high hopes for the Gionee Elife S5.5's camera as well. Our expectations might have therefore been a bit too high, and it turned out that the performance of the 13-megapixel rear camera was only slightly above average.
In our daylight testing, photos looked a bit dim. This dullness led to certain details being hidden. In HDR mode, the camera goes a bit overboard in trying to enhance the dynamic range, and ends up producing overexposed shots. Colours are also slightly off the mark in captured photos.
In low light, focusing is a major issue and we more often than not ended up with blurred images. Photos were also devoid of detail and had a yellow tinge to them. Focussing is jerky even when shooting video, but the captured 1080p video looks really good. The 5-megapixel front camera couldn't capture as much detail as the one on the HTC Desire 816, but the extremely wide-angled lens helps when we want to incorporate more people in the image. Anyone who wants to try aping Ellen DeGeneres' Oscar selfie should take note.
The camera app is minimalistic with transparent icons lined up along the edges of the screen. Oddly, the settings page opens up vertically instead of horizontally when you tap its button.
Performance
The S5.5 returned scores of 27,952 and 16,658 in AnTuTu and Quadrant respectively. While respectable, the scores are not a true reflection of the potential performance of this phone's hardware. In daily use, we found that the Elife S5.5 stutters and lags a lot in spite of its powerful specifications. We attribute this disparity in scores and real-life performance to the clunky software.
Graphics performance is not that great, either. We played Shadowgun and noticed that it lagged in sections which were filled with hordes of villains. The GFXbench test returned a score of 10.5fps which corroborates our experience with gaming.
One area where the Elife S5.5 shines throughout is video playback. Though it was no surprise that the phone managed to play all the videos we threw at it, we were glad that it did so without skipping frames. The gorgeous screen makes watching videos totally enjoyable.
On the other hand, this phone heats up quite a bit. This could be due to the way all the internal components are crammed within this slim, all-metal body. Battery life isn't great - the S5.5 lasted only six hours and 28 minutes before dying in our continuous video loop test. Call quality is decent with both the caller and the receiver hearing each other without issues.
Verdict
Quite surprisingly, we managed to spot the Elife S5.5 in the wild inside a local train and noticed that the person using it was engrossed in a movie. After striking up a conversation, we discovered that he had purchased the phone because of the 1080p screen and phone's looks. Perhaps this is a sign that users can indeed warm up to the idea of a Chinese brand making premium smartphones.
Our new friend had easily identified the two major reasons your should consider the Gionee Elife S5.5 at its current price of Rs. 22,999. However, you also now know that the camera isn't all that great, and the heating issue could potentially be harmful for the phone in the long run.
If that puts you off, at least this price segment is littered with options now. Our favourites are the big-screened HTC Desire 816 with its capable camera, the Moto X (review) with its unique voice commands, and the Elife S5.5's elder sibling, the Elife E7, which is a flagship on a budget.
Below is NDTV Gadget's overall review summary of the Gionee Elife S5.5 smartphone:
Here are the complete specifications for the Gionee Elife S5.5 smartphone:
Courtesy of an article dated August 8, 2012 appearing in Engadget, an article dated March 30, 2014 appearing in TechieOasis, and an article dated June 2, 2014 appearing in NDTV Gadgets
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