Gionee Elife S5.5 Review

Gionee Elife S5.5 with a thickness of 5.5 mm is the world’s slimmest smartphone. Gionee haven’t left a chance to highlight this key feature but is it sufficient enough to buy the device? Let’s take a look at other aspects of Elife S5.5 in this review.

Design

Keeping aside the advertised 5.55 mm thickness, on the face of it the device looks pretty slim (and light weight) indeed. However this slimness is negated by the available flip cover, an artificial leather non-magnetic cover which adds a certain level of glamour and safety. Also, you will need to stick the cover on the back of the device since there is no way to remove back cover (sealed).

Gionee Elife S5.5 has its outer body made up of Magnesium Alloy along with back of glass covering. On the sidelines you’ll find volume rockers and power button located on the left; micro SIM slot on the right; audio port and mic at the bottom and micro USB port at the top. For the purpose of noise cancellation and enhances call quality the device has dual microphones.

The rear panel, as mentioned earlier, has a glass panel sitting atop with the camera module located at the corner and popping out a bit.

Coming to the front, Gionee Elife S5.5 rocks a 5″ inch AMOLED display with brilliant viewing angles. The screen supports 1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD) resolution and is protected with corning gorilla glass 3. Mathematically this calculates to pixel density of 441 ppi which results in a sharp display output. Zooming in to images and text doesn’t cause pixelation!

Memory and Storage

The Elife S5.5 comes with 2 GB RAM and in-built storage capacity of 16 GB/32 GB. The downside with respect to storage is there is no provision for using a micro SD card (Compare micro SD Card prices), however OTG is supported fortunately.

Coming back to the RAM, of the total 2 GB RAM only 1.1 GB was available after the initial boot (no 3rd party app installed). For the internal storage, of the 16 GB, 2.7 GB is available free space for applications whereas the remaining 9.3 GB is for storing user files.

Performance

Gionee Elife S5.5 is powered by 1.7 GHz ARM cortex A7 Octa Core MediaTek MT6592 chipset with Mali 450 MP GPU. For those un-ware of these terms, all I have to say is because of these Elife S5.5 delivers a lag free overall performance.

A brilliant display, powerful processor and plentiful of RAM ensure that all the applications run without any problem whatsover. The only area I found the device to be left behind is the installed operating system. Elife S5.5 runs Amigo OS 2.0 based on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). There is no word on whether an update to Android 4.4 (or version 4.3) will be available or not.

Another thing is that the device tends to get hot when using heavy applications. This isn’t a deal breaker at all and the only reason for touching this topic is that I have been asked on numerous occasions during the review period about the same. Yes, the device indeed gets hot but it happens only when you are playing 1080p videos (for long duration), playing resource intensive games or similar resource intensive apps. Under normal circumstances the phone temperature remains nominal.

Camera

Gionee Elife S5.5 comes with a 13 MP rear camera (with auto focus, LED flash) and 5 MP secondary camera (selfie addicts be happy!). The primary camera is capable of capturing Full HD (1080p) videos as well.

With respect to camera app, an application called charmcam is the one which will get your attention the most. It comes pre-loaded with lot of effects!

On paper the camera rakes in all the mega pixels but the camera doesn’t impress much. The camera quality is just average. There were times when I had difficulty acquiring the focus, auto focus failed to impress either. I am hoping that this has something to do with camera software and a small future update should sort this out.

Sample Camera Shots

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Battery

Gionee Elife S5.5 is packed with a non-removable 2300 mAh battery. Considering the screen size and the octa core processor, this is without doubt below par. Under moderate usage the battery struggled to deliver a days usage.

A more judicious use would increase battery time but then again what’s the point of owing a high octane android device when you can’t use it.

Final Verdict

Gionee Elife S5.5 is available for Rs. 21,500. Key highlights of Elife S5.5 are its customized OS, “slimmest phone in the world” tag and Octa Core processing power. This being said, also keep in mind that its Camera and Battery are average at best. Overall, keeping in mind the price tag it is a good option to consider.

Elife S5.5 In Pictures