Gionee Elife E7 hands-on, first impressions

Today, Gionee launched their latest flagship phone, the Elife E7. It packs a 5.5-inch 1080p display, a Snapdragon 800 CPU, 3GB RAM and the much highlighted 16 megapixel camera paired with an 8 megapixel front-facing one. It also comes in many other colors and a really sleek package, so read on to find out all our thoughts on the company’s next big smartphone.

We managed to play with an orange unit and it feels just like the black one. The curve on the back falls perfectly on your hand making it really comfortable to hold even with the large 5.5-inch display, which is amazing like it’s predecessor’s by the way. Sliding your fingers to press the power button and the volume rocker can be quite a hassle though, but it works anyway with a little getting used to.

For an initial take on the UI, there isn’t much that has changed from the Elife E6. However, there are a few new apps that are built into the device as we’ve noticed. We’ll tackle all that in our review, but for now, you should know that the speed bump has drastically changed the experience while moving through the interface – something that wasn’t that good with the E6’s MediaTek CPU.

The main highlight of the Gionee Elife E7 is the camera. It has a 16 megapixel camera with sapphire lens, a pixel size of 1.34µm and a sensor size of 1/2.3″, something that they claim is better than everything else in the competition. We are going to put the camera to a dedicated test soon, so stay tuned for that. For the meantime, we took a few shots and they are far from disappointing; they look really impressive. Even the selfie camera is nice.

In the box, Gionee once again does not forget to pack in a case, a screen protector and all the essentials. What is surprising though is the inclusion of free NFC tags, which is a nice thing to have.

Gionee Elife E7 specs:
5.5″ Full HD (1920 x 1080) LTPS display, 400ppi
Gorilla Glass 3
2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 8974 quad-core CPU
Adreno 330
3GB RAM – 32GB internal storage
16 megapixel AF rear camera, Largan M8 lens, 1/2.3-inch, 1.34 µm pixels sensor
8 megapixel AF front-facing camera, 1.4 µm pixels sensor
3G
WiFi, WiFi Display, WiFi Direct
Bluetooth 4.0
NFC
GPS w/ A-GPS
2,500mAh non-removable battery
Amigo 2.0 (Android 4.2)
150.6 x 75.0 x 9.5mm
150g
7 color options

The Gionee Elife E7 is now available, selling for Php24,500USD 417INR 35,393EUR 398CNY 3,040. So far, the device has left us with good impressions, fixing the problems that we saw in the Elife E6. Will this be a must buy for the year? That you will have to find out soon so stay tuned for our full review.