Gionee Elife S7 review: Beautiful, great battery but can it compete in mid-budget category?

Specs: 5.2-inch full HD Super AMOLED (~424 ppi) with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 | 1.7 GHz Mediatek MT6592 Octa-core processor | 2GB RAM and 16 GB total storage space, no microSD slot | 13 MP rear camera with LED flash and 8MP front camera | 2700 mAh Polymer Battery | Dual-SIM, OTG support | Amigo UI based on Android 5.0 | Price Rs 24,425 on Flipkart

Design, Screen: The Elife S7 is for those people who want to flaunt their smartphone, but don’t have a budget north of Rs 40,000. At Rs 24,425, what you are get is a very good-looking smartphone, given how slim it is. The screen is really sharp and I had no trouble reading on it in sunlight.

The U-shaped metal frame on the side really helps the phone stand out and it looks even better in black.

Gionee Elife S7 is only .22 inches thick. (Source: Andrew Clarance)

My biggest problem with the phone has to be the fact that the glass back cover gets covered with smudges quite easily. Also, if you are careless with smartphones, you will need to think twice before you put in it your back-pocket because I was afraid I would sit on the phone and break it.

Performance, UI experience: Like other Gionee phones, this phone has the Amigo UI instead of stock has not given this the traditional Android UI and has tinkered with the experience quite a bit. There is no app tray and it feels a lot like the iOS UI where the Control settings appear at the bottom, while notifications appear on top. You can keep swiping to the left and right to see your apps and move the ones you like to the front.

To move an app from one screen/desktop to another, you just need to hard press on an app, and they will start blinking (similar to what happens in iOS) and you can then move the app to the particular screen, which show up on top.

Gionee Elife S7 control centre. (Source: Andrew Clarance)

There are a number of apps that Gionee has added and once again I didn’t really need those. All the native Google apps are in one folder and those are the ones that I really ended up using the most in addition to Twitter, Facebook.

I used this phone to extensively browse Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as well as for calls and did not notice any lags, even when I was switching between multiple apps. Gaming on the smartphone did cause the phone to heat up as did a long call, which is not something I would want as a user in a phone that costs close to Rs 25,000.

The other problem with the UI was getting the Control centre to show up. You have to swipe from the bottom to the top to get the settings to come up and at times this would not happen, which left me wondering if this was just poor implementation of the UI.

Gionee Elife S7 has a 13 megapixel rear camera. (Source: Andrew Clarance)

If you are used to the traditional Android UI, this smartphone will come with a bit of a learning curve.

Camera: This is definitely a great feature of the Elife S7 smartphone. The 13MP rear camera will let you focus clearly on an object and you get some great shots. I would suggest that you stick with the normal shooting mode and not go into the professional mode as tinkering with that never really gets the right results.

The eight megapixel front camera is really good for selfies and given how many users today choose smartphones purely on the basis of this ability, this is a top-notch option.

A picture taken from Gionee Elife S7. (Source: Shruti Dhapola)

What I did not like about the camera was the over-saturation, where a red flower became maroon or even dying yellow leaves had an unnatural green tinge to them. If you hate over-saturated photos, then this is not for you.

Battery: This is the one bit where the Elife S7 really surprised me. The phone easily lasted a whole day, even though I was constantly checking Twitter, Facebook, taking calls and spent an hour long metro ride playing a game. As an iPhone user who suffers from mortal fears about her smartphone’s battery running out, the Elife S7 was a welcome change. What I liked about the Elife S7 was that the too much usage did not result in battery levels falling drastically.

Should you buy? Elife S7’s USP is the slim form factor and the battery life in my opinion. What ticked me off was the phone’s heating issue and the fact that camera did not really deliver. If you have Rs 25,000 to spend on a phone and want something that looks exceptionally good, then the Elife S7 should be on your list.