Gionee Elife S7 review: Neat device let down by its price

With its offline retail model, Gionee has been able to come up with some impressive devices in the past. The list includes the Elife E5, E6, E7 and the S5.5. Adding a new contender to its slim series, Gionee has introduced the S7 in the market. But does it live up to the benchmark laid down by other Gionee smartphones?

Design: The phone has a slim form factor and feels premium to hold. It has a 5.2 inch AMOLED display that is good to look at. The company claims to have added scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 3, which protects it from scratches. Even with the big display, Gionee has maintained the thickness at just 5.5mm which makes it comfortable to grip and operate with a single hand. The Gionee S7 has a simple design with metallic frame, running across the sides. Due to the uni-body design, the SIM tray has been added to the left, which can be accessed using the eject tool. Volume controls along with power key have been placed on the top. Lastly, the 3.5mm jack, charging port and speakers are at the bottom edge. The black rear looks good but attracts a lot of finger prints.

UI and OS: The Gionee S7 comes preloaded with Android Lollipop operating system which is hidden beneath the Amigo 3.0. I am not a big fan of the custom user interface of Gionee smartphone, but it seems that the company has further enhanced the UI. All the apps are scattered on the multiple homescreens with no dedicated app tray. You can add four icons at the bottom, which remains static across the homescreens. The three control keys - multitasking, home and back - are a part of the display. The user interface is responsive. However, if are not comfortable with the interface, you can always install third-party launchers such as Nova Launcher.

Camera: With the 13 MP becoming a standard in smartphones, Gionee S7 is also equipped with one. There is a 13 MP camera at the rear and a 5MP in the front. The camera interface is neat and simple and offers some professional modes too. The camera is just about average and there was a lot of noise in the images captured on the auto mode. The images captured during low lights were also about average with visible noise. However, the front camera does a good job while capturing selfies, with the camera app enhancing these images.

Performance & Battery: This smartphone is powered by a 1.7GHz MediaTek MT6752 octa-core processor and 2GB of RAM. It manages to perform most of the tasks with ease, just like any other mid-segment smartphone. Multi-tab browsing on the Chrome browser was smooth. I was easily able to switch between multiple running apps. It didn't slow down even once during the review. I was able to run heavy graphic apps and games without any lag. However, it did heat up after long hours of usage. The phone comes with 16GB internal storage of which only 10GB is user accessible. And it doesn't support an expandable memory card. It packs in a 2700mAh battery that gave me over a day on heavy usage.

Bag it or Junk it: A neat device but slightly overpriced.