Gionee ELife E7 Mini: first impressions

HIGHLIGHTS

Gionee surprisingly unveiled a mini version of its flagship smartphone, the ELife E7, at its launch event here in India. We got our hands on the device and here is what we thought of it.

The Gionee ELife E7 Mini is the first device in India to debut with the MediaTek 1.7 GHz MT6592 octa-core SoC and 1GB RAM. The device scored a decent 27,175 in the AnTuTu benchmark, which suggests that the performance of this chip poses a credible threat to Qualcomm's chips which are used in most of high end smartphones. However, benchmarks are just a part of the story, so we will have to wait to find out how the device performs in day to day use.

The phone has a 13MP swivel camera, which looks the same as the one present on the Oppo N1. The camera interface is the standard one which comes with Amigo 2.0 OS, that is Gionee's homebrewn solution. It works fine and you will be able to take decent images under most indoor lighting conditions. The rotating mechanism works great but only the time will tell if it’s really durable.

The E7 Mini also has one the world’s first 4.7-in IGZO displays allowing for significantly higher pixel densities at less power consumption; the thinness of this smartphone can also be attributed this display . The display is also an edge-to-edge profile with 1280 × 720 (720p) pixels resolution. It seemed pretty crisp and vibrant with good viewing angles.

The phone runs on Amigo 2.0 OS which is a modified version of Android 4.2.2 OS. It is heavily customized and has lots of features but it might disappoint some fans of the stock Android interface. The interface can be quite quirky sometimes but works well for the most part. However, there is still scope for lots of improvements on the interface front.

The phone also looks quite good and has better build quality then most of the smartphones that it would be competing with at its price of Rs. 18,999. The phone will be launching in two colors, namely- sky blue and flower pink. The E7 Mini also supports dual-SIM (GSM GSM) functionality which I think will attract many Indian users.

The main selling point of the mobile will be its price, at Rs.18,999 it offers big in terms of specifications and quite possibly beats most of its competition in terms of performance . It will be interesting to see how it performs in the Indian market , since Gionee has already announced that they have plans to become the number one handset maker in India within 5 years .

Also read:

Gionee ELife E7 and E7 Mini: Benchmarks and Photos

Ishan Verma
Digit.in
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Digit.in
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