The Gionee Elife S5.5 with a 5.5mm thickness makes it the world’s slimmest smartphone. This single SIM handset sports a 5 inch screen with corning gorilla glass 3 protection and is powered by 1.7GHz octa core processor. The S5.5 is available for Rs. 21,299.
Box pack
I got the White / Golden colour option, full black, Pink and other colour options are also available. Box Content – Gionee Elife S5.5 smartphone, screen guard, free flip cover, OTG cable, travel charger, data cable, earphone, warranty card, micro SIM ejector pin and user guide.
Design and Display
The handset indeed is 5.55mm thick. However it is 5.58 mm thick in the center (using vernier calliper), I also checked with Screw Guage it is 5.55mm. If you measure away from the center the thickness is approx 5.79 / 5.73mm. But anyway the handset looks pretty slim.
The Golden Flip cover added more glamor to the handset, it is a simple cover made of artificial leather and doesn’t really do anything – it is non magnetic. You will need to stick the cover on the back of handset, well that’s the only option as the handset is sealed.
The camera module is a bit out and placed on the extreme corner. Gionee Elife S5.5 weight with battery is 128 grams. The white and the golden colour combination gives a very royal look to the handset.
The Elife S5.5 body is made up of Magnesium Alloy, back is glossy white with Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The volume rockers and power button are placed on the left, audio port and mic at the bottom and micro USB port is placed on the top side. There are dual microphones for noise cancellation.
The 2300 mAh battery comes built in (non-removable). There is a micro SIM slot on the right side, you will need to use the micro SIM ejector pin to eject the tray and place the micro SIM in the slot.
Gionee Elife S5.5 comes with a 5 inch AMOLED screen with excellent viewing angles. Touch is smooth and responsive. The screen supports 1920 x 1080 pixels (FHD) resolution and also comes protected with corning gorilla glass 3.
There are accelerometer, light, proximity, orientation and magnetic sensors.
Memory, Storage and OS
The Elife S5.5 comes with 2GB RAM and optional 16GB/32GB storage. The one that I got for the review is with 16GB storage. The handset is completely sealed there are no micro SD card slot, however OTG is supported. I tried connecting the pen drive with the OTG cable provided by Gionee and it worked.
Of the 2GB RAM 1.1GB is available on the first boot. And of the 16GB storage, 2.7GB is the free space for apps and 9.3GB is the free internal storage space. This single SIM handset runs on Amigo UI based on android 4.2.2.
Performance
Elife S5.5 is using the 1.7GHz (1.66GHz) ARM cortex A7 octa core MediaTek MT6592 chipset with Mali 450 MP GPU. Performance is lag free. The handset does tend to get hot (not too hot) when using heavy applications but it cools down faster. There is the CPU power saving mode that limits the CPU frequency to increase battery life and reduce the temperature.
| App | Result |
| Quadrant | 14864 |
| Antutu | 26694 |
| Vellamo | HTML5 (2041) Metal (724) |
| Nenamark 2 | 57.3fps |
| Multi Touch | 5 point |
Camera and Entertainment
The S5.5 being a octa core can easily play full HD videos. There is 13MP rear camera, it’s auto focus and comes with LED flash support. There is front camera of 5MP resolution, it’s FF and wide angle good for selfies.
The rear camera can shoot FHD (1080p) videos. Camera interface is easy to use and there is one more camera application called charmcam that comes loaded with lot of effects.
The camera quality is just average. Focusing at times is not that sharp. In general the Gionee Elife E7 camera is much better.
Gaming
There is limited space of about 9GB. I installed the MC4 (Modern Combat 4) and Asphalt 8. Both the games played well. Asphalt 8 played smooth in high visual quality mode. The handset did get heated up a bit, but it was not too hot. Max temperature was 43 degrees.
Others
3G, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth worked well without any issues. Sound is loud and clear.
2300 mAh Battery
We have seen that most of the octa cores drain a lot of battery and some get too hot specially when playing high end games or using heavy applications. The battery backup on the S5.5 is average.
Battery backup is good enough for normal to moderate usage, but if you are using heavy applications (moderate to high) then the drain is much faster. I used the handset for 27 minutes running benchmark apps and played the two games for few minutes, battery dropped by 14% and temperature was 43 degrees.
You can expect up to 3 hours of high end game play on a full battery charge.
Gionee Elife S5.5 review verdict
It is just like the other 1.7GHz octa core handset with a 13MP primary camera and 5MP secondary camera. The battery comes built in. The only difference between the Elife S5.5 and other 1.7GHz powered octa core is that the S5.5 comes with AMOLED screen with Corning Gorilla glass 3 protection on front and back, runs on customized OS and the key feature – it’s the slimmest phone in the world, just 5.55 mm thick.
Considering the price tag and the looks, it is a good option, but do note that camera and battery performance is average.
Gionee Elife S5.5 is now available for Rs. 21,299.