Gionee Elife S5.1 review – octa core on diet!

Here is the Gionee Elife S5.1 review and it is slimmer than the Elife S5.5. This handset is powered by MediaTek octa core chipset. It’s a single SIM handset sporting an AMOLED screen and running KitKat with Amigo UI out of the box. A unique smartphone – light weight and ultra slim, you got to hold it to believe.

Box Pack
Though the box pack is not that slim, it does come loaded with a lot of stuffs inside. Inside the box you will find the S5.1 carefully packed within a free flip cover, the magnetic flip cover is made of good quality artificial leather, 4 screen guard (2x for front screen and 2x for the back), data cable, SIM tray ejector pin, OTG cable, travel charger, user guide, warranty card, service center list, earphone and silicon case. The SAR values are mentioned on the box : 0.183 W/Kg @ 1g head and 0.59 W/Kg @ 1g body.

Design and Display
The handset is just awesome. First of all you will be impressed with the 5.1mm thickness and the moment you hold the handset in your hand you will be surprised by its light weight. The S5.1 with battery weighs 98 grams yes it is still an octa core. Dimensions are 67.44mm x 139.88mm x 5.16mm. S5.1 was the slimmest phone in the world, but that has changed with Oppo R5 and there is rumor about another one that is even slimmer than the Oppo R5.

This is a better design as compared to the Gionee Elife S5.5. On the S5.5 the camera module was a little out and the thickness was not the same all over. However on the Elife S5.1, everything is included in the 5.1mm thickness, there is nothing coming out – the front screen and the back side is completely flat. The camera module is also integrated within the 5.1mm dimensions.

I got the golden and white coloured handset that gives a very royal look. S5.1 is with a metal frame (golden color) and the rest of the glossy white body is made of plastic and glass. The front screen and the back side come with corning gorilla glass 3 protection.

Build quality is awesome and the handset does grab attention. The side are nicely curved with no sharp edges. The bezel is pretty slim and the screen has got a black border. Power button and volume rockers are placed on the right side, micro USB and 3.5mm audio jack are placed at the bottom and the singe SIM tray is located on the right side. There is nothing on the top and there are dual Mics for noise cancellation.

It sports a 4.8 inch AMOLED screen supporting 1280 x 720 pixels resolution. Viewing angles are very good and so is the colour reproduction. It is an AMOLED screen if you have used one you would know.

There are accelerometer, proximity, gyro, light and magnetic sensors. There are no LED notifications. Handset is small sized easy to carry and operate. There is single SIM slot – you need a micro SIM.

Memory and Storage
The handset is on diet and unfortunately  it does not come with micro SD card slot. There is 1GB RAM and 16GB storage, that’s all you will get. Of the 1GB RAM the free RAM on the first boot is 358MB and 2.6GB is the free space available for apps plus 9.6GB as the internal phone storage. OTG however is supported. The handset is also using 512MB swap RAM.

Operating System
The Elife S5.1 is running Amigo UI 2.0 with Android 4.4.2.

Performance
In spite of being light weight and slim, the Elife S5.1 houses a MediaTek MT6592 octa core chipset (cortex A7) clocked at 1.7GHz coupled with Mali 450 MP GPU. Performance is smooth, but occasionally there is a bit of lag. It is a very mild lag and can be ignored. Would have been better if Gionee had loaded with 2GB RAM. Anyway the handset still does well with 1GB. The handset doesn’t heat up much.

Benchmark

Camera and Entertainment
This handset comes with 8MP AF camera placed on the rear and a 5MP camera on the front. Native video calling is supported. Rear camera can shoot FHD videos. There is a charmcam app that comes loaded with lot of features (check video review).

The still camera and video quality is very good, check sample images / videos at the end.

Gaming
The gaming experience was pretty smooth. I tried the Asphalt 8 in high visual mode and the Modern Combat 5. Both games played really well.

Others
Loud speaker sound is pretty loud, the in-call speaker is also very good, loud and clear. 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth worked well. I got the first lock almost instantly.

The touchpal keyboard app comes with word sentence gesture wherein you will see the words on the key and if that is what you want you can simply drag the word on to the keyboard (check video review).

The screen is visible under direct sunlight.

Battery
The Elife S5.1 comes with non-removable battery of 2050 mAh capacity. And this is how the battery performed.

You can expect battery backup of 3 to 5 hours with continuous moderate to high usage. I am using the handset for few days and I am getting over 24 hours of backup as per my usage. As for now it has been 24 hours and battery level is at 40% – (3G, Bluetooth is on most of the time and S5.1 is connected with Moto 360).

Verdict
Though the Gionee Elife S5.1 is not the cheapest when compared with other octa core powered handsets, however no doubt it is the best looking, ultra slim and extremely light weight octa core powered handset available in the market. It is a premium handset at a good price tag of under Rs. 19,500 (MOP Rs. 18,999). Definitely a good buy if you can afford.

(Rating: 4.5 / 5 – Rating box below does not allow decimals.)

Gionee Elife S5.1 is available on Infibeam for Rs. 19,999.

Gallery

Sample Images shot using S5.1

Front camera sample