Gionee Elife E7 mini is a mini variant of Gionee Flagship Elife E7 and very well deserves to share the flaghship moniker. We had some time to play with Gionee Elife E7 Mini and here is the overview of the device which exceeded our expectations and pleasantly surprised us.
Gionee Elife E7 Mini Quick Specs
- Display Size: 4.7 Inches touch screen with 720 x 1280 resolution
- Processor: 1.7 GHz Mediatek True OctaCore with Mali 450 MP4 GPU
- RAM: 1GB
- Software Version: Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) Upgradeable to KitKat
- Primary Camera: 13 MP AF Swivel camera with LED flash
- Secondary Camera: Same camera doubles as a Selfie Shooter as well
- Internal Storage: 16 GB
- External Storage: No
- Battery: 2200 mAh battery Lithium Ion
- Connectivity: 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, aGPS, 3.5mm audio jack, FM Radio
- Others: OTG Support – Yes, Dual SIM – Yes (Micro SIM),
- Sensors: Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, light, magnetic
- SAR: 0.612 W/Kg @ 1g Head 0.524 W/Kg @ 1g Body
Gionee Elife E7 Mini Unboxing, Full Review, Camera, Price, Gaming, Benchmarks and Overview [Video]
Design, Build and Display
The Unibody design looks quite premium when held. The Elife E7 Mini is about 8.3 mm thick and feels quite slim with well balanced weight. The highlight of the design is the Oppo N1 like Swivel camera which is quite smooth in operation and also houses in call speakers on both sides. The matte finish back cover provides with good build quality.
The flipcover which comes bundled in the box has cutouts in all the right places to allow you to smoothly swivel E7 Minis camera, press power key and adjust volume. The leather finish flipcover however didn’t fit rigidly over E7 mini and we got a While color one in the box with black Elife E7 Mini.
The5 point multitouch Display is also very good and easily manageable with one hand owing to sweet 4.7 inches of diagonal length. The display flaunts 1280 X 720 pixels with good viewing angles and colors. It is not the sharpest display but works very well with the device. Outdoor visibility is good and auto brightness works well.
Processor and RAM
Inside the nicely built device you will find the prowess of 8 Cortex A7 cores at work in MT6592 Mediatek Octa core chipset backed by only 1 GB RAM. Amigo ROM is not much to our liking and also accountable for slight amount of UI lag, but the device functioned smoothly with third party launchers.
Elife E7 Mini scored 25927 on Antutu and gaming performance was smooth without any issue, even with graphic intensive games. We are not sure if that will hold true after few months of carefree usage because of RAM limitations. The device got heated after around 20 minutes of gaming but not as much to make you uncomfortable. Amigo ROM also comes with an accessible cache cleaner to manage your RAM.
Camera and Internal Storage
The rear 13 MP camera is the primary reason to recommend this phone. The camera works great in day light and artificial light. Macro shots are good as well. Several low light photos were grainy but certainly above average. It can also record good quality full HD and HD videos. Unlike Elife E7, the camera app does not have a pro mode, but that’s not something we are missing on this device. The Camera app fires whenever you swivel the camera module and this is something we like. The camera will be ideal for those who intend to take lots of selfies.
Internal storage is 16 GB out of which around 2.5 GB is available on first boot. 10 GB storage is available for apps data and multimedia content. The storage is not expandable. USB OTG is also supported which means you can carry multimedia files in separate flash drive.
User Interface and Battery
Gionee Elife E7 Mini comes with Android 4.2 jelly bean based Amigo ROM out of the box but you can update it to 4.4.2 KitKat by taking your device to the service center. There is gesture support, a good SIM card manager and an App cache cleaner. Continuous input is not supported on default keyboard, but since we have several efficient third party keyboards, it won’t be a problem. You can specify apps which you wan’t to run on boot up which can be used to save significant amount of battery.
Battery capacity is better than what we initially expected. The device can comfortably last one day with moderate usage. If you engage with graphic intensive gaming and other more demanding apps you can get around 5 hours of usage.
Sound, Video Playback and Connectivity
Loudspeaker has average loudness, nothing extraordinary. The handset which comes in the box are good in quality but bass levels are not too great. You can play HD and Full HD videos on this device but it does gets heated up after around 30 minutes of viewing HD video files. GPS locking is fast, which is not something we get to say very often for MediaTek devices.
Gionee Elife E7 Mini Photo Gallery
Conclusion and Price
Gionee Elife E7 Mini is selling for around 17,000 INR which sounds like a good deal for this device. In case you have already given up on chasing after Xiaomi Mi3, you could consider it as a good camera smartphone with powerful CPU, Good display and not so great software.
