Gionee Elife S5.1

4.8-inch, 1,280 x 720 pixel AMOLED display (306ppi)

The mainstay of the Gionee Elife S5.1 may be its slim waist, but there’s a welcome side effect – it tips the scales at just under 100 grams. Now that’s really lightweight for a phone these days, though the downside is that you’ll barely feel it in your pocket. Extremely slim phones could also be a tad uncomfortable to hold, but thanks to the rounded sides, the S5.1 feels reasonably good in the hand, if only a tad slippery. Its 4.8-inch display means it isn’t overly large either, so everything points towards a slim, lightweight and compact device that’s easy to pocket.

Up front and centre is a 4.8-inch display – something that goes against the phablet tide we’ve been witnessing of late. We’re not complaining though, since it makes the device great for one-handed usage, as we mentioned previously. With a resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels, the pixel density works out to be 306 ppi, and the AMOLED tech used by the screen ensures everything is crisp and vivid.

It seems like all Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, Lenovo, Huawei, OPPO and ZTE are in favour of customised skins or firmware adorning their Android devices and we’ve seen Gionee’s Amigo UI in action before. On the S5.1, you get Android KitKat 4.4.2 with Amigo UI 2.0, and the latter isn’t as crammed up to the gills with features as say, Xiaomi’s MIUI. Amigo does bring a few neat features such as gesture support to the table though.

The shooting capabilities of the Elife S5.1 are made up by an 8-megapixel autofocus shooter at the rear, assisted by an LED flash, while a 5MP camera stands guard at the front in case you’re in the mood for a selfie or need to make a video call.

Looking at that slim body, it doesn’t look likely that it could pack in powerful innards. But it does, because inside lurks an octa-core MediaTek chip clocked at 1.7GHz. This is mated to 1GB of RAM, which does seem a tad low at this price point. Thankfully for it, regular tasks work pretty well on the device, with hardly a hint of lag or jitter.