Gionee Elife S7

As far as the design philosophy is concerned, the Elife S7 doesn’t stray too far away from its siblings, the S5.5 and S5.1. In essence, it’s a slim slab with glass on both sides and metal in the middle. However, there are a couple of important differences to note. Unlike its siblings, the S7 doesn’t come with capacitive navigation keys and relies on virtual keys instead. Secondly, the metal frame on the sides is made of aviation-grade aluminium magnesium alloy, and is concave for added strength. This design has been labelled as ‘U-skeleton’ by the brand, and it does feel quite rigid. Both the screen and the rear are layered with Gorilla Glass 3, so scratches can be kept at bay. Smudges are a different story though, and our review unit that features a piano black rear had a hard time keeping those away.

A flagship-grade smartphone like the S7 can’t do with a screen that offers less than full HD resolution, and that’s exactly what it offers. The screen measures 5.2-inches diagonally, and boasts Super AMOLED tech – so the colours are vivid and the visuals are very crisp. Right from web browsing to media and gaming, the lovely screen just takes everything to a new level. It’s quite responsive to touch too.

Like most smartphone brands from China, Gionee’s handsets run a custom build of Android. It’s dubbed Amigo OS, and the Elife S7 is the first one to get the latest version (3.0) that uses Android Lollipop as its base. Amigo has improved by leaps and bounds since the first time we saw it, but some of the basic attributes remain the same.

The Elife S7 sports a 13-megapixel shooter at the rear, and a very respectable 8MP snapper at front. The camera app comes with a simple, no-fuss interface, and includes a variety of colour filters and modes covering the likes of HDR, panorama, night, and face beauty. There’s a so-called professional mode that lets you tweak settings such as ISO and white balance, while the Magic Focus mode offers background refocussing capabilities. The available capture modes include gesture shot and touch-to-shoot as well.

The marriage of the 1.7GHz octa-core MediaTek processor and 2GB of RAM results in smooth operation, with nary a hiccup during usage. Amigo runs like a hot knife through butter, and we didn’t face any issues with either navigation or running productivity-based apps.