First impressions Gionee Elife S5.5

Gionee the original chinese smartphone manufacturer unlike Micromax and other small Indian players, had an amazing smartphone launch on March 31, 2014. Gionee hosted a grand launch event in Goa, to launch their latest smartphone Elife S5.5 and celebrate a turnover of 500 crores.

We have attended so many events but this was exceptional. This kind of event was never seen before and definitely creates a history among press events. Gionee had released E Series, M Series, P Series and G Series smartphones and with the launch of S 5.5 they initiated the S Series smartphones which revolves around style, design and build of the smartphone. Gionee Elife S5.5 was announced at MWC 2014 in Barcelona as the world’s slimmest smartphone and was launched in India on 31st March 2014.

The Gionee Elife S5.5 has been branded as the world’s slimmest smartphone with just 5.5mm thickness. It is powered by a MediaTek MT6592T 1.7GHz Octa-Core processor with 2GB of RAM. It comes with 16GB internal memory and does not have any option to expand this any further. We have to compromise on this to get this kind of thinness else an external card slot could have not kept the thickness 5.5mm. It features a 13MP rear camera snapper probably using the same camera module as the Elife E6 and a 5MP front-facing camera with world’s first 95 degree ultra wide angle to cope up with video calling requirements and selfies. The front has a bright 5.0-inch Super AMOLED full HD display with 441 ppi pixel density. It runs on Android 4.2.2 JellyBean with Amigo 2.0 making the user interface simple following the flat design and packs non-removable 2300mAh battery.

Being honest I was flattered when I first saw the smartphone. The build of the smartphone is extremely good. The handset has been so well designed that you cannot make out that it is from a chinese manufacturer. The unibody design has a metal chasis which is made of some Aluminium-Magnesium alloy on the edges having the antenna and connectivity parts right there to avoid problems such as death grip which was found on iPhone 4. Both front and the back have a laminated, polished gorilla glass protection which although is brittle but scratch resistant somehow like what we had on Nexus 4.

Spending an hour with the device because that’s what you get the most at a launch event, we tested the newly launched smartphone and have got our first impressions. As said earlier, this is definitely the best engineered product by Gionee. The first look of the smartphone was jaw breaking. 10/10 for the build.
The 5-inch display is bright and features good viewing angles, which has been a USP in E6 and even E7. The camera though due to improper lighting conditions was not judged properly but what could make out was that it can perform well in daylight conditions. We need to perform a test again when we get the review unit to answer any further questions on it’s camera.

Gionee’s Amigo as always was meh. I personally don’t find a reason why I should use this, though it did not trouble us during our time with the device. This totally depends on the user, maybe you will like it. Gionee claims to have improved their Amigo custom UI but it looked the same to us, probably the retail units might have the updated one installed.

We would suggest our readers to seriously consider Gionee while planning our next buy because they do have some kickass handsets in their range of smartphones. Elife S5.5 has one of the best build seen on a smartphone and that too at an aggressive pricing of ₹22,999 only. I think what Gionee claims that they will be No. 1 handset manufacturer in India is not far seen if they keep coming up with such brilliant innovations. Below is the full photo gallery attached for reference.