Although the Elife E7 Mini isn’t that high up on the totem pole of Gionee’s high end Elife series, it does pack a pretty interesting feature: a rotating camera. It isn’t the first smartphone to come with one, but it is one of the smaller smartphones I’ve seen to come with such a feature. Luckily enough, Gionee Philippines sent me over a unit to review, which I’ve been using on and off as one of my backup phones.
What’s in the Box
The Gionee Elife E7 Mini standard retail package is pretty straight forward. You get everything you would typically expect out of the box, except maybe for a separate battery since it’s non-removable.
- handset
- headset with in-line mic
- micro USB transfer cable
- wall charger
- SIM ejector tool
- quickstart manual
Build Quality and Design
As is typical of Gionee’s smartphones, the build quality of the Elife E7 Mini is topnotch. The body is solid with very little give when you try to press down on any part of the device. I appreciated the matte finish since it’s less prone to smudging. The camera’s rotating function is consistently firm even if you try to swing it back and forth a few times. My only gripe though is that the camera assembly elongates the phone considerably, making it larger than the typical smartphone with a 4.7 inch screen.
The Screen
As mentioned, the display is an IGZO panel manufactured by Sharp. In case you weren’t already aware, Sharp makes panels that use similar technology and supplies them to Apple for their smartphones. And the panel they made for the Elife E7 Mini certainly doesn’t shy away from its heritage. Despite being only an HD resolution display, images are crisp and full of detail and viewing angles are excellent.
My only gripe though is the colors are too saturated. Perhaps they tried to imitate the color reproduction of the Elife S5.5, and while it achieves it to some extent, that amount of saturation just doesn’t look as good on anything other than a Super AMOLED display.
The Chipset
The Elife E7 Mini is driven by a 1.7GHz MT6592 octa-core processor by MediaTek. It’s no longer the best high performance octa-core Soc you can get from Chinese chip makers these days, but it’s still a capable performer as evidenced by a few of the benchmarks I ran. It scored 33,376 in Antutu, 970 in Vellamo Metal and 1,560 in Vellamo Multicore.
RAM and Storage
The Gionee Elife E7 Mini comes with 1GB RAM, which a few folks find to be lacking these days. However, it’s still good enough for most casual users and gamers. There were only a few times where I encountered force closes due to low memory and that was when I was trying to switch between Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Modern Combat 5. Along with it comes a whopping 16GB of internal storage. Unfortunately, it isn’t expandable, but it does support USB OTG for power users who like to bring their entire media library with them.
Software and UI
The Elife E7 Mini runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean out of the box, although a KitKat 4.4 update has already been announced and is rolling out in other parts of the world. The average user won’t notice much of a difference between the two in terms of functionality, but knowledgeable users would certainly appreciate a version of Android that’s as close to current as possible.
While the underlying software isn’t bad and will be upgraded soon, you can still expect the same Amigo OS UI layer. Alhtough it does pack some great functionality, I find it to be quite bloated and slow. I find this weird since there are custom UI overlays from other Chinese phone makers that sport a similar simplified layout, but are nowhere near as slow as Amigo OS. Thankfully, this is remedied by simply installing a 3rd party launcher.
Communication
As a phone, the Gionee Elife E7 Mini functions well enough, being just the right size for holding it in one hand while taking and making calls. However, I’ve gotten so used to 5 inch phones and above that I find the 4.7 inch screen to be a little on the small side. Still, it should be large enough to accommodate the hands of the average Pinoy when it comes to texting.
In addition to calling and texting, the Elife E7 Mini supports HSPA+, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS built-in so you’ll hardly be left wanting when it comes to wireless connectivity. Sadly, if you plan to take advantage of our local telcos’ limited 4G-LTE coverage, you’ll be sad to know that the Elife E7 Mini doesn’t support it.
Imaging
Rather than the traditional dual camera setup that most smartphones come with, the Elife E7 Mini comes with a single 13mp autofocus camera that rotates so it can be used as both the front and back cameras and anything in between. The advantage of this is that your selfies aren’t compromised by the typically lower resolution of front-facing smartphone cameras.
One thing I was curious about was if I would have an easier time taking certain shots by angling the camera in different ways. Here are some samples I took using the Elife E7 Mini.
I don’t take a lot of selfies so I didn’t really have to rotate the camera a lot, however, I did appreciate that the camera application was fast enough to flip the image automatically every time I did so. With other camera applications like Camera 360, it isn’t automatic at all, but all you have to do is just tap on the front/back camera toggle and that takes care of that.
Entertainment
As an entertainment device, the Gione Elife E7 Mini performs quite well. The 4.7 inch IGZO screen is great for personal viewing and has great viewing angles that allow a friend or two to watch with you. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the chipset and its Mali 450 GPU doesn’t have any trouble decoding Full HD video. It also makes for a great personal audio player thanks to its pocketable size and clean audio output. And yes, it supports CTIA-compliant headsets.
Gaming
On top of being a great media player, the Elife E7 Mini is also a great gaming device. I ran the device through 3DMark and GFXBench, a couple of my favorite benchmarking apps that specifically test a phone’s gaming capabilities. It did reasonably well in 3DMark’s Ice Storm Unlimited benchmark test, achieving an overall frame rate of that fluctuated between 24.2fps to 35.5fps across all three tests. In GFXBench, it didn’t fare quite as well though, achieving a frame rate of only 13.9fps in the T-Rex graphics test on native resolution.
Of course, benchmarks everything and what’s more important is that it runs real games well. The Mali 450 GPU didn’t disappoint, powering through games like Batman: Arkham Origins and Asphalt Overdrive while maintaining optimal frame rates. There shouldn’t be too many games that will give the Elife E7 Mini any trouble.
Battery Life
The Gionee Elife E7 Mini packs a 2,200mAh battery, which is adequate for a sub-5 inch screen, although there are still some who would not consider it to be ideal. It should still last casual users an entire work day, however, if you’re the type that likes to surf the web using mobile data a lot or play a lot of games, you’ll likely find yourself plugging into a wall socket at least once during the work/school day. I ran a test to determine how long the battery life would last in a straight gaming scenario and it was estimated at 3 hours and 11 minutes, which isn’t bad at all compared to a few phones I’ve tested recently.
So Should You Buy the Gionee Elife E7 Mini?
The Gionee Elife E7 Mini is a decent octa-core smartphone with a pretty innovative feature. Sure, some local brands have started coming out with their own smartphones with rotating cameras, but given a choice between such a device and the Elife E7 Mini, I’d still go for the Mini for the build quality that Gionee is known for.
As for the rotating camera itself, it’s quite serviceable. However aside from angling it front or back, I didn’t find much use for weird angles. The design is certainly innovative and seems to save the rather wasteful practice of using 2 cameras on a device when you only really need one, but that’s really it. Of course, maybe I wasn’t imaginative enough to take full advantage of the rotating camera, but that’s just me.
Gionee Elife E7 Mini Specs
- 4.7″ HD IGZO display
- 1.7GHz MediaTek MT6592 octa-core processor
- Mali 450 GPU
- Android 4.4 KitKat with Amigo OS UI
- 1GB RAM
- 16GB internal storage
- 13mp autofocus rotating camera with LED flash
- 3.75G/HSPA+
- WiFi b/g/n
- Bluetooth 4.0
- GPS with A-GPS
- 2,200mAh battery
