Gionee has sent us an invite asking us to save the December 24 date for an event. The invite comes with a side profile of a smartphone, which is quite clearly the newly-announced Gionee Elife E7. The phone has been rumoured to launch in India in January next year, so an end of December announcement is quite in line with that date.

While an actual venue or place has not been announced, we will know more details closer to the date. The Elife E7 promises to be one of the most powerful and exciting smartphones to come out of China. It has the same chipset as the Nexus 5 and is likely to hit stores with a price tag similar to the Google phone. Running a heavily modified version of Android Jelly Bean 4.2, Gionee calls its UI layer Amigo.






ELife E7 with 16MP camera


The E7 is essentially a camera-centric phone. Sporting a large 5.5-inch full HD display, there’s a 16-megapixel snapper on the back and an 8 megapixel front-facing camera. Gionee also includes a host of camera functions to further spruce up the experience. There are five ways to take photos – voice-based trigger, shutter button, touch trigger, smile detection shutter and V-gesture. The camera apps gives users in-depth editing options such as auto makeup effects and intelligent scene recognition function. One will also find a Photo Album feature that automatically categorises photos by time, place, and more. Footprint mode allows users to see a series of connected pictures in one shot.

The smartphone will be available in two variants. The 4G-enabled variant is powered by a 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor while the 3G version gets a 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800. The RAM varies depending upon the onboard storage–16GB variant gets 2GB RAM and 32GB unit will come with 3GB RAM. Both variants get the Adreno 330 GPU. It is as yet unclear which version will be coming to India.

Here’s a quick look at the specifications of the Elife E7:
  • 5.5-inch FHD display with 1920 x 1080 pixels of resolution (401 ppi)
  • 4G, 3G, Wi-Fi
  • NFC
  • Bluetooth 4.0
  • GPS with A-GPS
  • 16MP rear camera with auto-focus, 8MP auto-focus front-facing camera
  • 16GB and 32GB onboard storage

What could be disappointing is the non-removable 2,500mAh battery. With the kind of specs on show, we would have liked to see a bigger pack in there. Gionee offers a slew of colourful options with the E7 such as black, white, blue, pink, green, yellow and orange. In China, the 16GB variant is priced at 2,699 Yuan (approx. Rs 27,699) and 32GB at 3,199 Yuan (approx. Rs 32,730).