The Elife E6 was a huge hit for Gionee and marked the company’s official entry into the premium smartphones category in India. Coupled with a glitzy launch affair, India finally took notice of an otherwise unknown smartphone maker trying to make a name for itself. The launch of the Elife E7 was an even grander affair and rightfully so since this is Gionee’s answer to high-end droids from big name companies but with a very affordable price tag.
Gionee is talking up the camera capabilities of the E7, as it happens to be the second Android phone in India with a 16MP primary sensor (the first being the Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom).
Design and Build : The E7 follows a completely new design philosophy compared to the E6. The monolithic design consists of a unibody, polycarbonate shell that’s available in a variety of colours. We’re not terribly fond of the glossy finish as it’s a nightmare to keep clean. Thankfully, it doesn’t attract fingerprints as much as you’d expect.
The placement of the buttons isn’t too great either as the power sits right on the top, which is inconvenient to reach considering it’s a 5.5-inch display. The phone is incredibly slim and light though and it won’t weigh you down in your pocket.
We have capacitive buttons in the front along with an 8MP front-facing camera. There are two symmetrical grills at the bottom for the speaker and microphone. Around the back, is the brand new 16MP camera sensor from OmniVision. There isn’t a Xenon flash however, which is a sad considering a you’d expect the best flash technology in a phone designed for photography.
Overall, the E7 is a well-crafted handset and has premium written all over it. The design leaves a lot to be desired however as it doesn’t really stand out in any way. Also, at 5.5-inches, it can be quite cumbersome to use.
Features : The Elife E7 features a 5.5-inch, Full HD display. The IPS panel does a great job at delivering lively colours and sharp text. Viewing angles and sunlight legibility are also pretty good.
Like the E6, the E7 also features Gionee’s heavily customised version of Android 4.2.2, which, in a nutshell, is a complete nightmare to use. It’s hard to use it for more than a couple of days without risking losing your sanity. All apps are displayed on the home screen and the redesigned, oversized icons mean it’s hard to spot the app you’re looking for. There’s no option to have homescreen widgets here, which is really annoying. The experience is a bit smoother than it was on the E6, I’ll give it that much. But it’s terrible nonetheless.
The E7 also comes with some ‘Smart Gestures’ like tap-to-wake, smart answer, etc. These work well but we wouldn’t recommend turning on the tap-to-wake as this feature sporadically woke up the phone while still in the pocket. I would remove the phone from my pocket, only to find that I had accidentally sent gibberish text to a friend on Whatsapp. Adding a pattern lock helps but we didn’t face such an issue on the G2.
Gionee does bundle along a boat load of apps with the E7 like a bunch of games, productivity apps, and some of their own like GioneeXender, NQ Mobile Security, Traffic Assistant, Power Manager, Amigo Paper and CharmCam.
Media : The E7 features Gionee’s custom audio and video player. The music player has limited support for codecs as it does not support FLAC files. However, you might still want to use it as it supports DTS audio enhancements which make a huge impact on the audio. You can choose the built-in presets of tweak the setting yourself. Audio quality is good via headphones, but the loudspeaker isn’t great. At high volumes, there’s severe distortion.
Verdict and Price in India : The Gionee Elife E7 is available for Rs 26,300 online for the 16B model and about Rs 27,900 for the 32GB model. With such a minor price gap, it makes sense to pick the 32GB version considering you can’t expand the storage. What’s more, the 32GB version also comes with 3GB of RAM instead of 2GB. As far as camera-centric phones are concerned, the E7 is your best bet at this price point. You also have the Sony Xperia ZR, which is still a very good camera phone for the price.
Gionee ticks most of the right boxes with the E7. You get powerful hardware and a very capable camera. The 16MP shooter is nowhere as good as Sony’s Z1 but is still better than most 13MP shooters out there. However, there’s still a lot of work to be done when it comes to the firmware. It just feels unpolished and way too complicated for the average user. If Gionee can sort this out by sticking to stock Android as much as possible, then the E7 gets our recommendation.
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