Chinese phone manufacturer Gionee has released the Elife E7 mini, which is a mini version of the Elife E7 phone. The more spec'd out version comes with a 5.5-inch display with 1080p resolution support, 16-megapixel camera, and a super fast 2.5GHz Qualcomm snapdragon 800 quad core chipset.
The Elife E7 mini is a step down from its bigger brother in terms of specifications, but it is still quite an awesome-looking smartphone with Android inside. If marketed well in the U.S., the Elife line of smartphones could become the newest sensation.
On the inside, the Elife E7 mini is packing a 4.7-inch display with 720p support, 13-megapixel camera and 1.7GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6592 processor. In addition, the device comes loaded with 1GB of RAM, which is a far cry from the 3GB inside the bigger and better version of the Elife E7 mini. There's also 16GB of internal storage, Android 4.2 and dual-SIM 3G capability. We have to admit, this device comes off as very attractive smartphone, and we're also interested in seeing how far this company goes in the future.
A closer look at the device and we can see that Elife E7's design was inspired by the Nokia Lumia Windows Phone. It is not certain if this design would cause problems for Gionee in the future, but right now, the handset has caught our attention.
During the Elife E7 mini launch in India, FoneArena managed to get some quality hands-on time with it. The consensus here is that it feels very much as solid as the Elife E7, but it managed to do away with the fingerprint-prone backside. The publication also claims the user interface to be quite laggy, which might be due to the 1GB of RAM inside. In this day and age, 1GB of RAM is arguably not enough to run Android smoothly unless the user interface is toned down enough in its features and animations.
The most interesting thing about the Elife E7 mini, however, is its camera. This thing has a swivel-like camera that can be switched from being a primary camera at the back, to a front-facing camera. Right away we have this idea that Gionee has designed this phone specifically for folks who love to take "sefie" pictures for posting on the various social networks.
