GIONEE ELIFE E7 Smartphone

The ELife E7 features a chunky, plasticky body that comes in six color options, which retains the sharp, boxy shape of its siblings, but with a slightly curvy back. It features a 5.5-inch IPS LCD screen with full-HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution. The screen is toughened by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 panels.

The back side of the E7 is characterized by the abnormally large primary camera lens, which really does deck up the biggest item on the E7's feature-list, a 16-megapixel BSI CMOS camera. The front-camera, we suspect, has to be of the highest resolution among any smartphone in its class, featuring an 8-megapixel sensor, which should make 1080p video chats possible, with the right app, and the right amount of Internet bandwidth.

Under the hood, both the E7 and its LTE-equipped E7L variant run Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoCs, but different variants of it. The E7 runs the MSM8274 base-model, with a quad-core Krait 400 CPU clocked at 2.30 GHz, and HSPA+ capable integrated soft-modem, while the E7L features the fastest variant on the block, the MSM8974AC, which features a 2.50 GHz CPU, and 4G LTE-capable integrated soft-modem.

Both variants come in 16 GB and 32 GB internal storage options, and what's interesting is that the RAM amount differs between the two, a first. The 16 GB variant comes with 2 GB of LPDDR3 memory, while the 32 GB variant features 3 GB LPDDR3. Other connectivity options on the device include 802.11 ac WLAN, and Bluetooth 4.0. We can't find NFC on the list. The device is powered by a 2,500 mAh battery.

Gionee deployed Android 4.2.2 with its custom Amigo 2.0 user-interface, that includes numerous custom apps, including a camera app that comes with several shooting modes, including ones that take advantage of the native HDR processing of its primary sensor.