New Delhi: Taking on world heavyweights like Samsung and Apple, Chinese handset maker Gionee has launched a premium high-end smartphone, the Gionee Elife E7, in China. The company now plans to launch the smartphone in India in the early part of 2014.
The E7 is a feature-packed device that makes sense to Indian consumers who are keen to buy latest and premium phablets in the market. The recent IDC data suggests that the Indian smartphone market almost tripled its shipments year on year (YoY) in the second quarter of 2013, and out of 9.3 million smartphones that were shipped in the 2nd quarter of 2013, nearly 30 per cent was that of phablets.
IDC said Indian consumers are keen to invest more in their mobile devices while also receiving more features than previously offered.
There are two key factors that support the fact that China's Gionee can be really successful in the world's fastest-growing smartphone market.
The first being the fact that the company has already tasted success with Elife E6, Elife E3 and E5 models. The company has been around in India for nearly seven months, and it has already become a well known brand among budget conscious Android consumers in India. The second is the phone itself. The build quality, design and form factor are of premium class.
Now coming to the design of Elife E7. The E7 has almost edge-to-edge 5.5-inch 1080p display with a bezel of just 2.3mm on the side. The device sports a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, giving a healthy pixel density of 401ppi, which is quite sharp for any standard. E7 is also equipped with Gorilla Glass 3. The display is sharp and has good viewing angles.
Gionee's latest flagship smartphone is powered by a 2.2GHz quad-core Krait 400 processor on a Snapdragon 800 chipset. The 4G LTE variant will be the first smartphone globally to house a 2.5 GHz Krait 400 CPU. E7 with 16GB of internal storage will feature 2GB of RAM, while the 32GB model has 3GB of RAM on-board.
The Gionee Elife E7 is touted as a camera-centric device, and features a massive 16MP “zero-delay” unit on its back, made by OmniVision. Reports suggest that the lens on the E7 has been made by Largen, and the auto-focus assembly is the work of Chinese Shicoh. Pixel size is said to be 1.34 microns. The phone also has an 8 megapixel front-facing camera.
The E7 runs on a customized version of Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, called Amigo 2.0 OS. The device gets its juice from a 2500mAh battery. The E7 has support for the now standard Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and GPS with GLONASS and comes in 7 different colors – black, white, blue, green, yellow, pink and orange.
Gionee Elife E7 will be up for grabs from December 5 in Black, White, Blue, Pink, Green, Yellow and Orange color options.
The company has priced the 16 GB variant is priced at 2,699 Yuan (about $443), while the 32 GB model caries a price tag of 3,199 Yuan (about $525). The smartphone will also hit markets outside of China in early 2014.
