Gionee ELife E8 India Launch: New Flagship From Chinese Phone Maker To Launch October 8

Gionee, the Chinese smartphone maker and one of the largest ODMs (Original Device Manufacturers) in the world, has announced that it would launch its newest Android powered flagship handset, the Gionee Elife E8, in India starting October 8, 2015. The announcement comes just a few weeks after Gionee also announced its plans to make some of its handsets in India. Coming back to the Gionee Elife E8, this phone is widely touted to be a successor to the Gionee Elife E7, which was launched back in late 2013. The Elife E7 won rave reviews for its superb camera, design, and overall functionality. The E8 is expected to top the E7 in terms of all these features and end up being a worthy successor. That brings us to the specifications of the new phone.

The Gionee Elife E8 will be powered by a Mediatek processor. For some, this might be seen as a downgrade owing to the fact that the Elife E7 used the more mainstream Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. However, Gionee has used the powerful Mediatek MT6795 Helio X10 chipset on the Elife E8 which compares well with the current crop of Qualcomm and Exynos chipsets being offered from Qualcomm and Samsung, respectively. The Helio X10 chipset is an octa-core beast with each core sprinting at 2.0 Ghz It also packs in 3GB of RAM as well. This might be on the slightly lower side because we now have devices that offer 4GB of RAM – the likes of the Asus Zenfone 2 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, being a few examples. Moving on to the display, the Gionee Elife E8 gets an “upgrade” here with the display size being increased from 5.5-inches to 6 inches. The display resolution also sees an upgrade from full HD to QHD (1920 x 1080) to (1,440 x 2560) pixels. The phone will come in a 64GB variant and thankfully, unlike the E7, you do get the option to expand the memory further – up to 128GB using microSD cards. The graphics department will be handled by the PowerVR G6200 chip, which will ensure a great gaming experience. Apart from this, the Elife E8 would also be the first phone from the company to get a fingerprint sensor. Here is the list of some of the key specs.

While the outgoing E7 boasted of a 16-megapixel camera, which as we mentioned was great in itself, the new Elife E8 gets a significant upgrade here as well in the megapixels department. The Gionee Elife E8 gets a 23.7-megapixel camera that supports lossless zoom in real time. And yes we do get the option to record 4K videos as well. 4k was not mainstream at the time of the launch of the E7.

Another major addition to the Gionee Elife E8 would be the fact that it will support 4G LTE networks in India. 4G has made decent inroads into India and several cities now boast of a robust 4G networks, which again wasn’t the case during the time of the E7’s reign. Powering all this potent hardware would the the large 3,500 mAh battery that should easily help drive the QHD display and still keep the phone powered all day. Moving on to the software front, the Gionee Elife E8 will run Android 5.1 at launch – albeit in a skinned form called the Amigo UI 3.1 – developed by Gionee themselves. Being a flagship, the phone also has the likelihood of receiving priority updates in the future.

At the time of its initial introduction in China, the Elife E8 received a price tag of RMB 3,999 ($630). This translates to a price tag of nearly Rs.41,000 in India. If the phone is launched at that price, it would become the most expensive phone launched by Gionee in India by far. However, initial hints are that the phone might be made available for much lesser considering the market dynamics of India. With the likes of the One Plus Two and the Moto X Play and the upcoming Moto X Style all well under the Rs.30,000 price bracket, Gionee might find it difficult to command a premium for the Elife E8. However, we will reserve a final comment once the phone is officially announced. There is also a possibility that the Gionee Elife E8 would be offered in an online only exclusive sales model. This is yet to be confirmed.

Expect a review of the Elife E8 here in a few days after the launch of the phone in India.

[Images Via Gionee]