The battle for the title of world’s thinnest smartphone rages on, and the latest firm to lift the trophy is one which is probably unfamiliar to you. It’s Gionee, a Chinese smartphone brand, which has announced the Elife S5.5, which measures an almost unfeasibly thin 5.5mm. Gionee has put the Elife up for preorder in China, plus it says that in the future, it’ll be putting the device up for sale in another 40 different countries. While we wait for news on this, here’s what the phone is all about.
The screen measures 5-inches, and according to GSMArena.com, it has a 1080p resolution. An octa-core processor running at 1.7GHz powers the phone, and although Gionee hasn’t confirmed the brand, we’d expect it to be one of MediaTek’s MT6592 chips. There’s 2GB of RAM to help speed things along, plus 16GB of storage space to fill up.
Android 4.2 Jelly Bean is the installed OS (which will annoy Google, if recent reports are accurate), covered with Gionee’s Amigo user interface. Other features include a 13-megapixel rear camera, a 5-megapixel front camera, and a sensibly sized 2300mAh battery. Apparently, this should be enough to see the phone last the day, despite its waifish dimensions.
Gionee’s Elife S5.5 has snatched the world’s thinnest smartphone title from the Vivo X3, announced during the summer last year which has a 5.75mm thick chassis. The X3 usurped Huawei’s 6.16mm thick Ascend P6. Compare this to phones we’re likely to see everyday, and the Elife S5.5 is 2.1mm thinner than the iPhone 5 and 2.4mm thinner than the Galaxy S4.
The standard 3G version has been priced at around $370, and a 4G version will follow in a few months time. We’ll have to wait and see where Gionee decides to sell the Elife 5.5 next.
