The Elephone S7: a well built and beautiful phone for a very low price. But is it any good?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn3G1VkRA3g&feature=youtu.be

I’ve used the Elephone for the past week to discover its flaws and positive points. Let’s get the cons out of the way first.

Wi-Fi Signal

I had some issues with the wi-fi-signal on this phone. It’s not that I never have connection, but when I’m in a room with bad wi-fi reception, it’s difficult to connect. On my regular iPhone SE, I’d get one bar of wi-fi, while the Elephone wouldn’t connect at all. If you have a house with good wi-fi reach everywhere, it shouldn’t be an issue.

Pictures and Video are Too Sharp

This is a weird one. When you take pictures or watch YouTube videos, the image shown on your screen is over sharpened. It just looks weird and is something you need to get used to with this device, there’s no way to change it.

Long Shutter

When taking pictures, you’ll need to hold still because of the long shutter time. It takes about 2 seconds to take a picture and it’s very difficult to keep the phone still. You’ll get the hang of it eventually but be prepared for some blurry shots.

Keyboard Lag

When typing something, I noticed the keyboard lagging from time to time. It’s not pinpoint exact, and a bit annoying when you’re coming from an expensive, more polished phone.

Battery Life

The battery life on this phone is almost abominable, but on the other hand, the battery life on my iPhone 6 is even worse. You get about 9 hours of battery life with heavy usage, but with the fast charging capabilities, you can replenish around 30% charge in half an hour.

Gets Warm

The back of the phone, where the chips are, gets pretty warm. This is not really a problem or issue, but it’s just something that I noticed when using it.

Sound quality

When watching Youtube videos, the sound quality is poor. The sound is like it’s coming out of a can and it’s very tiny. Not impressed by this.

Notifications

Some notifications tend to skip and not show up on the phone. So when you get a message for example, you don’t get a notification. VERY ANNOYING! There is a solution however, there are apps you can use to white-list  other apps that you always need a notification from. It fixed my problem.

Homescreen Lag

When you get a lot of notifications and you pull out your phone, the homescreen lags. This may be from sliding around in your pants or bag but it’s still not acceptable. Annoying!

Well, we have all the bad things out of the way, let’s get on to the good part!

Design

The design of the Elephone S7 is just amazing. We all know that they got their ‘inspiration’ from the Samsung Galaxy S7, but it’s still an amazing looking phone with the rounded edges on the screen and the shiny back cover (even though it attracts a lot of fingerprints).

Responsiveness

This phone is very fast. With 4GB of RAM on the most expensive version and a Helio X20 Deca Core, you’re getting a very responsive and fast phone. Apps load up very fast and using the phone is a great experience. It’s a shame that it has so many flaws, otherwise it would be an almost perfect phone.

Price-Quality

At the moment I’m writing this, the phone retails for $150, but it’s with a discount. So generally this phone will retail somewhere between $200 and $220. Still not expensive for a 5.5 inch phone with these specs.

Fingerprint Scanner

The fingerprint scanner was the first thing I was impressed by. It’s very fast, works every time and it’s just better than the iPhone scanner. You place your finger on the scanner and voila, you’re in the phone.

Customize

Of course, every phone running Android has this feature, but coming from an iPhone, I really liked the fact that you can customize this phone in every way possible. The Elephone runs on Android 6.0 and doesn’t have a lot of bloatware out of the box. I installed a skin and really liked the lay-out and design.

Big screen

Already mentioned this one. The screen is pretty big and is full HD, I wasn’t expecting less actually nowadays. The touchscreen is very responsive and with the Gorilla glass, you get a top quality screen.

Audio Quality When Calling

The audio quality when listening to music or watching videos is not good, but when calling it’s very good! The microphone is more than decent and the small speaker on top of the phone is top notch

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is very fast. I connected several devices and they all worked like a charm!

Case

You get a case in the box and that’s cool. Imagine Apple doing something like that… You’re lucky you get Apple-stickers lol.

Fast charging

Last positive thing is something I already mentioned. The Elephone S7 has fast charging capabilities and they really work. The phone takes about 2 hours to completely charge and that’s very fast. You’ll need it though, because the battery-life is not that good.

Overall, the Elephone S7 is a very decent phone for the price! If you’re looking for a first smartphone and don’t want to pay  a million dollars for an iPhone or Samsung, maybe this can be the phone for you. You can find the Elephone S7 here. We also have a discount code! You can use ‘GBMBP’ for 8% off.