Elephone S8 Review: 6 inch 2K screen - 4GB RAM

[Guest chief_wolfinjo]

The Elephone S8 may share its moniker with Samsung’s latest flagship, but Chinese manufacturer Elephone isn’t a household name yet, at least in this part of the world.

Famed for its low-cost devices which often bear more than a passing resemblance to rival phones, Elephone has traditionally focused on offering impressive specs and power for a budget price. The S8 is no exception, it boasts a fantastic quad-HD resolution display which is almost entirely bezel-free.

Retailing at around £180, the S8 certainly packs a punch when compared to the Android budget competition.

Design

While the use of glossy, fingerprint-attracting plastic on the back of the device is disappointing, the chassis is aluminum and gives the phone a reassuring heft. The volume and power buttons are both metal too, and can be found on the right-hand edge of the handset.
The SIM card tray (which can accept two different Nano SIMs at once) is on the left edge, while on the bottom you’ll find the USB Type-C port and the single speaker. There’s no 3.5mm headphone socket, but Elephone has included a USB Type-C to 3.5mm port adapter so you can still use your old cans.

The first thing that hits you when you pick up the Elephone S8 is that massive 6-inch, 2K resolution screen, which fills almost the entirety of the phone’s front.

True to form, Elephone has been a bit cheeky here and copied the design of the Xiaomi Mi Mix, so while it’s almost bezel-free for the most part, at the bottom there’s a space for the home button and the 8-megapixel front-facing camera. Because the selfie cam is on the bottom edge of the handset, you have to turn it upside down to take a shot, which takes some getting used to.

With its 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution, the screen on the S8 is undoubtedly the star of the show. Not only is it pin-sharp, colours look vibrant and contrast is excellent. Viewing angles are rock-solid, too.

Performance

A MediaTek Helio X25 deca-core CPU is running the show here, and while this isn’t a setup which is likely to trouble flagships handsets from Sony, HTC or Samsung, it’s more than adequate for most users. With 4GB of RAM keeping things ticking over, I didn’t notice any sluggishness or awkward pauses during typical day-to-day usage and the S8 was capable of toggling between applications easily, even quite demanding processes like playing back HD video on YouTube.

Camera

Surprisingly for a Chinese-made phone, the Elephone S8 doesn’t jump on the dual-camera bandwagon and instead chooses to focus on a single snapper.

The 21-megapixel sensor is, according to the marketing material, designed to maximise detail in low-light environments. While the quality of the captured images is decent enough, with minimal compression and good colour replication, it takes so long to focus and capture a shot that most of the time it’s almost impossible to get the snap you want.

Battery life

Elephone has wisely included big battery to go along with that big screen. The 4000mAh power cell is larger than that found on other market-leading devices, and while low-cost Chinese phones are rarely as well optimised when it comes to power consumption, we were able to make it through a whole 24 hours without any major issues.

Fast-charging is supported, so topping up that roomy battery isn’t too much of a headache, it takes around an hour and a half to fully charge, which isn’t bad when you consider the size of the cell.

for more information please visit Elephone S8

Youtube review

 

Thank you

Edited February 11, 2018 by chief_wolfinjo