Gionee Elife S5.5 review: Genie in a bottle

Synthetic Benchmarks

The Gionee Elife S5.5 runs on a MediaTek MT6592 chipset with eight Cortex-A7 cores clocked at 1.7GHz each. Graphics are powered by an aging Mali-450MP4 GPU, and there is 2GB worth of RAM on board.

GeekBench 3 and AnTuTu 4 are benchmarks, which put to the test the hardware combo inside the smartphone. GeekBench 3 is more CPU-intensive, whereas AnTuTu 4 is a truly compound benchmark - testing CPU, GPU, memory performance, etc. The Elife S5.5 was able to post respectable scores next to other top flagships, but the less capable GPU takes its toll on the AnTuTu test.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  3093
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  3011
• Sony Xperia Z2
  2856
• LG G3
  2687
• LG G Pro 2
  2585
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  2581
• LG Nexus 5
  2453
• HTC One (M8)
  2367
• LG G2
  2243
• Motorola Moto X
  2123
• HTC One mini 2
  1526
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  1359

AnTuTu 4

Higher is better

• HTC One (M8)
  37009
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  36018
• LG G2
  35444
• Oppo Find 7a
  33344
• Sony Xperia Z2
  33182
• LG G3
  30482
• LG G Pro 2
  29603
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  26957
• LG Nexus 5
  25097
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  19896
• Motorola Moto X
  19031
• HTC One mini 2
  17883

Basemark OS II is another all-round benchmark. It gives an overall score along with single-core, multi-core, and math performance, among others. We focus on the overall and CPU scores. The CPU scores are quite decent and prove the eight Cortex-A7 cores do a similar job to a quad-core Krait 400 processor. But the underperforming GPU and the lower memory bandwidth add for a significantly lower overall system rating.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• LG G3
  1151
• LG G3 (anti-cheat)
  1132
• LG G Pro 2
  1140
• HTC One (M8)
  1126
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  1082
• Sony Xperia Z2
  1080
• Oppo Find 7a
  1057
• HTC One mini 2
  517
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  492
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  434

Basemark OS II (single-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  2580
• HTC One (M8)
  2428
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  2415
• LG G Pro 2
  2401
• Sony Xperia Z2
  2253
• LG G3 (anti-cheat)
  2176
• LG G3
  2137
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  1781
• HTC One mini 2
  1304

Basemark OS II (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  10256
• LG G3 (anti-cheat)
  10097
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  10063
• Sony Xperia Z2
  10044
• LG G3
  9937
• HTC One (M8)
  9860
• LG G Pro 2
  9802
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  8941
• HTC One mini 2
  5182

Next up we have GFXBench's 2.7 T-Rex. The 3.0 Manhattan test isn't available on the Gionee Elife S5.5 as its OS is based on Android 4.2, which lacks the proper OpenGL drives, courtesy of Android 4.3 and above. Just as we thought, the old generation Mali-450MP4 GPU is far less capable than the current Adreno crop and it posted very poor scores on both offscreen and onscreen tests.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One (M8)
  28.4
• Oppo Find 7a
  28.4
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  27.8
• LG G3
  27.6
• Sony Xperia Z2
  27.2
• LG Nexus 5
  23
• LG G Pro 2
  22.9
• LG G2
  22
• Motorola Moto X
  16
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  10.8
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  5.8
• HTC One mini 2
  5.8

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One (M8)
  30.1
• Oppo Find 7a
  28.8
• Sony Xperia Z2
  28.7
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  28.1
• LG G Pro 2
  24.1
• LG Nexus 5
  24
• LG G2
  23.1
• LG G3
  20.6
• HTC One mini 2
  11
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  10.9
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  10.6

BrowserMark 2.1 puts to test the HTML 5 performance of the phone, while the Mozilla's Kraken 1.1 is JavaScript-centric. The third-party UC Browser found on the Gionee Elife S5.5 scored extremely poor in both tests. It is slow, performance bottlenecks occur often and crashes aren't that rare either. We installed Google Chrome instead and it did well on Kraken, but failed to finish BrowserMark 2.1. Still we suggest trying Chrome instead of the default UC Browser.

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  1398
• LG G Pro 2
  1346
• Oppo Find 7a
  1327
• LG Nexus 5
  1286
• LG G3
  1254
• Sony Xperia Z2
  1224
• HTC One (M8)
  1069
• HTC One mini 2
  945
• Sony Xperia M2
  903
• Motorola Moto E
  784
• HTC Desire 816
  774
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  432

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  6043
• LG G Pro 2
  6578
• Oppo Find 7a
  6660
• Sony Xperia Z2
  7041
• LG Nexus 5
  7148
• LG G3
  7610
• HTC One (M8)
  10296
• Gionee Elife S5.5 with Chrome
  12201
• HTC One mini 2
  15684
• Motorola Moto E
  17213
• Sony Xperia M2
  18047
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  67209

The Gionee Elife S5.5 isn't quite able to stand up to the current flagship crop mostly because of its older generation GPU and the unimpressive web browser performance. It will do OK on popular games no matter the GPU benchmark scores, but it definitely needs some tweaking in the web department.