Gionee Elife S5.1 review: Johnny Slim

A custom gallery app

The Gionee Elife S5.1 comes with a custom Gallery app. It defaults to a pre-defined folder view of Albums, Wallpapers, Screenshots, Videos and Others. You can't change this view, nor can you customize the default folders.

Gallery • Others • Albums • People

The available features when viewing a single image are pretty standard - set image as wallpaper/contact image, share it, delete it or get a menu with more functions.

The image editor offers various effects, frames, tools (crop, mirror, straighten, rotate) plus light adjustments that let you bring out the shadows or the highlights or even create a tiny "planet photo".

Editing options

Oppo-like music player

The Gionee Elife S5.1's player has a simple interface and is very easy to use and navigate. It supports customizable DTS audio customizations.

The DTS audio enhancements apply on all music-related apps and games no matter whether you are using headphones or the loudspeaker. There are a few DTS presets you can use, but you can also customize one preset by yourself. Loudspeaker booster mode is also available.

DTS settings • Audio filter size

The music player UI is pretty straightforward - your music library is organized into a local list of all music, favorites, artists, albums and folders. There isn't an option to add a playlist.

Music player • Now playing screen

The Now playing is pretty much a standard affair. One interesting feature you get is the Sleep Timer. There is also a DTS on/off switch for easy control over the equalizer.

While the player is on, the notification area lets you control the playback via an expandable notification. There are music controls on the lockscreen, too.

FM radio with recording

The Gionee Elife S5.1 also features an FM Radio aboard, but there is no RDS support or at least our unit didn't have that. The app offers stereo FM recording in the .OGG file format and the recorded files can be accessed via the Sound Recorder app.

FM radio and FM recording

Video player

Besides the Gallery, there is a separate Video app that lists all of your videos. The video player does play 1080p files but only as long as those are XviD or DivX AVI files or MP4 and MKV's. However DTS and AC3 audio tracks are not supported, which makes the MKV compatibility rather questionable.

The video player

There are no advanced options and no subtitle support.

Interestingly, pop-up play is available, so you can watch a video while doing something else on the phone.

Pop-up play

Mediocre audio output

The Gionee Elife S5.1 started out very promising in our audio quality test. When plugged in an active external amplifier, the smartphone posted great scores top to bottom and demonstrated very high volume levels to round up one of the better performances for the day.

Plug in a pair of headphones however and things quickly go south. Volume levels plummet, stereo crosstalk spikes and a notable amount of intermodulation distortion creeps in. Noise levels and dynamic range are affected too although they still remain very good. Still, the overall result is rather disappointing, which is made worse by the fact that this is the more important test scenario.

And here go the detailed results so you can check them out for yourselves.

Gionee Elife S5.1 frequency response

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.