The Elephone P7000 is a device many have been looking forward to. Pretty much no other Chinese mid-range handset was hyped in the way the Elephone P7000 was. But is it worth the hype? That's what we checked out for a week of real-life usage. The reason the Elephone P7000 enjoyed such an extreme hype according to our opinion is the massive delay partially caused by bad luck but also intentionally. As a matter of fact, the P7000 initially was scheduled to launch in March but now we have June and shipping just started and isn't even finished yet due to limited production capacity. But why do delays cause the phone to be hyped that much? Well, there are two reasons: First, due to the repeated press presence mainstream media got curious and started reporting about the Elephone P7000 as well. Another reason is that people tend to believe such a delay means the device will be perfect since the manufacturer has lots of time available to make that possible. But does that assumption reflect the reality? Well, lets get into the review to learn more.
Unboxing
The Elephone P7000 packaging looks totally different from anything we've seen from Elephone so far. It indeed reflects a premium approach and leaves a very nice impression. A red fingerprint printed onto the box announces the main feature of the "Pioneer". Inside Elephone places lots of accessories, at least if you paid the full price. This includes a user guide, a wall charger, a USB cable, a tempered glass protector, a classic screen protector and one flip case with S-View window.
Design
We've got mixed feelings here. Now at the first look everything's fine, the device looks quite nice despite the sheer thickness of 10.5mm. The metal frame gives a premium-touch to the device and makes it look very sturdy. But it's just for the looks, since reality looks totally different. The metal frame actually is very thin and can be bent very easily. It doesn't give any strength to the body. The whole chassis of the device is made from plastic. Now this is the reason why you can bend the phone without much force, even if the back cover is on. Now the thin metal frame actually will bend as well and remain in the position you bent it to, holding the device in a curved shape. Now that leaves and extremely cheap impression and just screams cheap. It's a serious design flaw that shouldn't happen if you work on a device for so many months.
Yes, some of you might say that no one will willingly bend their devices, so it doesn't matter, but let us tell you: It does! There have been reports of people bending their P7000s just by carrying it inside a tight side-pocket. Now that doesn't even have to go as far as bending the device so much that you get a visibly curved shape, it is enough if you bend it very slightly, since the screen reacts very sensitive to that. It will show white spots, also referred to as "clouding", after a while, and that is inevitable. Any P7000 unit out there will eventually get those white spots (which luckily are only visible on white background) on the screen, no matter how much attention you pays. That being said, we really can say that the build quality is crap and Elephone should completely re-think the chassis plus do a callback of the delivered units. But well, they won't.
If you think our complaints stop there, nope! There is one part left and that's the home button. There is a single square-shaped home-button which is driven by a multi-color LED. Unfortunately the LED is not bright enough and thus not visible under daylight, which is a pity since it is used as the status LED as well. What's more, it shows a significant amount of light-bleeding at night, which does look cheap again. Another thing that looks cheap is light-bleeding around the plastic frame that's wrapped around the screen-glass. Here we also noticed light-bleeding of the LCD backlight at night.
Display
The Elephone P7000 screen does look quite nice – basically. It's a 5.5-inch 1080p panel with a good sharpness and a very responsive digitizer. Unfortunately it shows a very intense reddish tint which could be removed by using Mediatek Miravision, but unfortunately that feature is missing from the ROM. Another flaw is the aforementioned bending sensitivity, resulting in small spots that are slightly brighter and thus look like white clouds if the display shows white color. An initial flaw also was the brightness which never exceeded 40% of the maximum brightness. Luckily this meanwhile got fixed, so if your screen is too dark, make sure to flash the latest ROM.
Hardware
With a MT6752 SoC, 3GB of RAM and 16GB of memory the Elephone P7000 doesn't offer anything special compared to similar devices. Benchmark scores are very similar. We noticed though, that the phone tends to get very hot during gaming, but later on it came out to be caused by the unoptimized ROM and not so much due to all the plastic.
A positive part about the hardware is the fingerprint scanner. Really, we've never seen a better one on a Chinese phone. It just works, all the time, no exceptions. In case you know the sensor used on the Huawei Mate 7 – the Elephone P7000 is pretty much the same. Not so nice though is the (in our case) non-working e-compass. It just does… nothing! We tried calibration and all that stuff to no result.
Software
The Elephone P7000 is crap when it comes to software. Really, Elephone worked about 4 months on that device and still deliver it with a Android 5.0 ROM that feels like Beta?! Quite unacceptable that is! The ROM is utterly slow and slugish (exagerating a bit, but you definitely feel it), had lots of bugs of which a few got fixed now and isn't quite stable. The missing Mediatek MiraVision and a bad optimization generate heat and suck the battery empty too fast. Luckily Elephone apparently are working hard to fix that. The latest OTA update improved a few things but still didn't make the ROM ready for daily use. We recommend to use the Vibe UI ROM available over at bbs.elephone.hk until the Stock ROM is operational. The Vibe UI ROM runs almost bug-free and is extremely snappy, plus offers a way better camera app. It just doesn't support the fingerprint scanner and the S-View cover.
Audio
Initially we have been very disappointed by the Elephone P7000 internal media speaker. It just sounded like crap. Luckily that for the most part is just caused by the crappy software again. With the Vibe UI ROM we were pleased with some very nice audio quality and the only flaw are distortions on high-volume. Anyway, something we wanna shout at Elephone though is the fact that they want to mislead their customers by placing two speaker openings into the metal frame while there is only one single speaker. Such things are truly unacceptable to us and leave a very bad aftertaste.
For the headphone jack we have to say that we liked the audio quality. It is very loud and quite balanced. There is a tad of background noise but that is only noticeable when nothing is played. The audio quality during phone calls isn't perfect but acceptable. There are definitely no issues understanding each other but it could be more clear for sure.
Reception Quality
The Elephone P7000 surprised us with its reception quality since it doesn't offer LDS antennas. Anyway, the signal strength we got across any network have been above average. It really doesn't happen too often that there are no issues at all with 3G / 4G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth at all, so that's definitely a great part about this device. GPS initially was bad, but that's caused by the software. After the latest update the GPS started working properly with a good amount of accuracy and plenty of satellites with a good signal strength (the screenshots show results before the latest update, right now we get fixes for about 16 to 17 satellites).
Camera
13 mega pixel Sony IMX214 on the rear, 8 mega pixel OmniVision on the front. That's what you get with the Elephone P7000. Unfortunately the camera isn't quite what we expected after testing the OnePlus One and Oppo Find 7 which both use the same rear camera sensor. Don't get this wrong, the quality is far away from anything we would seriously complain about on a Chinese phone that is just a bit more than $200, but it just could be better if the software gets optimized properly and if Elephone would use a better lens. The software flaws: Bad noise cancellation, sharpness could be better, colors could be less reddish and the low-light performance needs to be improved. Lens flaws: A noticeable blurred area on the left side of pictures. Besides of that, the camera is pretty good. Videos look very nice as well, but sadly don't sound that nice. Reason: The GSM / LTE antenna is right above the microphone, and Elephone didn't put an RF-shield around the mic. Result: Interferences at its best! Plain stupid… but actually fixable with some aluminum foil in case you don't mind hacking into your devices.
The front camera looks good at daylight but lacks auto focus and sucks with bad light. Really, it creates so much noise then, you barely can see anything.
Battery
The Elephone P7000 offers a 3,450mAh battery which is ore than the average device offers. Does it make up for an amazing battery life? Sadly no. Did they fake the battery? Actually no, we verified the capacity and it is very close to the advertised 3,450mAh, somewhere in between 3,000 and 3,300mAh probably. Anyway, the reason the battery life isn't as nice as expected with about 6 hours of screen-on time simply is the software part. The non-optimized ROM really needs way too much power. Using the Vibe UI ROM the battery life almost doubled. So don't worry, battery is good, it just needs some software fixes to unleash its potential. Not so nice though is the charging time at about 4 to 5 hours which is way too long for anyone used to fast-charging.
Elephone P7000 Review: Verdict
Well, initially we haven't been able to give any purchase recommendation at all (see the English video review or our German review over at gizchina.de). But meanwhile that changed, though only in a limited way. With a proper running custom ROM the Elephone P7000 actually is quite a fun device and the reception quality, screen, camera and battery life make it a pleasure to use. The only unfixable flaws are the camera lens issues, the bending issues, the screen clouding issues and the interferences (which actually are fixable). Now it depends on you. In case you can live with all those flaws, you might enjoy the P7000. But hell, if you can't and believe that what Elephone did here is more than just unacceptable but more a try of ripping customers off, you seriously should stay away from this phablet.
That being said we want to say thank you to Elephone for shipping us the review sample and wish them better luck with their next devices. In case there are any questions left, make sure to drop a comment. Thanks for reading!
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Model: | Elephone P7000 |
| Processor: | Mediatek MT6752 |
| GPU: | Mali T760 |
| RAM: | 3GB |
| Memory: | 16GB |
| Frequencies: | GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz; WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100MHz; FDD-LTE 800/1800/2100/2600MHz |
| Screen: | 5.5-inch 1920 x 1080 IPS / OGS |
| Camera Front: | 8MP OmniVision |
| Camera Rear: | 13MP Sony IMX214 |
| SIM: | Micro SIM + Normal SIM |
| Micro SD: | Yes (128GB) |
| Sensors: | Gravity sensor, Proximity sensor, Light sensor, E-compass, Hall sensor |
| Housing: | Polycarbonate + a bit metal |
| Dimensions: | 154 x 77 x 10.5mm |
| Weight: | 175g |
| Accessories: | Flip cover, tempered glass, screen protector, USB cable, wall charger, user guide |
| OS: | Android 5.0 Lollipop |
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