Elephone S3 Review

Elephone S3 is the second smartphone in the market that is largely advertised to have a bezelless display after the Ulefone Future. The brand has its fair share of fans and most probably they are curious whether this is really a bezelless display design, so we've decided to make a review of this model and check whether it has other merits besides its display and affordable price.

Specifications

Elephone S3 is equipped with a 5.2-inch, fully laminated OGS display with an in-cell IPS panel that has a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and is covered with a 3D top glass layer. The screen has a peak brightness of 750 cd/sq.m. and contrast ratio of 1200:1. It graces a metal body, which houses a MediaTek MT6753 chipset including a 1.3GHz eight-core CPU and a 450MHz tri-core Mali-T720 MP3 GPU. There are 3GB of single-channel, LPDDR3 RAM and 16GB of built-in memory as well. The model provides support for a wide range of network bands, including 2G GSM, 2.5G CDMA, 3G WCDMA and TD-SCDMA, 4G TDD- and FDD-LTE Cat. 4 ones. The additional connectivity options are Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Hotspot, wireless display, Bluetooth 4.0. As long as it concerns satellite navigation, the smartphone works with GPS and Glonass. The device is equipped with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. It neighbours a 13-megapixel camera with a Toshiba T4K37 CMOS BSI sensor (no, it's not a Sony IMX135 Exmor RS as announced), 5-element lens and an f/2.0 aperture. The selfie snapper packs a 1.3-megapixel OmniVision OV9762 CMOS BSI 2 sensor and an f/2.8 lens. The lights are kept on by a 2100 mAh Li-Pol battery that should provide up to 8 hours of talk time and up to 150 hours of standby time. It is coupled with a 5V/2A fast charger and MediaTek's Pump Express Plus tech. The device runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Check the complete Elephone S3 specifications here.

What's in the box

The Elephone S3 package is pretty standard in terms of type of accessories. The device is placed in a rectangular white box with rounded edges and the Elephone logo on the top. Inside, in the top compartment is the smartphone and below it you'll see the user manual, SIM tray pin, the 5V/2A fast charger and the USB cable. The latter is not an ordinary cable, though. It is made of Green TPE coating for better environmental friendliness, durability, and softness. Being one meter long, it can also be used as a ruler. The cable is available in two colors - lily sky and mint green. We got the green one.

Design, build and controls

Elephone S3 is pleasant to the touch and sight. Its design is reminiscent of well-known flagship devices by HTC and OnePlus, but of course is not the same. The body is made of metal, which has undergone a "unique 209-step manufacturing procedure", including 300 kg/cm2 nano-meter injection moulding for strength and durability, anodic oxidation coating and sand blasting for a smooth finish. The rear and front edges are chamfered and glossy, contrasting with the matte surface of the body. The front edges bond with the 3D curved glass of the display immaculately. The antenna bands are thin and do not disturb the eye. The device is heavier than the officially stated 145 grams, actually it weighs 20 grams more. With a width of 70.5 mm and a height of 142 mm, Elephone S3 is one of the most compact smartphones with a 5.2-inch display. Its thickness of 8.3 mm is average for that size class. The smartphone is available in gold, gray, silver, and rose-gold. We are reviewing a grey unit. The volume and power button are placed on the right hand side of the device. They are made of metal as well and do not protrude very much, while being tactile and comfortable to operate with. The hybrid dual-SIM tray, which can house a micro-SIM card and a nano-SIM or microSD card can be found on the left side. On the top frame the 3.5 mm jack is placed and at the bottom you'll see a centrally positioned USB 2.0 port with speaker grilles on both sides. From the sound that comes out, while playing music, it looks like both house a speaker. Above the display from the left to the right are the front-facing camera, earpiece and light/proximity sensor. The physical space below the screen is empty. Navigation is on-screen and the only option you have is whether it should be able to hide or stay fixed on the screen. This option is hidden under Device>Display. The navigation bar contains a button for hiding the navigation bar (when activated), a second one for bringing up the Widgets menu, the home button and the back button. If you have hidden the navigation bar, you have to swipe from the bottom of the display up, so it can appear again. However, this can interfere with the app icons and you can open an app by mistake. We are not big fans of on-screen navigation as it is just a waste of space, but this is a subjective opinion. The navigation bar does get transparent, while appearing on the home screen and screens with installed apps, so at least it looks better on these occasions. The rear of the device is where the primary camera (with a microphone hole above it), the single-LED flash and fingerprint sensor are located. The camera and fingerprint modules are square with rounded edges. At the lower end of the back you'll see the Elephone logo.

Display

Elephone S3 boasts a 5.2-inch fully laminated OGS display with an in-cell IPS panel that has an FHD resolution (1080 x 1920), peak brightness of 750 cd/sq.m. and a 1200:1 contrast ratio. The top layer is 3D curved glass. The manufacturer claims this is a real bezelless display. Similar to the Ulefone Future, the 3D glass creates and optical effect for a bezelless display, but if you look closer, you can see bezels that are very thin. Probably they are more visible, because the top glass layer is not so strongly curved as in the Ulefone Future. Full lamination, one glass solution (OGS), in-cell displays are usually thinner and brighter, because the thin film transistors are placed on the semiconductor backplane of the display along with one of the conductive layers. Elephone S3's display is really one of the brightest displays on a mobile device we have seen, though it does not reach the official 750 nits. Our measurements show that the peak brightness is 603 cd/sq.m. The viewing angles are almost excellent with preserved color and only a slight loss in brightness. The contrast ratio is almost nailed as at all brightness levels it measures a little above 1200:1. The average temperature of the white dot is higher than 11000K, which means that colors look visibly colder than average. Thankfully, the device arrives with Miravision, so you will be able to tweak the display. The colors do not match the sRGB space exactly. There are slight deviations in the blue and red range, while in the green range of colors the deviation is larger.

Brightness	White luminance	Black luminance	Contrast	Color temperature
100 %	602.861 cd/m2	0.479 cd/m2	1259 : 1	11257 K
75 %	468.313 cd/m2	0.373 cd/m2	1256 : 1	11117 K
50 %	334.406 cd/m2	0.267 cd/m2	1252 : 1	11047 K
25 %	183.33 cd/m2	0.149 cd/m2	1230 : 1	10947 K
0 %	26.816 cd/m2	0.021 cd/m2	1277 : 1	11178 K

OS, UI and software

Elephone S3 runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow. By default the OS is coupled with ELE launcher, which makes it look more like Android 5.1 Lollipop. There is no app tray, all apps appear on successive screens, which you can swipe to the left and right. Swiping can be done either via the display, or via the rear-mounted fingerprint module. The icons are entirely redrawn and the standard features have some extended options. For example, the Widgets menu, which is accessed by the second button from the navigation bar (left to right) or by long-pressing on an empty space on the home screen, lets you choose from several beautiful wallpapers, themes, standard widgets and screen effects. A single swipe from the top of the display down opens the notifications and a second one - the quick settings, which let you toggle your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections, Airplane and DND modes, Sound profiles, Cast screen and Flashlight, Portrait and Location. A longer press on the Settings icon activates the System UI tuner. A press and hold on the home button brings up the list of all apps that have been open. The volume and power off menus are standard. From the Settings menu you can choose Launcher3, which will make the OS look like a classic Android 6.0 Marshmallow one - from the icons to the way the apps are listed. There's a twist here as well, because the apps are accessed via the app tray, but they continue to appear on successive screens, not on one scrollable one. The Widgets menu lets you choose wallpapers for the home and lock screens, and widgets. The notifications, volume, quick settings, and power off menus are standard. The whole Settings menu holds no surprises. As usual, it starts with the Wireless & networks section from where you can manage your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections, the SIM cards and Data usage, etc. The second big section with options is called Device, besides the typical settings for the Display, Sound & notification, Apps, Storage & USB, Battery, and Memory, also contains settings for the launcher - Home, and Smart Gesture ones. The latter allows you to switch on a Smart Wakeup function for apps and assign a special sign to open a specific app, when you draw it on the switched off screen. You can also toggle a double click on the home screen to lock the device and to make a screenshot by swiping with three fingers. As mentioned earlier, under Display you can tweak the color saturation and other features as well as toggle the hide/show option for the navigation bar, wallpapers, Daydream, etc. The Sound & notification set of options is standard - with four pre-set audio profiles, DND mode management, Sound enhancement, and Notifications management. From Device you can also manage your Apps, monitor the Battery, Storage and Memory usage. The third major settings section is Personal. It lets you adjust your Location properties, manage your accounts (Skype, Viber, Whatsapp, etc.), manage your Google account, which as of Android M is a separate set of options, Language and Backup properties. This section also contains the large Security group of settings, under which you can set-up your fingerprint ID(s), encrypt the phone, screen-pim apps, and activate Smart Lock. This feature allows your device to remain unlocked if it is near trusted device and places, your body or voice. Finally, under System you can adjust the Date & time, Schedule power on & off, Printing, Developers options and Accessibility. Besides all standard features, the latter also allows you to manage the Breathing light (LED notification light), toggle the Open Hall function and set a Hall wallpaper. If you're working under the ELE Launcher you will enjoy all standard apps you can imagine (Dialer, Contacts, Messenger, Clock, Calendar, Camera, Gallery, Browser, Calculator, Downloads, File Manager, Email, FM Radio, Music, Sound Recorder, Voice Search). Elephone has added several other apps such as Theme - lets you choose from many themes and wallpapers stored on the device and online, Ele Service - support, and Ele Xender - a tool for sharing files and syncing data between two smartphones. You get these two apps under Launcher3 as well along with the ELE Launcher as a separate app. No Theme app, however. Under ELE Launcher there is also an Intelligent Classifier, which groups the apps in folders according to their functions - communication, media, life, tools, system, etc.

Networks, calls and connectivity

Elephone S3 supports 2G GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), 2.5G CDMA (800 MHz), 3G WCDMA (900, 1900, 2100 MHz) and TD-SCDMA (1880-1920, 2010-2025 MHz), 4G TDD-LTE (1900, 2300, 2500, 2600 MHz) and FDD-LTE Cat. 4 (800, 1800, 2100 2600 MHz) networks. Strangely enough, MTK Engineering shows that the phone supports all CDMA bands. Though Elephone says that the device supports "6-model and 18 frequency connectivity", we doubt that all CDMA bands are supported. The additional connectivity options of the S3 include Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0. All work fine. However, you have to bear in mind that the model is set up to change its MAC address each time you reboot or switch on the airplane mode. This means that every time you have to setup the Wi-Fi connection. There's a solution if your Wi-Fi router has a Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) button, which will allow you not to set up the Wi-Fi connection on the phone every time. All you need is to push it and it will discover the phone as a new device and you can connect directly. You can also use the WPS Pin Entry option. The device generates a PIN code, which you then enter in the configuration panel of your router and it will appear in your local network. Elephone S3 offers Turbo download for files larger than 20MB, cast screen function and supports USB OTG. It also works with GPS and Glonass managing to discover enough satellites with good accuracy.

Performance

Elephone S3's hardware is based on a MediaTek MT6753 chipset, which includes eight 1.3GHz CPU cores and a 450MHz tri-core Mali-T720 MP3 GPU. According to AnTuTu's score of 37447 points, the device outperforms Ulefone Vienna, Oukitel K6000 Pro, and even Leagoo Shark 1, which has the same SoC but its cores are clocked at 1.5GH. The device yields only to UMi Touch and only with a little. To be fair, UMi Touch's CPU is clocked at 1.5GHz. The same is with the PCMark Work performance score. The model's performance is backed by 3GB of single-channel, LPDDR3 RAM and the internal storage measures 16GB. It can be expanded via a microSD card placed instead a nano-SIM card in the hybrid tray. Of 16GB, 11.91 are available to the user. Reading and writing speeds (to and from the memory) are fast, but in all cases the results from the Androbench test yield to those of the above mentioned smartphones. Finally, the S3 is equipped with a proximity and light sensor, accelerometer and a fingerprint sensor. The latter can be used for unlocking the device, swiping through the screens from the home one, releasing the camera shutter, etc. It is very easy to set up a fingerprint ID and unlocking is fast.

Cameras

The camera app of Elephone S3 is standard and provides all the settings you're used to, including choice of scene modes, exposure, white balance and ISO adjustment, image properties and size (up to 13MP), gesture and smile shot, beauty mode and so on. For the video you can toggle Noise reduction, Microphone and EIS, choose the video quality and time lapse interval.

Primary camera

According to the official specifications, the primary camera of Elephone S3 is equipped with a 13MP Sony IMX135 Exmor RS sensor. However, our unit has a totally different sensor - a 13-megapixel Toshiba T4K37 CMOS BSI one. We cannot tell whether all units have this sensor, or the device has two variants, or this is simply a mistake. The sensor is coupled with a 5-element lens with an f/2.0 aperture. Below you can check out some photos made with this camera - don't forget to click on them to see their full size - 4160 x 3120 pixels.

Secondary camera

The secondary camera is equipped with a 1.3-megapixel OmniVision OV9762 CMOS BSI 2 sensor coupled with an f/2.8 lens. The images are with a resolution of 2560 x 1920 pixels. Obviously, the photos are extrapolated to 5 megapixels.

Audio

Elephone S3 does not have any special audio equipment and features a typical Music app with equalizer settings and standard layout. For its audio test we used the RightMark Audio Analyzer software and the TASCAM US-2x2 audio interface. The model excels in frequency response and shows good results in THD + Noise. The rest of the parameters are estimated as very good and the overall audio result is the same. Simply put, the audio quality equals that of any other average smartphone in the market.

Test	Value	RMAA rating
Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB	+0.03, -0.10	Excellent
Noise level, dB (A)	-93.1	Very good
Dynamic range, dB (A)	92.9	Very good
THD, %	0.0050	Very good
THD + Noise, dB (A)	-82.2	Good
IMD + Noise, %	0.0090	Very good
Stereo crosstalk, dB	-81.6	Very good
IMD at 10 kHz, %	0.016	Very good
General performance		Very good

Battery

Elephone S3 features a 2100 mAh Li-Pol battery, which, according to the data by the manufacturer, should provide up to 8 hours of talk time and 150 hours of standby time. It is coupled with MediaTek's Pump Express Plus fast charging tech and a fast charger with output power of 5V/2A. With this tech and charger the battery charged from 0% to 100% exactly for 1 hour and 30 minutes. 50% was reached in 38 minutes, 70% - after 20 minutes more, and 90% was reached in 1 hour and 10 minutes. The last 10% to 100% needed 20 minutes to charge. The PCMark Work battery life test showed a result of 4 hours and 25 minutes, which is a good result for s 2100 mAh battery.

Final thoughts

Elephone S3 is a nice phone for its price. Its screen is very bright and pleasant to work with. The device is not a powerhouse, but has all the tools you'd expect from a modern mid-range smartphone.