Elephone S8 Review

Overview

With the Elephone S8 the manufacturer joins the rest of the smartphone manufacturers from China that lure customers with various versions of the all-screen front design and bezel-less screens. Currently, there are two tendencies in these types of devices. The first is of smartphones that provide 18:9 displays following the trend set by the Galaxy S8/S8+ and the LG G6/LG G6+ such as Bluboo S8. The second is the one set by Xiaomi with its revolutionary Mi MIX such as the Doogee Mix. Though named S8, Elephone's latest offering resembles the Mi MIX with its "tri-bezelless display" and unlike other copy-cats, it does offer some bang for your bucks. In our 10-page in-depth review of the Elephone S8 we will explore its design and display, check out real-life performance and run synthetic benchmarks as well as test the camera, audio and battery life.

Specifications

Elephone S8 employs a metal frame of aerospace grade aluminium alloy with a plastic back. It is coupled with a 6-inch display made by Sharp. The display panel has a QHD resolution (1440 x 2560 pixels) and is protected by a 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass 4. According to Elephone, it covers 92.4% of the total front surface of the device. The model's hardware is based on a 64-bit MediaTek Helio X25 (MT6797T) chipset created on the 20nm process. Its tri-cluster architecture incorporates 2x 2.5GHz Cortex-A72 CPU cores, 4x 2GHz Cortex-A53, and 4x 1.55GHz Cortex-A53 CPU cores. The graphics are handled by an 850MHz quad-core Mali-T880 MP4 GPU. There are 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM from Samsung on board along with 64GB of eMMC 5.1 memory from Samsung. This system-on-chip employs a 64-bit WorldMode LTE platform and supports the following network bands: 2G GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), 3G W-CDMA (850, 900, 1700, 1900, 2100 MHz), 4G FDD-LTE (B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B7, B8, B17, B20, B26, B28) and 4G TDD-LTE (B38, B39, B40, B41). In addition, the model supports dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, Cast display, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, A-GPS, and GLONASS. The device is equipped with a USB Type-C 2.0 port with OTG support. As long as it concerns the camera department, Elephone S8 relies on Sony sensors for the two shooters. The primary one utilises a 21MP Sony IMX220 sensor combined with a 6-element lens and a dual-LED flash, while the front snapper packs an 8MP Sony IMX219 one. Here's the full set of Elephone S8 specifications.

What's in the box

Our review unit of Elephone S8 arrived in a very simple white rectangular box with Elephone's logo on top and no mention of the model. There's a simple S8 on the stickеr at the back, which states some of the most important features of the device. The package is quite simple. The smartphone is placed in the top level compartment. Below it, the following items are positioned:

• USB Type-C cable
• 5V/2A fast charger (EU plug)
• SIM tray pin
• user manual in English