Oppo R5 vs Gionee Elife S5.1 – which thinnest is more worth it

Oppo has just launched the Oppo R5 which has been officially named the thinnest smartphone in the world, dethroning the previous champion, the Gionee Elife S5.1. The Oppo R5 was launched alongside the new Oppo N3, a smartphone with a rotating camera that has a 16 MP sensor and a motorized bed. While the Oppo R5 has become the talk of the town, the difference in measurements compared to the previous champion in thinness, the Gionee Elife S5.1 is minimal, yet still surprising.

Both the Oppo R5 specs and Gionee Elife S5.1 specs put these phones in the mid-range category, they are worth a comparison. The two mid-range thin smartphones are not very different, aside from some design elements. The Oppo R5 design includes a sacrifice which might bother some users: the absence of a headphone jack. A headphone jack could simply not fit on the thin body of the Oppo R5, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to listen to music on the device. If you would like to get the Oppo R5, its package will include an adapter, so the lack of a headphone jack shouldn’t be such a big problem. Another issue that the Oppo R5 has is the camera. The problem with the Oppo R5 design is that it doesn’t give much room for that camera and the optics protrude from the body of the phone, making them vulnerable to scratches and damage. Nonetheless, the thinnest phone in the world looks great and its aluminium alloy feels good in the hand.

The Gionee Elife S5.1 design doesn’t have the design flaws of the Oppo R5, but it is a thicker than the Oppo R5. If you are holding the two phones next to each other, you will definitely sense the difference between the two. The Gionee Elife S5.1 includes a Gorilla Glass panel on the back, which makes it much more glossy than the metal Oppo R5. Now when it comes to design, the only actual drawback of the Oppo R5 is the protruding camera. Otherwise, design preference is up to the user and both smartphones look great and feel great in the hand. While I would prefer the metal design of the Oppo R5 because it seems more solid and I don’t enjoy glossy designs, that doesn’t mean the design of the Gionee Elife S5.1 is inferior. It does have a metal frame surrounding all that glass, so it should be as durable as you can expect from an almost paper-thin smartphone. On to specs!

Oppo R5 price, specs and features 

• CPU – 2-1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octa core
• GPU – Adreno 405
• DISPLAY – 5.2 inch, AMOLED, 1080*1920, 403 ppi pixel density
• MEMORY – 2 GB RAM, 16 GB ROM, no microSD card slot available
• BATTERY – Non-removable, 2000 mAH
• CAMERA – 13 MP rear camera, 4128*3096, autofocus LED flash and 5 MP front camera
• VIDEO – 2160p@3f0fps, 1080p@60fps,720p@10fps
• BODY – 148.9 x 74.5 x 4.9 mm
• WEIGHT – 155 g
• WIRELESS – Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot
• PRICE – $500
• FEATURES – LTE, GPS, microUSB 2.0, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, special cooling system made from phase-shifting material, VOOC Mini fast charging
• OS – ColorOS 2.0 on top of Android 4.4 KitKat

Gionee Elife S5.1 price, specs and features

• CPU – 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad core
• GPU – Adreno 3f05
• DISPLAY – 4.1 inch, IPS, 720*1280, 305 ppi pixel density
• MEMORY – 1 GB RAM, 16 GB ROM, no microSD card slot available
• BATTERY – Non-removable 2100 mAH
• CAMERA – 8 MP rear camera with LED flash, 5 MP front camera
• BODY – 139.80 x 67.40 x 5.15 mm
• WEIGHT – 100 g
• WIRELESS – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• PRICE – $320 approximately
• FEATURES – GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, microUSB 2.0
• OS – Amigo 2.0 on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean

As you can see, if we review the Oppo R5 specs and Gionee Elife S5.1 specs, we can clearly see that the Oppo R5 is the superior one in this comparison. While its specs are not exactly flagship, they come pretty close, actually. Oppo chose the N3 to be the current flagship, thanks to its motorized rotating camera, but the Oppo R5 also places in a great spot among high-end smartphones. While the Gionee Elife S5.1 is considerably cheaper, the Oppo R5 beats it with the superior display, better processor, better camera, many more features and updated Android 4.4 KitKat. The Oppo R5 battery is just a bit smaller than the one in the Gionee Elife s5.1, but both will probably make for about a day and a half of mixed use. The most interesting part of both phones is their respective design and the fact that they are, or once were, the world’s thinnest smartphones you can get your hands on.