First look at Gionee Elife E7 Mini: Great build quality with a unique camera experience

The Elife E7 Mini was a surprise package from Gionee as the press invitation only gave us a glimpse of the Elife E7. We noticed a smaller version of the Elife E7 on another counter which had an interesting feature. The Elife E7 mini comes in dual-SIM configuration and is priced at Rs 18,999. Before we talk about anything else, let's just get straight into the main USP - the swivel camera. Elife E7 Mini has a 13MP swivel camera. While the Oppo N1 did release the first phone with such a rotating camera module in September it was primarily for the China market, with limited international availability. The Elife E7 Mini on the other hand will be first released in India followed by other countries. So the Elife E7 Mini will get the first mover advantage in India at least. The 13MP camera gets automatically activated when it is rotated to the front, so you don't need to tap the camera icon to start shooting.The 13MP swivel camera is a real USP of the Elife E7 MiniThe Elife E7 Mini sports a 4.7-inch screen with a 1280x720 pixel display and is powered by the 1.7GHz Octa-core MediaTek MT6592 SoC and 1GB of RAM. It comes with Android 4.2 with Amigo 2.0 customisation from Gionee. The top of the phone is clean as it has the swivel camera, so the 3.5mm audio jack and the microUSB charging port are on the bottom. On the left hand side you have the microSIM slot and on the right you have the power button and volume rocker. The speaker is located on the rear side towards the base.Since the camera can be swivelled, you get all the camera settings at your disposal on both sidesBuild quality of the phone is great and it fits well in the hand. Unlike the Elife E7, the Mini is less affected by fingerprint smudges on its rear side. One-handed operation is quite easy thanks to the 4.7-inch display.With the camera swivelled on the rear sideJust like the Elife E7, the Elife E7 Mini comes with the Amigo 2.0 which is the Android customisation by Gionee. It also has apps such as CharmCam which allows you to take photographs and apply any number of filters and overlays. Watch out for our hands-on video with the Elife E7 Mini to see the phone in action.