[Android General] mdabar:
Elephone P3000S : 4G, 5"IPS Gorilla-Glass, octa-core, Mali450 GPU , 2GB, Fingerprint

Just some weeks ago we saw in the market a new lowcost smartphone, with very interesting specs.

I’m talking about the P3000S, from the Chinese company (but based in Hong Kong) Elephone, created in 2006 with the philosophy of innovate, very far from other asiatic companies more focused on copying fisrt brand products.

[IMG="Elephone P3000S"]http://www.baquia.com/images/easyblog_images/1852/2e1ax_default_entry_p3000s_photos_1.jpg[/IMG]

I want to highlight that point before starting the review because I’m really tired of talking to people that have bought the last clone of Samsung and later on complaint it’s not working well...it’s having a lot of FC, it’s not restarting after updating. It seems that those companies have done the biggest investment on copying the exterior rather than presenting a well-working phone.

We find each time more chinese manufacturers presenting new products based on a good quality-price ratio.

Needless to say that if the last Samsung Galaxy costs around 600€ and you buy a smartphone for less than 100€, even if it looks great, the difference on the price will not be only because of the brand and the marketing campaings.

Lets start the review :)

The P3000S is an evolution of the previous model P3000, the improvements are in the hardware part, moving from 4 to 8 cores, 8 to 16GB of storage and 1 to 2GB of RAM. The rest is mostly the same.

[IMG="P3000S specifications"]http://www.baquia.com/images/easyblog_images/1852/b2ap3_thumbnail_Elephone-P3000S-caracteristicas.jpg[/IMG]

The packaging looks well, it’s not as great as in iPhone or Samsung last models, but is elegant and simple. Once opened, we see the terminal carefully wrapped and next to it, the charger and a plastic protector for the screen, nice detail!

First pros and cons. I like having that screen protector included but, where are the headphones??

Honestly, nowadays it’s essential to have headphones, specially devices that are so multimedia capable. And this one is perfect for multimedia with that big screen and powerful hardware.

The phone looks very good, made in plastic but very good, nice touch and with quality. I’m surprised of finding the 4g logo on the corner, I guess it’s to highlight that capability, since there are not many phones on that range of price that can use 4G networks.

Moving the phone, we see the power and lock button on the right side, on the left the volume control, on the top the microUSB for charging and the Jack 3,5 for the headphones. On the bottom, just the small hole of the microphone. The 5” screen is a HD JDI IPS with Gorilla Glass 3rd gen, we can also see the front camera (8MP), the speaker and the navigation touch buttons.

If we turn the device, on the rear part we find first the 13MP camera (with OV Camera lenses), the LED flash and just below them, the fingerprint reader, one of the strengths of this smartphone.

Centered we will see the Elephone logo (I find it quite cool, something like Transformers!) and the handsfree speaker on the bottom.

Turning it on.

It boots really fast and we don’t have to make the 1st config like in other Android models, so we can just start and use it, leaving for later the account configuration.

After setting up the WiFi, I receive the notification for a new update, great! We like updated products!

It’s really fluid, moving screens, opening apps,... We don’t see any lags or delays. The quality of the screen is awesome! It’s not the iPhone 6 , but is far better than other chinese phones.

Lets go for the fingerprint reader. Enable the service and...

[IMG="Fingerprint manager"]http://www.baquia.com/images/easyblog_images/1852/b2ap3_thumbnail_Screenshot_2015-01-05-12-02-42.png[/IMG]

We have to pass 10 times our finger (the same finger) to complete the process, the secret is not to pass it very fast. I was able to complete the registration on the first try for the 10.

Now lock the phone, press unlock, pass the finger and works perfectly! Again, don’t pass it very fast, keep in mind that this is a real fingerprint reader/scanner and not the TouchID that we see on the iPhone5S and succesive models, that just checks some points.

Point to improve, the sound. It’s very low, watching a video we realise the image is great and the sound... Must be higher.

What about the camera? Promising 13MP is not giving them...

[IMG="Picture taken with Elephone P3000S"]http://www.baquia.com/images/easyblog_images/1852/b2ap3_thumbnail_IMG_20150104_110249.jpg[/IMG]

We can see an improvement compared to other lowcost phones, but it’s not yet a great camera. When taking outdoor pictures with a good light, the pictures will look good, sharp and clear. But when using the flash or with poor indoor ilumination... Pixelated images.

The voice control for the camera also works well.

All the applications I have tried work very well. When we ask for more computing power like watching movies or playing games... Is when the P3000S shows all his heart. The Mali450 GPU works perfectly in combination with the octo-core CPU and the 2GB of RAM. If you like playing, you’ll like this device.

Other functions like NFC or gesture recognition (with locked screen) also do what promised. In fact they’re very useful, for example to open the camera or the music player without unlocking (if you have fingerprint or other security you will have to pass it). They should change that, to be able to take pictures without accessing the gallery.

Surfing the web is really fast, either data or wifi webs load very very fast and all the navigation, changing tabs, etc is fluid.

Special mention for the battery!! It looks infinite. You’ll see the percentage going down, but having an iPhone5 with the battery of 1440mAh and charging it at least once everyday... those 3150mAh on the Elephone and more than 2 days with normal use are a delight.

To conclude, the SView cover is very useful, it fits perfectly the phone, shows that cool Elephone logo on the rear part and allows us to continue using the fingerprint scanner. Also leaving the quote “Keep expecting and be surprised” for our thoughts about the brand... Nice detail.

With the circle window on the front part, we can see an analog clock (can be digital) that shows automatically when we close the cover. Touching that window we can change between the watch and the musice player, without having to unlock the phone.

ATTENTION: just until next 12th of January, you can get a discount of $14 in GeekBuying using the coupon MXOMAATR if you also want the SView cover, don’t miss the extra coupon XSGBXTGB. I don't get any commission, just got the coupon when acquired my phone, you can benefit.

Summary: if you’ve read until here, you have surely understood that I like this phone, it has gratefully surprised me. In the last year I have tried several chinese smartphones and after using them you see why the price is so lower than first brand products.

When a brand bets for showing something new, the products have much more quality than the brands trying to copy/clone top seller products.

I have tried clones of Galaxy S4 and S5. From outside they could confuse us, but when using them... Slow answer, random changes, FCs...

This Elephone P3000S has some very good things and some things to improve. But we cannot overlook that we will have a mid-high range smartphone for less than 200$, it wouldn’t be fair to compare with the last 800$ from top brands ;)