The world’s slimmest Android phone is official

The Gionee Elife S5.1 might just become one of the thinnest Android phones on the market after the official announcement of the handset. We’ve heard about this Android handset earlier this summer under the name of Gionee GN9005 which was supposed to be around 5 mm thick.

The Elife S5.1 didn’t quite reach the 5 mm goal, but it’s very close to it with its 5.15 mm thickness. Aside from the USB port and headphone jack, the Android phone actually looks as thin as advertised. Usually, when manufacturers aim for thinness, they und up sacrificing some of the gadget’s features because they just don’t fit. The Gionee Elife S5.1 tries to avoid that by packing a 2100 mAH battery and fairly good specs. The phone will supposedly be up for sale in a matter of weeks in China, so we expect it to be released on other markets by the end of the year.

Supposed specs of the Gionee Elife S5.1 are a 4.8 inch 720p AMOLED display, quad core 1.2 GHz SoC, 8 MP rear camera, 5 MP front camera, 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage. These specs are still in the rumor-phase and so far we haven’t heard anything about a microSD card slot, but the gadget doesn’t look so bad, considering that it’s so thin. It’s also a super light phone weighing just 100 grams, which makes it really appealing to some audiences. We don’t know which Android version the Elife S5.1 will run, but it will hopefully be at least KitKat, since the previous Elife S5.5 ran Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with Gionee’s own Amigo UI on top of it when it was launched in March.

Gionee had had the throne for the slimmest smartphone so far with its 5.5 mm thick Elife S5.5, but with its current upcoming release, the company is trying to outdo itself. Previously, the record for the thinnest phone on the market was held by the Vivo X3 with its 5.75 mm thickness. The Vivo X3 had held the record since September 2013, with fairly good specs and features. The Vivo X3 is similar to the Elife S5.5 with the same OS, display resolution, 1.5 GHz quad core CPU and 2000 mAH battery. On the plus side, compared to the new Elife S5.1, the Vivo X3 offers a microSD slot which can expand storage to 32 GB.

I personally love thin phones, but the race to create the thinnest Android gadget ever does sacrifice some of the specs which could have been included in an otherwise premium device. You can peek at what has been leaked about the Gionee Elife S5.1 handset in the pics below.