At the end of June, we received the first tentative reports of a new Elephone S7 device, set to be based around the MediaTek Helio X20 System-on-Chip and sport a design that looked very much like the Samsung Galaxy S7. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing: the Galaxy S7 features an elegant design and it’s well made, too. Following the earlier announcement, we have now seen a new report providing some additional detail about the device. In particular, that the MediaTek Helio X20 will be supported by 3 GB of RAM and there will be 32 GB of onboard storage, although the amount taken up by the operating system is unknown. As a reminder, the MediaTek Helio X20 was the first tri-cluster multi-core mobile chipset available on the market. The chip, manufactured using a 20nm process, features a total of ten 64-bit application cores, arranged in three tiers of different clusters. One cluster consists of four ARM Cortex-A53s clocked at 1.4 GHz, another quad core cluster uses ARM Cortex-A53s clocked at up to 1.8 GHz and the final tier consists of a dual core ARM Cortex-A72 application processor with a maximum speed of between 2.1 to 2.3 GHz, depending on the device. MediaTek have optimised the Helio X20 for low power consumption with high performance when needed.
Other key features include a double curved glass edge and have a similar bezel-less design as we’ve seen with the Elephone P9000. In the case of the Elephone S7, it will measure 5.5-inch and feature a Full HD, or 1080p, resolution. It isn’t clear if this will be an IPS LCD panel or if the S7 will use an OLED panel instead. Other specifications include a 16MP rear camera paired up with an 8MP front facing camera. There will be a fingerprint scanner on the front of the smartphone. It is unclear what version of Android the device will run but we would expect it to use Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
This specification puts the device into the mid to upper-mid range of today’s devices and should be of no surprise, however the Elephone S7’s greatest strength may be in the attractive design, the range of colours the smartphone will be available in and the price. Unfortunately, at this time we do not know when the device will be available, what markets nor how much it will be.
