Elephone U

Elephone U 4G Phablet

The end of the year and the pre-Christmas period prompt Chinese smartphone manufacturers to present their latest products. After the Honor V10 was recently presented in China, Elephone now wants to attack the competitive market. They focus on some technical features and have now released the Elephone U & U Pro, which still bore the name “Elephone S9”.

The Elephone S8 came onto the market in the summer of 2017, but took a while to be delivered. Especially because of the used Deca-Core processor and the good screen resolution it did a lot right. Now Elephone introduces the successor, but remains basically true to the line. Originally the U was still called S9, which, like the design, is strongly reminiscent of the current Samsung flagships. The top and bottom of the screen have relatively thin edges, but they are still clearly visible. A borderless design can only be spoken of on the two long sides of the phone. An Infinity display is used here, as in the Edge version of the South Korean model. As previously assumed, you bet on a 5.99 inch display.

Neither the Elephone U nor the Elephone U Pro are visually different! Both have dimensions of 15.40 x 7.25 x 0.84 cm. The Pro version weighs only 6g more than the normal version. Speaking of displays: Elephone makes a small compromise here. The built-in panel is an AMOLED, which comes with a resolution of 2160 x 1080 p. This makes it smaller than its predecessor, which had a resolution of 2560 x 1440. The higher resolution had to give way either because of the 2.5D display, which is strongly bent at the edge. Or because of another highly interesting feature: a flexible display panel. Doogee recently made a big splash with a similar display design, even if this technology is not entirely new. And a flexible display doesn’t mean a flexible smartphone – does it?

Overall, this blends in well with the phone’s appearance. The corners of the display, but also those of the housing, are rounded and real “corners” are not to be found through the edge display. The back confirms the impression and seems to outstrip the noble back of the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2. So far, only blue and black are listed as colour variants in the online shops. It is of course possible that further variants will follow.

Hardware into the interior. And that’s where the biggest difference lies in the two versions of the smartphone. For the cheaper version, the current Helio P23 processor from MediaTek finds its way into the Elephone. It is currently a popular choice, as it is quite energy-efficient thanks to 16 nm production, but still operates in four cores at 2 GHz. The other four cores are clocked at 1.5 GHz. This CPU can also be seen on the Ulefone Power 3, for example, which we have already tested. In addition, there is 6 GB RAM and 128 GB memory.

For the Pro version, the manufacturer opts for the Snapdragon 660 processor, which can also be seen in the current Xiaomi Mi Note 3. This CPU belongs to the upper middle class and is very efficient due to the 14 nm production and supports features such as Bluetooth 5.0. Four Kyro cores clock at 2.2 GHz and the other four still clock at 1.8 GHz. It also comes with a generous 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of mass storage. This is so large that you may not want to allow external memory expansion. Personally I’m a fan of this CPU and think Elephone made a good choice here.

Camera enthusiasts should not miss out either. That’s why the manufacturer has three cameras in total, two on the back and one on the front. That’s one more than its predecessor. Here you work with a dual camera setup. Both sensors offer a resolution of 13 megapixels. One is an RGB camera and the other a monochrome sensor. This should make particularly good photos and a portrait mode possible. The front camera is equipped with 8 megapixels and fortunately finds its place on the upper front – Mi Mix 2 says hello. It is particularly interesting that it is used for facial recognition, for which it analyses 128 aspects.

Even though this sounds very solid so far, Elephone does not save on additional features. Another surprise is the operating system, because the Elephone U Pro comes with pre-installed Android 8.0, which is very rare so far, especially on Chinese smartphones and is only used on current top models from Google and HTC. Buyers of the Elephone U, on the other hand, have to make do with Android 7.1 (for now), but the update to Android 8 will follow.

In terms of wireless charging capability, Elephone was previously a pioneer with the P9000 and is now once again integrating Qi capability. A suitable charging station like the RAVPower one probably has to buy additionally. However, this feature is also reserved for the Pro version only! Further connection options are also on board and cover all necessary standards. LTE Band 20 is not a problem and with local networks, you can use LTE Band 20.

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