The Gionee Elife S5.1 is one of the thinnest smartphones ever

Gionee-Elife-S5-1

Photo: CNMO

You’ve probably never heard of Gionee, a Chinese electronics manufacturer that builds handsets mostly for emerging markets. But if super slim smartphones are your thing, you’ll want to take note of its latest offering, the Elife S5.1. Measuring just 5.15mm thick, it’s one of the slimmest smartphones ever made, and its metal chassis makes it pretty darn attractive, too.

Despite its extravagant design, the Elife S5.1 isn’t actually a high-end device. Like most Gionee devices, it’s supposed to be affordable, so you get mostly midrange specifications under the hood — including a 4.8-inch 720p display, a Snapdragon 400 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage.

There is no microSD card slot, but the Elife S5.1 does have an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 2,100mAh battery. It will ship with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean pre-installed — along with Gionee’s own user interface.

Photo: CNMO

Photo: CNMO

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely the Elife S5.1 will make its way over to Western markets, but if you’re interested, there’s always the possibility of getting one imported. It’s unclear how much the device will cost at this point, but we’ll know more when it goes on sale in China in the coming weeks.