Watch Elephone as they pit their Elephone S3 against the Xiaomi Mi5


Elephone have a bit of a bee in their bonnet when it comes to the Xiaomi Mi5 and this is their 2nd video showing another of their phones up against the flagship Xiaomi phone.

In a previous video, Elephone took the Elephone P9000 and showed it in comparison to the Xiaomi Mi5, now the company have taken their metal bodied Elephone S3 and done the same.

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The video above goes over a few of the design and specification differences of the two phones, but in reality it is hard to believe that someone who was in the market for a Xiaomi Mi5 would even consider the Elephone S3. Put aside the fact the two brands are leagues apart, the Elephone S3 is clearly aimed squarely at people wanting style over performance while the Xiaomi Mi5 is a phone for people who require speed and performance over design.

Perhaps Elephone should compare the S3 against the new Oppo R9 instead, or would you prefer to see more original videos from them?

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35 Comments

  1. Atomicrus
    March 26, 2016

    Overall, design is not the only thing about any phone. As for me, stable rom and support is not meaningless, as it helps a product to long it’s life. Elephone is weak on roms and support after a year of time.

    • petarr90
      March 26, 2016

      You spelled month wrong.

      • Atomicrus
        March 26, 2016

        My Bad))) But you get it right

    • Stef
      March 26, 2016

      That’s less of an issue if they release sources. ‘Till now they only did so with Elephone P8000 and it’s about to get a nightly release (CM12.1.). Few Chinese phones even touch this level of support.

      In fact I would prefer if they were to give up creating roms completely. Just release well documented sources and let the community create the roms. Their own roms are filled with bugs and some of them come with Malware even, so I simply stay away.

      I was always of the opinion that hardware makers should only do minimal software, else both are held back (both software and hardware), software is very expensive to support too.

      I think more people should start caring about sources instead of stock roms. Well sourced phones are supported for almost half a decade (my 5 year old kindle fire is still getting OTA updates, incredibly enough).

      • Riccardo Benzoni
        March 26, 2016

        they don’t want you to keep the phone for almost half a decade, but to change as much as possible during this period. that’s where closed sources come in play.

        • Stef
          March 26, 2016

          I know but my Galaxy S2 works perfectly well. Bought new battery, installed latest available CM and gave it to my father, never could he be happier.

          The phone it’s much better than it ever was. Frankly it is better than many new phones.

          Swappable batteries + Swappable Software gives you almost infinite life to a phone.

          Sealed batteries + closed source …. not for me (ok I don’t mind sealed batteries so much, but closed source is a no-no and such companies should not be supported).

    • Roberto Tomás
      March 26, 2016

      Well, the success of apple shows how far design goes for phone sales. 🙂

      • yalok
        March 26, 2016

        Design is important, but apple has 3 or more years of support for their mobile devices.
        If they had such a bad support as elephone does, the design would not help them be competitive.

        • Stef
          March 26, 2016

          Frankly P8000 is going to get a looot more support than any Apple phone. When it ascends in nightly status it will probably be supported for another 5 years at least… Not all Elephone are built the same.

          • yalok
            March 27, 2016

            1. Will it?
            2. Even if, nightly is not on the same level as apple’s support.
            Comparing Elephone to Apple is like comparing Lada (russian car brand) to Bugatti.

            • Stef
              March 27, 2016

              1) Most/all devices that I’ve owned that reached nightly status are still supported despite often being 5+ years old

              Examples of prior devices of mine (all still supported):

              https://download.cyanogenmod.org/?type=nightly&device=galaxysmtd
              https://download.cyanogenmod.org/?type=nightly&device=otter
              https://download.cyanogenmod.org/?type=nightly&device=i9100
              https://download.cyanogenmod.org/?type=nightly&device=ovation

              2) Stable releases are of higher quality actually. All newest features and better performance. Most Apple new firmwares don’t include all the new features on older phones and often downgrade performance too.

              Nightly releases, some are as good as stable (better than Apple), some are worse indeed. Lately the quality is much higher though, even in nightly releases. Have you used a nightly release of a mature device?

              3) You’re confused, I’m comparing Google to Apple. Cyanogenmod is AOSP based not Elephone-based whatever that may be…

            • yalok
              March 27, 2016

              We are speaking of elephone and apple here.
              I’m using cyanogenmod nightly builds since 2012, so I know what it is. Currently running cm13 on nexus 5x and OPO.
              It’s a big luck if your device gets to receive official cm nightly builds. But the quality of the nightly builds is to be discussed, still better than nothing..
              You are double lucky if there are enthusiasts to maintain the builds for that many years..
              Yet, I wouldn’t buy any elephone counting on that luck.
              Elephone hasn’t build yet a device that popular to receive official nightly cyanogenmod builds.

            • Stef
              March 27, 2016

              Maybe you do, I mostly spoke of CyanogenMod though, I made it clear in my first post (“when it ascends in nightly status”), pay better attention.

              As for Elephone it’ll probably ascend in the following weeks/months (basically once fingertip is added): http://forum.xda-developers.com/elephone-p8000/orig-development/rom-cyanogenmod-12-1-p8000-t3259022

              The rom is already fully usable, it only lacks fingertip sensor support (drivers are written as we speak).

              Nightlies are automated. Technically a maintainer is needed but, most often than not, they only attend them once in a while. So they typically run for 5+ years, I expect no less for P8000 (by comparison iphones get less support, and often of less quality).

            • yalok
              March 27, 2016

              Oh, sure. You too pay better attention and don’t intrude with off topic cyanogenmod propaganda since your post in this thread was not the first.
              That xda link is only about an unofficial build. There are hundreds of devices that get those and never get to ascend to receive official nightly builds. Good luck to your hopes.

            • Stef
              March 27, 2016

              Actually the dev himself told that once fingertip is done he’s going to upload it to CM with him as maintainer. I can find the post for you to read.

              It’s only unofficial because the fingertip is not done, apart from that it has all the latest and greatest. Research my links better next time.

              Also it’s not propaganda. It’s a simple matter of fact that CM devices get more support than apple devices. Nor was it off topic , I corrected your inaccuracy.

            • yalok
              March 28, 2016

              CM is good, but they have yet to produce a device.
              What if that “lonely” dev loses interest in this device after a few month? What if a new maintainer is not found?
              Also, a 5-year old device is slow. Even if the OS is ok, the hardware just cannot handle the constantly growing applications.

            • Stef
              March 28, 2016

              Galaxy S2 is actually faster than ever. Hardware in phones have slowed down , so in the next 5 years a lot less will happen than in the last 5 years. And if Galaxy S2 dealt so well with change, I expect modern phones to deal even better down the line… BTW Apple devices dealt with change a lot worse. My iPhone 4 is practically useless by how slow it is and it actually got less support than S2-CM.

              Nightlies are automated. Maintainers are mostly needed for stable releases, they check nightlies only now and then. That’s why all phones have got a minimum 3-4 years of support.

              CM is software, they don’t have to produce a device. Microsoft managed just fine by not producing a computer up until the surface line…

            • yalok
              March 28, 2016

              You can’t say “cm devices”, since there are none. There are devices that run cm very well, but that doesn’t make them cm devices. Pay attention to what you say.

              I have different experience with galaxy s2 and cm. My friend uses this device with latest cm nightly. The device was lagging so much he couldn’t unlock it to answer a call from his girlfriend.

              Good luck with elephone p8000 ascending to official cm nightlies.

            • Stef
              March 28, 2016

              Which version of CM? CM12+ needs heavy greenifying to be usable.

              CM11 works as intended. That’s not CM’s fault though, it’s Google’s decision to make Android twice as heavy from Android v5 and up.

              A device running maintained CM is a CM device. What else can it be?

            • yalok
              March 28, 2016

              A Samsung/Huawei/LG/etc device?
              Or by OS, let’s say there are ios and Android devices.
              When you say apple device, I think about devices designed and produced by Apple, when you say cm devices, I think about the same as in the first case but I don’t know about any cm produced device.
              CM is not an OS build from ground up, it’s just another custom Android ROM maker.

            • Stef
              March 28, 2016

              By OS they’re running the CM distribution of Android, not Huawei/Samsung/LG distributions (even though they could), nor AOSP.

              CM is actually a whole mechanism of automated releases supporting all the add ins of the latest AOSP release , sprinkled with certain open source software. It’s a distribution separate from AOSP, just how Debian is Different than Ubuntu even though both are running Linux kernel.

              Similarly CM runs Android kernel (which is very similar to Linux kernel btw), but as an important aside it gets multiple times more support than the rest of the distros. That’s why a CM device is more of a thing than a “Samsung device” (which often gets what? 2 years of support? … At most.).

            • yalok
              March 28, 2016

              Lol. You know so much about Linux and CM world, but you still miss some basic logic.

            • Stef
              March 28, 2016

              My point is that in the long run maintained open source (with Google actually being the real maintainer, since they maintain the AOSP releases which make the biggest bulk of Android distributions) would and does beat closed source of any kind.

              As an interesting aside: after 2 decades of fighting it seems that both closed and open source software lost. The best software in the world right now includes a bit of both, from scientific software to enterprise OSes, even mobile software.

              Naturally closed source software eventually loses even if they have total control of the hardware too (like Apple does). Don’t get me wrong, other (mostly) closed source releases lose too even more badly (Samsung/Sony/HTC).

              It turns out closed source software is a good idea to boot start something, but a bad idea to maintain it. The best software gets born as closed source but it get to its own when it is open sourced (often through the various forks, open or closed source). CM follows this model by using a bit of both closed and open source software, no wonder that it’s close to the best thing right now in mobile software.

              BTW I don’t even like many of the guys there, I have got in heated arguments with them on what should be pushed on the main trunk, and sometimes I found it insane that they would push certain pieces of software so badly. I just admit that they’re part of sth bigger than themselves, and probably better than anything else in the whole industry (in the long run).

          • Karly Johnston
            March 28, 2016

            More like 5 weeks.

            • Stef
              March 28, 2016

              There was never a CM device that got less than 2 years support minimum. Not one that I know of. The expectation is 4 years+.

              Here , take a look (choose any device you want): https://download.cyanogenmod.org/

            • Karly Johnston
              March 28, 2016

              How about any Exynos powered Samsung that managed to get a port. How about any phone that quickly dropped off the XDA modding interest. If the team doesn’t think it is worth their time, they won’t work on it.

            • Stef
              March 28, 2016

              None of those ascended to nightly status to begin with … I’m talking here of CM devices, not those with generic custom roms.

            • Karly Johnston
              March 28, 2016

              P8000 runs on a Mediatek… CM doesn’t stick with that.

            • Stef
              March 28, 2016

              Apparently it does: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=65615877&postcount=237

              Once fingertip is fixed (building of drivers is in process), we’ll get official nightlies.

            • Karly Johnston
              March 28, 2016

              Obviously it doesn’t

            • Stef
              March 28, 2016

              I just gave you evidence man, what more do you want?

              If you can’t be swayed by evidence you’re an ideologue and I’m losing my time talking with you…

            • Karly Johnston
              March 28, 2016

              You proved it doesn’t.

            • Stef
              March 28, 2016

              How?

  2. Brooklyn701
    March 26, 2016

    With all the bad Elephone often does, one has to recognize, that the screen shown is very impressive with respects to the boundaries to the Frame. But that doesn’t mean you get that screen in the final product, doesn’t say anything about illumination and contrast, Sunlight legibility etc. It remains to be seen what comes out at the end.

    Along with the simple HW part, a well customized ROM regarding standby consumption and consumption in general would be nice. As well as Updates longer than 12 Months.

  3. fahady
    March 27, 2016

    I guess Elephone either they are out of thier minds or they are playing stupid, there is nothing to compare between these two phone elephone is crap literally , while xiaomi is a different story, so please crap elephone stop wasting effort in this meaningless compares and direct your effort to enhance your software and support.