Bezel-less, unibody, metal: Meet the Elephone S3


While the world waits for the S7, it’s the S3 that excites the GizChina community more… the Elephone S3.

Elephone have slowed down after last year’s flurry of launches. The most recent Elephone we got our hands on, the P9000, feels like quite a nice phone.

‘Premium’ seems to have gotten the better of the brand, which is why, the S3.

1-Elephone-S3_result

Gizchina News of the week


The Elephone S3 is a full-metal unibody phone which is supposed to be bezel-less. We’ve seen how most ‘bezel-less’ claims turn out in the end, so we won’t be hoping too much in that regard here.

From the photos, the S3 looks like an amalgamation of some recent Huawei and LeEco (Letv) phones, with the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and all.

3-Elephone-S3_result

No further details of the phone are available at the moment. What we do know is that the Elephone S3 will come in three colours (shown above), in Gold, Rose Gold and Silver.

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36 Comments

  1. guran
    February 16, 2016

    hmm, very similar to the huawei mate s

    • Roberto Tomás
      February 16, 2016

      also very similar to the already released M3

  2. Roberto Tomás
    February 16, 2016

    I’ve seen real samples of some of these bezelless phones and they were in fact bezelless. I think they might actually make them but then not export them or something. An example is the Elephone P9000 “edge” — which I’ve seen in someone’s hand. It was an engineering sample, not a final product. It most definitely had a “true bezeless” design and very rounded 2.5D glass. If you look at the current P9000 — the nice one that is closer to real bezeless design — the P900 edge had that amount of bezel, but the high curvature of the 2.5D glass hides the 1-2mm black stripe on the side, and it looks effectively bezelless.

    • Marius Cirsta
      February 16, 2016

      Actually I think this version of the Elephone is on sale or will be on sale soon.
      Maybe some people will pay a premium price for the fancy screen.

  3. balcobomber25
    February 16, 2016

    “While the world waits for the S7, it’s the S3 that excites the GizChina community more… the Elephone S3.” I thought the Gizchina community was more excited about the Mi5. Guess I was wrong.

    • Adam Irvine
      February 16, 2016

      Neither excites me really… The Mi5 will be a lovely phone I’m sure, but it’ll be silly money, (too silly for my wallet anyway) and Elephones are usually well, Elephones… They never turn out to actually look like their heavily doctored renders of the phone and the quality isn’t ever there either…

      Bit like most of the glamour models once Photoshop has been used a bit I guess…

      • balcobomber25
        February 16, 2016

        The Mi5 will be silly money? It will be 1999 yuan like every other Mi (#) model was. That’s not exactly silly money. But my overall point was I don’t really hear anyone in the Gizchina community (outside of the writers) talking about the S3. It’s not even the most talked about Elephone, the P9000 and the elusive Vowney are.

        • Marius Cirsta
          February 16, 2016

          The Mi5 will be worth it, no doubt about it, but by the time re-sellers get to sell it the price would probably be like $400 which is too much considering the Redmi Note 3 is a very good phone for 1/2 that.
          Yes I know you can’t really compare the 2 specs wise and build quality wise but in the end I ( and many other people I guess ) are perfectly fine with something like the Redmi Note 3.

          • balcobomber25
            February 16, 2016

            The Note 3 is a very good phone and we are at a point now where cheap phones are no longer “cheap phones”. You can get some excellent phones for under $200.

            • Sirrr
              February 16, 2016

              This year promises to be an exciting one, as we can go even lower on the price scale to find good and affordable phones like Redmi 3, Huawei Honor Holly 2 Plus or Lenovo Lemon 3. And i believe that we all have to thank Xiaomi for pushing down the prices and rising the quality bar.

            • balcobomber25
              February 16, 2016

              Yea Xiaomi shocked the industry when they put an X10 in a $150 phone. Everyone was scrambling to counter.

        • Adam Irvine
          February 17, 2016

          Yes sorry, I should have explained a bit behind my ‘Silly Money’ comment… Because of the usual lack of SD Card, I’d want to go for a 64gb model minimum, that for a start isn’t the Entry 1999 yuan, that coupled with the re-sellers taking a rather large cut makes it Silly Money… 🙁

          Back, back, back, in the day (lol) When it was between the Mi4 or the OnePlus One I went for the OPO because they were selling it directly/officially to me in the UK for the same money as all the other countries were paying (obviously with the UK VAT on top etc… But it’s not exactly a re-sellers fee tacked on is it.)

          That’s really the only thing that keeps a Xiaomi Flagship device out of reach for me 🙁

          • balcobomber25
            February 17, 2016

            I can understand that now that your broke it down

    • bro-reac
      February 16, 2016

      Excited but you know nothing about the phone – very funny.

      • balcobomber25
        February 16, 2016

        I know it is coming this month and will feature a SD820, I also know that the camera takes some very good pics.

        • bro-reac
          February 17, 2016

          Ear to the ground.
          It is gizchina who are giving no news as news.

  4. Young
    February 16, 2016

    Every week, new phone.

    Confused company.

  5. chuckdaly
    February 16, 2016

    While the idea and look of a bezel-less smartphone sounds great. Who really wants to deal with the requirement of Palm Rejection software on a smartphone?

    • Muhammad Yasir
      February 16, 2016

      wat ?

      • chuckdaly
        February 17, 2016

        Anytime you make a phone call, your palm will touch the screen due to the lack of side bezels. Depending on the size of the phone and the users hand, both sides of the screen can be in contact with the users palm at any given time. The phone must utilize “Palm rejection” software to differentiate between accidental touches by the users palm and their fingers. Its unecessary software that may or may not work well on a smartphone and it will use up resources as it will always be enabled. Got Dat?

        • Muhammad Yasir
          February 19, 2016

          Ich habs

  6. Coinphone
    February 16, 2016

    After reading and seeing all about Elephone’s beautiful phones, I have decided to buy Photoshop.

    • Muhammad Yasir
      February 16, 2016

      HAHA

      noice one (how Andi , the Brit , would pronounce it 😀 )

    • Young
      February 16, 2016

      Hahahahaha

    • Steven Fox
      February 16, 2016

      Best comment this year 🙂 🙂 🙂

    • bassa
      February 16, 2016

      LOL

    • Bailey
      February 16, 2016

      Yep nobody photoshops better than Elephone Lol

    • BotondKisKovacs
      February 16, 2016

      You won the internet today!

    • Joel Adames
      February 17, 2016

      And the comment of the year award goes to…!!!

  7. Muhammad Yasir
    February 16, 2016

    looks beaut but needs a powerful spec set !

  8. Sam
    February 16, 2016

    Looks quite nice

  9. kik
    February 16, 2016

    I will not believe it is bezel-less until they release a video with display on just like what Ulefone has done with Ulefone Future.

  10. Kuo Ho Chan
    March 17, 2016

    Here is a video to see the bezel-less smartphone elephone s3:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpJyp7O_dns

  11. Lennald
    May 6, 2016

    In my opinion, the highlight of the Elephone S3 are: bezelless desigh, MTK6753 octa-core chipset, 3GB RAM and the 13MP sony rear camera. While the short-point are, the first one must be the 2100mAh battery, it is strongly not enough for the specifications. The other is the 16gb rom. The mystery is the price. While comparing to the other MTK6753 mid-range device, I will prefer the Oukitel k6000 pro with 6000mAh battery, Android 6.0 and 3GB+32GB storage. Its price is only $143.99 now at gearbest.

  12. david2016
    June 25, 2016

    Awesome!appreciated to your professional latest review about elephone S3
    Elephone.CC has unveiled latest Elephone S3 with 15% off discounts during 21th June to 30 June(you could get the most 10 USD coupons anytime), I am the fan of elephone.CC and i also bought P9000 and P8000,so that’s why the elephone.CC gave me the 10 usd coupons, it is just sold at 149 USD excluding shipping price cutting from 179.99 USD,that make it the cheapest on the net,HAHA elephone just aims to join us to enjoy the the excitement of wonderful fourth round of the European Cup! You guys could contact with the girl sale for other varies coupons.LOL