Elephone U3H
At the beginning of January Honor got it Honor View 20 fooled. A smartphone whose front camera is subtly integrated into the display. In contrast to the Notch, the in-display camera (or punch-hole camera) is not very successful. Nevertheless, smaller smartphone manufacturers from China could not miss it and the design of the Honor View 20 copied. Above all Elephone, which already announced a visually similar model in spring 2019. Almost forgotten, the Elephone U2019H was released in December 3.
Design with punch-hole camera
The most striking design feature of the Elephone U3H is the aforementioned “punch-hole camera”. The front camera's cutout, which is just 2.98 mm in size, is located directly in the display. The display itself covers a large part of the front with a diagonal of 6.53 inches. According to Elephone, the screen-to-body ratio is more than 91.38%. The built-in panel is of the IPS type and has a resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels.
The back of the smartphone is just as striking as the front. The back curves into the display frame. The colors “Midnight Black” and “Breathing Crystal” give the smartphone a special touch.
48 Megapixel main camera
A 48 megapixel main camera with a central LED flash and a 5 megapixel depth sensor underneath is arranged vertically on the back. The main camera uses a Sony IMX 586 image sensor. Elephone would not only be based on the design of the Honor View 20, but also use the identical camera sensor. However, information on camera sensors should be used with caution with China smartphones. Often the advertised sensors are not installed!
The main camera is supported by Elephone's camera AI. The “Ultra-Dark Mode 2.0” is intended to produce largely noise-free and colorful images even in poor lighting conditions using “multi-frame processing”. The same applies to the 24 megapixel front camera, which is supposed to deliver perfect selfies using numerous beauty filters. The face unlock, which takes into account more than 128 identifying features, ensures more security. But even this information is not always correct, especially for Chinese smartphones. Many smartphones, including those from Elephone, can be tricked by showing photographs.
MediaTek P70 mid-range
Like the Elephone U2, the Elephone U3H is also equipped with MediaTek's P70 system-on-chip. This is divided into an Octa-Core CPU with 2.1 GHz clock rate and a Mali G72-MP3 GPU. The memory equipment includes a 6GB LPDDR4x main memory and a 128GB eMMC5.1 data memory. The data memory can be expanded with a microSD memory card at the expense of the second SIM slot.
In terms of performance, the MediaTek P70 belongs to the upper middle class. Experience has shown that the P70 should display both the user interface and games smoothly. The user interface is based on Android 9, which is largely based on stock Android.
4G LTE and 3500 mAh battery
The Elephone U3H supports the most common mobile radio frequencies in Europe. LTE reception is possible on both nano SIM slots. When it comes to WiFi, Elephone uses fast dual AC WiFi. Bluetooth is available in version 4.2. There is a fingerprint scanner on the back for safe unlocking. The capacity of the battery is given as 3500 mAh. It is loaded via USB-C. Wireless Qi charging is not possible.
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More than half a year after the Elephone U3H was announced, the time for the China punch-hole smartphone might have run out. Even if well-known manufacturers such as Honor, Samsung or OPPO have published or published smartphones with punch-holes, the trend around the punched-out front camera was not really successful.
However, the smartphone cuts a good figure on the data sheet and is an inexpensive mid-range device. We are curious to see how the Elephone U3H will fare in the test.
