The world's thinnest phone, Gionee Elife S5.5, hits the shelves March 18 for $374

If you have been jonesing to get your hands on the world's thinnest handset, March 18th is your lucky day, as Gionee just announced that the Elife S5.5 will be released on that date. As the name suggests, the phone is just 5.5 mm thick, beating everything else currently on the market, but the svelte design is not its only selling point.

 

We will be getting a 5" 1080x1920 pixels Super AMOLED display, 1.7 GHz octacore MediaTek MT6592 processor, 2 GB of RAM, 13 MP rear camera, and a 5 MP frontal one, as well as a 2300 mAh battery. The battery capacity seems decent for such an anorexic phone, and Gionee claims that the Elife S5.5 will be able to get you through the working day on its juice alone. Unfortunately, Gionee didn't find the space for a microSD slot, so the fashion model will stay with the 16 GB of internal memory it houses.

The Elife S5.5 will launch in China next Tuesday, though Gionee promised it will roll out gradually to more than 40 countries as well, while there will be an LTE version, arriving in June. For now, you can get the 3G version of the handset, which will run you $374 - small potatoes to pay, if you want to brag with the possession of the "world's thinnest phone". We spent a brief hands-on time with the handset during the MWC expo last month, and found it to be truly an engineering marvel, though somewhat uncomfortable to handle, precisely on account of the trimmed waistline.

source: GizChina via UnwiredView