We all try to look after our smartphones and protect them from damage, but for some users doing so is almost impossible. If your job involves manual labour or you’re into extreme sports, your phone is more vulnerable to the elements than most. For these type of users a rugged phone such as this Ulefone Armor will make a great purchase. Also see: Best Chinese phones 2017
Available from GearBest at the attractive price of £122.34 ($149.99/136.92€), the Armor is IP68-certified waterproof, dustproof, shockproof and can withstand temperatures from -40°C to 80°C. With a Gorilla Glass 3 coating the screen is also scratchproof.
Ulefone claims it has an extra strong signal thanks to a large antenna and that plastic casing, which combined with built-in GPS and a compass will be useful in the great outdoors. Battery life is also good from the 3500mAh lithium-polymer cell, and there’s a dedicated SOS button should you get lost.
In other respects this isn’t the most exciting smartphone, but with reasonable performance it will get the job done.
If you decide to go ahead and buy the Ulefone Armor from GearBest you should be prepared to factor import duty into the overall cost. This is calculated at 20 percent of whatever value is on the shipping paperwork, plus an admin fee of around £11. For more advice on buying tech from China see our article on grey-market tech.
Ulefone Armor design and build
The design of the Armor is perhaps the most interesting thing about it. With a blend of TPU and polycarbonate plastic and rubber, nothing is getting in or out of this case – water, dust or otherwise. Also see: Best Android phones 2017
Ulefone claims it uses waterproof gum to attach this case to the phone, and waterproof film to cover any inevitable gaps. The touchscreen has also been optimised to work effectively with wet fingers, and worked well in our tests.
The Armor has an IP68 rating, which means it can withstand up to 1.2m of water for up to 30 minutes, but in Ulefone’s own testing it was able to withstand up to 1.5m of water in that time.
The rugged case adds some thickness to the smartphone, which measures 12.5mm at its thickest point. Thankfully, though, the smaller-than-most 4.7in screen keeps down the overall size of the handset. It’s still reasonably weighty at 195g, but reassuringly so.
This screen is sadly only an HD panel, with a resolution of 1280×720 pixels. It’s been a while since we tested anything with a lower than full-HD resolution, even in the budget market, but because the screen is ‘small’ everything still looks sharp. It has a pixel density of 313ppi, which is only just short of the iPhone’s 326ppi.
You might find the screen a little dull for outdoor use in the brightest conditions, and contrast is also lacking, but on the whole it is a good performer with realistic colours and good clarity. Also see: Best mid-range phones 2017
The Ulefone Armor has an interesting design, and is instantly recognisable as a rugged phone. Available in black or orange and black (we reviewed the latter), it’s a bit like Marmite: you’ll love it or you’ll hate it.
On the orange and black model an orange plastic trim runs the circumference of the screen, which itself has pretty large bezels. Though this is often something you find in cheap phones, here it is purposely created to protect the screen from damage.
The orange colour scheme is more obvious at the rear, which comprises six vertical panels with a rough, textured surface that helps you grip it with wet or cold hands. The second panel down features two screws, which you remove in order to prise off the panel and access the dual Micro-SIM slots and microSD port.
Screws also hold in place the other rear panels, but these require a different type of screwdriver to the one supplied in the box for getting to the SIM slots. We don’t think Ulefone wants you to remove these.
At the top of the rear is a 13Mp camera with a waterproof housing and a single LED flash, and to the right of this a mono speaker. The Armor wasn’t built for audio quality, and not only will it fire sound into your palm or on to a table or flat surface, but the results are rather tinny.
At the bottom of the Ulefone is a large silver, grooved piece, which we think is part of the antenna. As we mentioned previously, Ulefone claims excellent signal strength for the Armor.
Because the casing is rather thick, also in the box you’ll find an extender cable for the 3.5mm headphone jack, and a Micro-USB charging cable with a slightly longer prong than most (you might find using third-party USB cables tricky).
Both these ports are hidden behind a rubber flap – we would prefer to see waterproofing on the ports themselves, as is the case with the Galaxy S8 and iPhone 7, but this phone costs nowhere near as much so we can hardly complain.
It’s a shame not to see USB-C here but, again, this is a budget phone, and the processor doesn’t support any form of quick charging in any case. Ulefone supplies a 5W charger but it’s a two-prong adaptor, so we recommend using your previous handset’s USB charger or buying a third-party model.
Below the screen are three physical buttons for home, back and multi-tasking. These are waterproof and coated in rubber, and like the other buttons on the phone require extra pressure to operate. Bizarrely, above the back button is an onscreen back button, but with no label. Had we not noticed it mentioned in the Quick Start Guide we would have thought the phone was playing up.
Ulefone Armor review continues on the next page >>
The post Ulefone Armor review appeared first on Gigarefurb Refurbished Laptops News.
source https://news.gigarefurb.co.uk/ulefone-armor-review/
No comments:
Post a Comment