camisa pa铆s de gales 2022

Blackview is a company that I rarely pay much attention to. Their devices are usually decent, but also surprisingly generic, hence why I like to focus on more attention grabbing companies and their devices. When I was offered the Blackview R6 however, I decided to give it a try, if only to see if my suspicions and preconceptions were true. So, how is the Blackview R6?Design and BuildIn terms of design, the Blackview R6 is more focused on being simple and functional than flashy. My unit is the Titanium Grey model, which comes with a simple grey rear and a completely black front. Going around the device is a CNC Aluminum frame, with the power and volume button sitting comfortably on the right. On the bottom of the frame, there鈥檚 the microUSB port, and at the top there鈥檚 the usual 3.5mm headphone jack.  PerformanceThe R6 performs like any other MTK6737T powered device. It鈥檚 quick and snappy in the UI department, but once you start gaming things become more troublesome.Playing simple games is completely fine, for example Angry Birds or Tetris. Unfortunately, anything that requires even slightly more graphic fidelity is going to make you drop frames. Playing NOVA 3 results in a low of dropped frames, at some points rendering the game unplayable. The R6 is good at managing RAM, as it鈥檚 fully possible to run multiple apps in the background without slowdown. Unfortunately, I still stumbled freezes and slowdowns way more often than I would鈥檝e liked. The fingerprint sensor is accurate and quick, though it鈥檚 not much of a consolation.Overall, the performance is acceptable but may leave some desiring more. If you have any desire to game on your phone, then you will want to avoid the R6. If you don鈥檛 really game much or only play light games like Candy Crush, then the R6 should be sufficient.Battery LifeThe battery life on the R6 is above average, not more and not less. The 3000mAh battery in the R6 isn鈥檛 as beastly as the 6000mAh unit in its cousin the P2, and the results reflect that.With standard usage and brightness set to 60%, the R6 is fully capable of getting me through an entire day with 10-20% of battery life left. With heavier usage and brightness set to 80%, I managed to run out the battery before the end of the day. Realistically however, the R6鈥檚 battery life more than sufficient enough to get most people through the day.One more thing to take note off is that the device takes quite a while to charge with the included charger, about 2 hours and 20 minutes to go from 0% to 100%.Audio QualityThe R6鈥檚 audio quality is a mixed bag. The main speaker, located on the bottom right of the rear, is small and easy to muffle with a single finger. It is however very loud, though it lacks in clarity and bass. It鈥檚 good if you find it hard to hear your phone ringing, but it鈥檚 not optimal for music.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramSimilarly, the in-ear speaker is loud, but it can be somewhat blurry at times. It might get just a bit too loud since people around me could hear what the person on the other line was saying. On a more positive note, the person on the other hand could hear me just fine.CameraThe camera on the R6 isn鈥檛 very good. It can take some decent shots, but the white balance and saturation are incredibly inaccurate. Colors are blown way out of proportion and simply look unnatural or painful. 聽Just take a look at some of these samples.Now the R6 isn鈥檛 the worst camera I鈥檝e used, and these problems could be fixed by going through the settings, but the average user isn鈥檛 going to know that. They want to be able to point and shoot at a moments notice, needing to fiddle with settings just to take a usable photo simply isn鈥檛 acceptable. The front facing camera is similarly abysmal, with highlights getting blown to oblivion and details getting blurry and smudged. Low light shooting isn鈥檛 something you want to do with this device either as trying to snap a steady picture is a fight in itself.Video recording is also not really good. As is the case with most devices at this price point, the recorded footage is mediocre and the sound quality is also fairly bad. Still, if you鈥檙e looking at something in this price point, good video quality is simply something you don鈥檛 expect to get.ConnectivityMoving onto a more positive note, the R6鈥檚 GPS performance is fantastic. No matter where I went, the device managed to get a lock-on pretty quickly with minimal fuss. Reception was also great, as I could easily get 4G speeds anywhere I went.I never really faced any major connectivity issues throughout my testing. Everything ran as it should have and there weren鈥檛 any times where a problem with stop me from doing something. So for connectivity, the R6 gets a big thumbs up.ConclusionThe Blackview R6 is a device that leaves me quite conflicted. It鈥檚 a device that has some high highs, while also having some really low lows. Things like the build quality and connectivity of the device left me impressed, while the other aspects of the device were lacklustE.ProsStock software is snappyBuild quality is fantasticConnectivity is goodReliable battery lifeConsBad cameraMediocre video recordingNo backlit buttonsNo notification LEDGaming performance is poorDisplay isn鈥檛 greattime out nyBlackview is a company that I rarely pay much attention to. Their devices are usually decent, but also surprisingly generic, hence why I like to focus on more attention grabbing companies and their devices. When I was offered the Blackview R6 however, I decided to give it a try, if only to see if my suspicions and preconceptions were true. So, how is the Blackview R6?Design and BuildIn terms of design, the Blackview R6 is more focused on being simple and functional than flashy. My unit is the Titanium Grey model, which comes with a simple grey rear and a completely black front. Going around the device is a CNC Aluminum frame, with the power and volume button sitting comfortably on the right. On the bottom of the frame, there鈥檚 the microUSB port, and at the top there鈥檚 the usual 3.5mm headphone jack.  PerformanceThe R6 performs like any other MTK6737T powered device. It鈥檚 quick and snappy in the UI department, but once you start gaming things become more troublesome.Playing simple games is completely fine, for example Angry Birds or Tetris. Unfortunately, anything that requires even slightly more graphic fidelity is going to make you drop frames. Playing NOVA 3 results in a low of dropped frames, at some points rendering the game unplayable. The R6 is good at managing RAM, as it鈥檚 fully possible to run multiple apps in the background without slowdown. Unfortunately, I still stumbled freezes and slowdowns way more often than I would鈥檝e liked. The fingerprint sensor is accurate and quick, though it鈥檚 not much of a consolation.Overall, the performance is acceptable but may leave some desiring more. If you have any desire to game on your phone, then you will want to avoid the R6. If you don鈥檛 really game much or only play light games like Candy Crush, then the R6 should be sufficient.Battery LifeThe battery life on the R6 is above average, not more and not less. The 3000mAh battery in the R6 isn鈥檛 as beastly as the 6000mAh unit in its cousin the P2, and the results reflect that.With standard usage and brightness set to 60%, the R6 is fully capable of getting me through an entire day with 10-20% of battery life left. With heavier usage and brightness set to 80%, I managed to run out the battery before the end of the day. Realistically however, the R6鈥檚 battery life more than sufficient enough to get most people through the day.One more thing to take note off is that the device takes quite a while to charge with the included charger, about 2 hours and 20 minutes to go from 0% to 100%.Audio QualityThe R6鈥檚 audio quality is a mixed bag. The main speaker, located on the bottom right of the rear, is small and easy to muffle with a single finger. It is however very loud, though it lacks in clarity and bass. It鈥檚 good if you find it hard to hear your phone ringing, but it鈥檚 not optimal for music.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramSimilarly, the in-ear speaker is loud, but it can be somewhat blurry at times. It might get just a bit too loud since people around me could hear what the person on the other line was saying. On a more positive note, the person on the other hand could hear me just fine.CameraThe camera on the R6 isn鈥檛 very good. It can take some decent shots, but the white balance and saturation are incredibly inaccurate. Colors are blown way out of proportion and simply look unnatural or painful. 聽Just take a look at some of these samples.Now the R6 isn鈥檛 the worst camera I鈥檝e used, and these problems could be fixed by going through the settings, but the average user isn鈥檛 going to know that. They want to be able to point and shoot at a moments notice, needing to fiddle with settings just to take a usable photo simply isn鈥檛 acceptable. The front facing camera is similarly abysmal, with highlights getting blown to oblivion and details getting blurry and smudged. Low light shooting isn鈥檛 something you want to do with this device either as trying to snap a steady picture is a fight in itself.Video recording is also not really good. As is the case with most devices at this price point, the recorded footage is mediocre and the sound quality is also fairly bad. Still, if you鈥檙e looking at something in this price point, good video quality is simply something you don鈥檛 expect to get.ConnectivityMoving onto a more positive note, the R6鈥檚 GPS performance is fantastic. No matter where I went, the device managed to get a lock-on pretty quickly with minimal fuss. Reception was also great, as I could easily get 4G speeds anywhere I went.I never really faced any major connectivity issues throughout my testing. Everything ran as it should have and there weren鈥檛 any times where a problem with stop me from doing something. So for connectivity, the R6 gets a big thumbs up.ConclusionThe Blackview R6 is a device that leaves me quite conflicted. It鈥檚 a device that has some high highs, while also having some really low lows. Things like the build quality and connectivity of the device left me impressed, while the other aspects of the device were lacklustE.ProsStock software is snappyBuild quality is fantasticConnectivity is goodReliable battery lifeConsBad cameraMediocre video recordingNo backlit buttonsNo notification LEDGaming performance is poorDisplay isn鈥檛 greatnetller

Many people dream of the old days when phones lasted for three weeks straight and while that is no longer a reality, the Oukitel K6000 Plus offers the next best thing; up to 4 days of battery life.Oukitel K6000 Plus ReviewOukitel has been trying for quite a while to unseat the Ulefone Power 2 as one of the most popular MediaTek battery phones. This time, Oukitel is fighting Ulefone on its own turf, releasing a phone almost spec for spec with the Oukitel with a couple of minor differences. It uses the MTK6750 processor, 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM and of course, a massive 6080mAh battery as well. can the new Oukitel K6000 Plus successfully beat down the Ulefone Power 2? Let鈥檚 find out.Oukitel鈥檚 Ulefone Power 2Oukitel K6000 Plus SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6750 Octacore ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1920×1080 px, LCD Gorilla Glass 3RAM4GBStorage64GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras16MP, 8MP frontBattery6080mAhPhysical Dimensions208g, 15.70 x 7.6 x 0.98 cmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Oukitel K6000 Plus HardwareBuild quality is great. The body is metal and it feels good in hand. The only issue is that so many other midrange to low end devices feature similarly good build that metal like this no longer is special or exclusive to higher end devices.The phone is large, definitely not compact for a 5.5鈥 device, nearing 1cm in thickness and 76mm wide.I suspect people with smaller hands will have trouble hefting this phone while those who do not mind big device might be less put off by the size. The fingerprint sensor/home button combo is on the front with capacitive buttons flanking said button. Overall the build quality here is good, but the phone is large, as is expected for phones with massive batteries.Well built but bigOukitel K6000 Plus DisplayThe Oukitel K6000 Plus uses a 5.5鈥 1920x1080px display by AUO and the display here does not disappoint. The display is quite strong, showing off crisp text, pictures and the like while colourizing each pixel quite well.Colours are quite vivid, blacks are pretty dark and whites are slightly on the blue side, so I don鈥檛 have any complaints about how this display looks.It has a maximum brightness of 450 nits which is respectable, viewable even in direct sunlight. The screen is also covered with Asahi Dragontrail Glass, so it is protected against scratches to a certain degree.Oukitel K6000 Plus AudioThere is a single speaker on the back that provides decently loud sound. It鈥檚 still possible to get overpowered (e.g. on a highway) but the phone pumps out respectable sound.Audio quality is slightly above average, there is some decent clarity from the speakers and some bass as well. While the speaker here is not something to boast about, it is by no means a deal breaker either.Oukitel K6000 Plus BatteryBam bam! Another 6000mAh battery in my hand, and I鈥檓 over the moon! The K6000 Plus has a slightly larger battery than the Ulefone Power 2 (6080mAh vs 6050mAh) but that should not have any measurable effect on battery life compared to other factors like software optimization, screen brightness, etc.I put this phone through its paces, a 16 hour day with 5 hours of screen on time consumed about 38% of the battery, meaning there was 62% left.The next test was a two day test, two 16 hour days and about 10 hours of screen on time. I had about 17% left in the battery by the end of the second day. Can you kill this phone in a day? Yeah its possible. Will it be realistic? Definitely not, you will need to do some ridiculous things to kill this in a single day if you so desire.The phone also supports MediaTek鈥檚 PumpExpress fast charging, however the included charger was not a PumpExpress charger.Heavy users will not be able to kill the battery in a single day while medium and light users can stretch that to 3, even 4 days.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramTwice the battery, double the鈥attery?Oukitel K6000 Plus SoftwareThis phone comes with the latest Android 7.0 Nougat and let me start with a slight downside, the icons, notification shade and settings menu are not stock, you have custom Oukitel icons for each of those sections of the phone. A custom launcher replaces the icon on the launcher but you鈥檒l have to live with the custom icons elsewhere.That being said, moving between home screens, swiping, and accessing the notifications shade was all silky smooth. As fast as the Ulefone Power 2, but of course still slower than expensive flagships.Moving on to the fingerprint sensor, it is fast and accurate, there鈥檚 not much else to say here. As long as a fingerprint sensor passes a certain threshold of speed and accuracy, there isn鈥檛 much else to talk about.The processor handles opening and closing apps quite well, there wasn’t a lot of lag or hestitation when opening or closing apps, there definitely was some if you compare it directly with a higher end phoen, but it isn’t big enough to be an annoyance.Multi-tasking is handled very admirably as well, considering there鈥檚 4GB of RAM here. I faced no issues switching between many apps and even some games as well, so no issues there.I could run any game on this phone with no lag at all which is pretty impressive, you won’t have any issues gaming and you can do it for a long time as well.Oukitel K6000 Plus ConnectivityDouble check the network bands on this phone before you buy to ensure it works with your carrier. I was only able to get LTE in Ontario as the network bands did not support 3G in Canada. LTE speeds are not bad, not the fastest but not slow either. WiFi, bluetooth and GPS works quite well also, GPS works and doesn’t jump around at all.Oukitel K6000 Plus CameraSo the thing is, I was able to take good photos in good lighting conditions, pretty good pictures in fact, detail is good, colours are saturated and contrast is good, dynamic range isn’t the greatest and HDr does fix that, but it doesn’t fix it fully either.But the downside here is that the K6000 Plus’s camera quality actually dips pretty sharply once you enter less than ideal lighting conditions. It obviously doesn’t handle low light situations well either.The front facing camera has 8MP and takes some decent photos, and performs about the same as the front facing camera in terms of colour reproduction and low light conditions.You can film 1080p video and detail in the video just isn’t that great, but colours and saturation are fine.Oukitel K6000 Plus Camera Gallery Oukitel K6000 Plus VerdictThe Oukitel K6000 Plus isn’t backing down from the Ulefone Power 2 at all. In fact, it has almost all the same pros and cons as the Ulefone Power 2, tit for tat. With that in mind, the K6000 Plus is also a good option for a Mediatek battery phone, and the camera is the weakest part of this phone so far.It is very close, too close to call as to whether the Ulefone or the Oukitel is a better device. that being said, if you go either way both the Ulefone and Oukitel perform quite similar. However, the K6000 Plus and the Ulefone Power 2 both face competition with the Redmi Note 4X, and that is still the biggest challenge MediaTek battery phones face today. Buy the Oukitel K6000 PlusToo close to callOukitel K6000 Plus Video ReviewMany people dream of the old days when phones lasted for three weeks straight and while that is no longer a reality, the Oukitel K6000 Plus offers the next best thing; up to 4 days of battery life.Oukitel K6000 Plus ReviewOukitel has been trying for quite a while to unseat the Ulefone Power 2 as one of the most popular MediaTek battery phones. This time, Oukitel is fighting Ulefone on its own turf, releasing a phone almost spec for spec with the Oukitel with a couple of minor differences. It uses the MTK6750 processor, 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM and of course, a massive 6080mAh battery as well. can the new Oukitel K6000 Plus successfully beat down the Ulefone Power 2? Let鈥檚 find out.Oukitel鈥檚 Ulefone Power 2Oukitel K6000 Plus SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6750 Octacore ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1920×1080 px, LCD Gorilla Glass 3RAM4GBStorage64GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras16MP, 8MP frontBattery6080mAhPhysical Dimensions208g, 15.70 x 7.6 x 0.98 cmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Oukitel K6000 Plus HardwareBuild quality is great. The body is metal and it feels good in hand. The only issue is that so many other midrange to low end devices feature similarly good build that metal like this no longer is special or exclusive to higher end devices.The phone is large, definitely not compact for a 5.5鈥 device, nearing 1cm in thickness and 76mm wide.I suspect people with smaller hands will have trouble hefting this phone while those who do not mind big device might be less put off by the size. The fingerprint sensor/home button combo is on the front with capacitive buttons flanking said button. Overall the build quality here is good, but the phone is large, as is expected for phones with massive batteries.Well built but bigOukitel K6000 Plus DisplayThe Oukitel K6000 Plus uses a 5.5鈥 1920x1080px display by AUO and the display here does not disappoint. The display is quite strong, showing off crisp text, pictures and the like while colourizing each pixel quite well.Colours are quite vivid, blacks are pretty dark and whites are slightly on the blue side, so I don鈥檛 have any complaints about how this display looks.It has a maximum brightness of 450 nits which is respectable, viewable even in direct sunlight. The screen is also covered with Asahi Dragontrail Glass, so it is protected against scratches to a certain degree.Oukitel K6000 Plus AudioThere is a single speaker on the back that provides decently loud sound. It鈥檚 still possible to get overpowered (e.g. on a highway) but the phone pumps out respectable sound.Audio quality is slightly above average, there is some decent clarity from the speakers and some bass as well. While the speaker here is not something to boast about, it is by no means a deal breaker either.Oukitel K6000 Plus BatteryBam bam! Another 6000mAh battery in my hand, and I鈥檓 over the moon! The K6000 Plus has a slightly larger battery than the Ulefone Power 2 (6080mAh vs 6050mAh) but that should not have any measurable effect on battery life compared to other factors like software optimization, screen brightness, etc.I put this phone through its paces, a 16 hour day with 5 hours of screen on time consumed about 38% of the battery, meaning there was 62% left.The next test was a two day test, two 16 hour days and about 10 hours of screen on time. I had about 17% left in the battery by the end of the second day. Can you kill this phone in a day? Yeah its possible. Will it be realistic? Definitely not, you will need to do some ridiculous things to kill this in a single day if you so desire.The phone also supports MediaTek鈥檚 PumpExpress fast charging, however the included charger was not a PumpExpress charger.Heavy users will not be able to kill the battery in a single day while medium and light users can stretch that to 3, even 4 days.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramTwice the battery, double the鈥attery?Oukitel K6000 Plus SoftwareThis phone comes with the latest Android 7.0 Nougat and let me start with a slight downside, the icons, notification shade and settings menu are not stock, you have custom Oukitel icons for each of those sections of the phone. A custom launcher replaces the icon on the launcher but you鈥檒l have to live with the custom icons elsewhere.That being said, moving between home screens, swiping, and accessing the notifications shade was all silky smooth. As fast as the Ulefone Power 2, but of course still slower than expensive flagships.Moving on to the fingerprint sensor, it is fast and accurate, there鈥檚 not much else to say here. As long as a fingerprint sensor passes a certain threshold of speed and accuracy, there isn鈥檛 much else to talk about.The processor handles opening and closing apps quite well, there wasn’t a lot of lag or hestitation when opening or closing apps, there definitely was some if you compare it directly with a higher end phoen, but it isn’t big enough to be an annoyance.Multi-tasking is handled very admirably as well, considering there鈥檚 4GB of RAM here. I faced no issues switching between many apps and even some games as well, so no issues there.I could run any game on this phone with no lag at all which is pretty impressive, you won’t have any issues gaming and you can do it for a long time as well.Oukitel K6000 Plus ConnectivityDouble check the network bands on this phone before you buy to ensure it works with your carrier. I was only able to get LTE in Ontario as the network bands did not support 3G in Canada. LTE speeds are not bad, not the fastest but not slow either. WiFi, bluetooth and GPS works quite well also, GPS works and doesn’t jump around at all.Oukitel K6000 Plus CameraSo the thing is, I was able to take good photos in good lighting conditions, pretty good pictures in fact, detail is good, colours are saturated and contrast is good, dynamic range isn’t the greatest and HDr does fix that, but it doesn’t fix it fully either.But the downside here is that the K6000 Plus’s camera quality actually dips pretty sharply once you enter less than ideal lighting conditions. It obviously doesn’t handle low light situations well either.The front facing camera has 8MP and takes some decent photos, and performs about the same as the front facing camera in terms of colour reproduction and low light conditions.You can film 1080p video and detail in the video just isn’t that great, but colours and saturation are fine.Oukitel K6000 Plus Camera Gallery Oukitel K6000 Plus VerdictThe Oukitel K6000 Plus isn’t backing down from the Ulefone Power 2 at all. In fact, it has almost all the same pros and cons as the Ulefone Power 2, tit for tat. With that in mind, the K6000 Plus is also a good option for a Mediatek battery phone, and the camera is the weakest part of this phone so far.It is very close, too close to call as to whether the Ulefone or the Oukitel is a better device. that being said, if you go either way both the Ulefone and Oukitel perform quite similar. However, the K6000 Plus and the Ulefone Power 2 both face competition with the Redmi Note 4X, and that is still the biggest challenge MediaTek battery phones face today. Buy the Oukitel K6000 PlusToo close to callOukitel K6000 Plus Video ReviewI guess no one knew this small company a couple of months ago but now almost everybody is talking about them 鈥 and for a VERY good reason if I might add. Geotel is one of the new additions in the mobile phone industry during the past few months and they already managed to produce a very decent budget Android smartphone, called Geotel Note. Have a look at its review to find out our thoughts about it.Geotel Note聽SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MT6737 ProcessorDisplay5.5″聽IPS – 1280 x 720 (HD 720)RAM3GB LPDDR3Storage16GB eMMC – microSD聽slotOperating SystemAndroid 6.0 MarshmallowCameras13MP, 8MP frontBattery3200mAhPhysical Dimensions110g, 152.3 x 76.8 x 8.2 mm UNBOXING聽Geotel NoteIt鈥檚 always typical to expect nothing from a鈥 budget Android smartphone when it comes to its package, but this isn鈥檛 the case with Geotel Note, since the device comes with several extra accessories, such as a screen protector and a hard plastic case.Pretty decent package for this price, I have seen less extra accessories given for much more expensive smartphones, so I cannot complain.Geotel Note聽鈥 Hardware (Camera, Display, Chipset)OK, let鈥檚 see how this little guy performs in everyday use. First of all, it鈥檚 made entirely out of plastic but still it doesn鈥檛 feel cheap at all. On the contrary, it has a special glossy finish on its back and the display (5,5 inch –聽 HD resolution) looks and feels impressive for a phone of this category.The Geotel Note packs an 8Mpixels front facing camera (f/2.0, 84 degrees wide angle), along with notification LED next to it, and customizable on-screen navigation keys on the front (yes, you can swipe to make them disappear and re-appear if you wish or change their placement).As we mentioned earlier, one of its most premium features is the glossy/shiny back plate that impresses everyone who looks at it, but on the other side 鈥 beware- it鈥檚 a huge fingerprint 鈥渕agnet鈥 as you will see from the images below.Below the back plate you will find room for 2 SIM cards along with a micro SD slot and a fully replaceable 3200 mAh Li-Ion battery. In the same area, you will also find the main camera of the device, a 13Mpixels shooter with LED flash and several functions (autofocus, touch focus, video recording, f/2.0, 5P camera lens etc.)I really liked the sound from its speaker for use with ringtones, but the loudspeaker could be a bit better in terms of quality and volume output during phone calls.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on Telegram On the other hand, I had no problem with the GPS signal of the device, so I could use it with Google Maps with no problems at all. The same goes for its WiFi/Bluetooth signal, nothing to impressive but also, nothing to blame it for.Geotel Note –聽Battery lifeGeotel Note 4G聽has used a removeable 3200mAh battery to power MT6737 SoC聽and battery life understandably won鈥檛 be great. After some testing, I was able to get around 3-4 hours of screen on time before the battery bar hit 0% and this was almost exclusively light use; web browsing, social networking聽and messenger with the occasional light game and photo.Heavy users will kill the battery before the day ends, medium users can stretch the battery out for a maximum of a day while light users won鈥檛 see this phone dying before the day completes.Geotel Note聽鈥撀燑/strong>Software, Benchmarks聽Let鈥檚 have a look now at its software. The device runs on stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow and it鈥檚 equipped with a quad-core MTK6737 chip, along with 3GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage. The device has average benchmark scores that clearly depict on its everyday performance but no one can ask for more, given the fact that its price is under 90$ most of the time. You will surely enjoy聽the usability of stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow (no significant lags, no extra battery hog applications, no bloatware 3rd party apps) and the device also comes with some extra gesture/motion controls such as “5 fingers back”, that enables us to return to Home just by shrinking the display with 5 fingers. Geotel Note –聽Camera qualityYou can鈥檛 possibly expect awesome imaging results from a budget Chinese smartphone, no matter what its camera resolution might be. The Geotel Note has a decent main camera, one that can offer quite pleasing photos in daylight conditions, but still most of the time its dynamic range is usually off and sometimes the colors may look washed out. Don鈥檛 complain however, these are good photos for a 90$ smartphone, be sure of this. I wouldn’t expect much from its selfie camera however. It’s has an 8MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 84 degrees wide-angle view but still it is plagued by slow viewfinder speed and average ISO in low light conditions. Don’t be alarmed: you will be able to shoot great selfies for social media sharing, but -as I told you- I wouldn’t expect something more.What I LikedGreat display, with impressive performance even under direct sunlightPure Android 6.0, no bloatware, no battery hog appsGreat value for moneyWhat Could Be ImprovedMediocre battery lifeAverage chipset powerCould use a better selfie cameraGeotel Note 鈥 Our impressionsI think Geotel has a winner here. I always try to judge a smartphone for its price and functions as a whole, and the Geotel Note 4G is one of the most decent, budget Android smartphones around. It surely deserves your attention if you are searching for an affordable smartphone with some decent specifications.I guess no one knew this small company a couple of months ago but now almost everybody is talking about them 鈥 and for a VERY good reason if I might add. Geotel is one of the new additions in the mobile phone industry during the past few months and they already managed to produce a very decent budget Android smartphone, called Geotel Note. Have a look at its review to find out our thoughts about it.Geotel Note聽SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MT6737 ProcessorDisplay5.5″聽IPS – 1280 x 720 (HD 720)RAM3GB LPDDR3Storage16GB eMMC – microSD聽slotOperating SystemAndroid 6.0 MarshmallowCameras13MP, 8MP frontBattery3200mAhPhysical Dimensions110g, 152.3 x 76.8 x 8.2 mm UNBOXING聽Geotel NoteIt鈥檚 always typical to expect nothing from a鈥 budget Android smartphone when it comes to its package, but this isn鈥檛 the case with Geotel Note, since the device comes with several extra accessories, such as a screen protector and a hard plastic case.Pretty decent package for this price, I have seen less extra accessories given for much more expensive smartphones, so I cannot complain.Geotel Note聽鈥 Hardware (Camera, Display, Chipset)OK, let鈥檚 see how this little guy performs in everyday use. First of all, it鈥檚 made entirely out of plastic but still it doesn鈥檛 feel cheap at all. On the contrary, it has a special glossy finish on its back and the display (5,5 inch –聽 HD resolution) looks and feels impressive for a phone of this category.The Geotel Note packs an 8Mpixels front facing camera (f/2.0, 84 degrees wide angle), along with notification LED next to it, and customizable on-screen navigation keys on the front (yes, you can swipe to make them disappear and re-appear if you wish or change their placement).As we mentioned earlier, one of its most premium features is the glossy/shiny back plate that impresses everyone who looks at it, but on the other side 鈥 beware- it鈥檚 a huge fingerprint 鈥渕agnet鈥 as you will see from the images below.Below the back plate you will find room for 2 SIM cards along with a micro SD slot and a fully replaceable 3200 mAh Li-Ion battery. In the same area, you will also find the main camera of the device, a 13Mpixels shooter with LED flash and several functions (autofocus, touch focus, video recording, f/2.0, 5P camera lens etc.)I really liked the sound from its speaker for use with ringtones, but the loudspeaker could be a bit better in terms of quality and volume output during phone calls.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on Telegram On the other hand, I had no problem with the GPS signal of the device, so I could use it with Google Maps with no problems at all. The same goes for its WiFi/Bluetooth signal, nothing to impressive but also, nothing to blame it for.Geotel Note –聽Battery lifeGeotel Note 4G聽has used a removeable 3200mAh battery to power MT6737 SoC聽and battery life understandably won鈥檛 be great. After some testing, I was able to get around 3-4 hours of screen on time before the battery bar hit 0% and this was almost exclusively light use; web browsing, social networking聽and messenger with the occasional light game and photo.Heavy users will kill the battery before the day ends, medium users can stretch the battery out for a maximum of a day while light users won鈥檛 see this phone dying before the day completes.Geotel Note聽鈥撀燑/strong>Software, Benchmarks聽Let鈥檚 have a look now at its software. The device runs on stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow and it鈥檚 equipped with a quad-core MTK6737 chip, along with 3GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage. The device has average benchmark scores that clearly depict on its everyday performance but no one can ask for more, given the fact that its price is under 90$ most of the time. You will surely enjoy聽the usability of stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow (no significant lags, no extra battery hog applications, no bloatware 3rd party apps) and the device also comes with some extra gesture/motion controls such as “5 fingers back”, that enables us to return to Home just by shrinking the display with 5 fingers. Geotel Note –聽Camera qualityYou can鈥檛 possibly expect awesome imaging results from a budget Chinese smartphone, no matter what its camera resolution might be. The Geotel Note has a decent main camera, one that can offer quite pleasing photos in daylight conditions, but still most of the time its dynamic range is usually off and sometimes the colors may look washed out. Don鈥檛 complain however, these are good photos for a 90$ smartphone, be sure of this. I wouldn’t expect much from its selfie camera however. It’s has an 8MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 84 degrees wide-angle view but still it is plagued by slow viewfinder speed and average ISO in low light conditions. Don’t be alarmed: you will be able to shoot great selfies for social media sharing, but -as I told you- I wouldn’t expect something more.What I LikedGreat display, with impressive performance even under direct sunlightPure Android 6.0, no bloatware, no battery hog appsGreat value for moneyWhat Could Be ImprovedMediocre battery lifeAverage chipset powerCould use a better selfie cameraGeotel Note 鈥 Our impressionsI think Geotel has a winner here. I always try to judge a smartphone for its price and functions as a whole, and the Geotel Note 4G is one of the most decent, budget Android smartphones around. It surely deserves your attention if you are searching for an affordable smartphone with some decent specifications.The large phablet market is slightly less crowded than other segments of said market, but it is competitive nonetheless. Elephone has a new budget entry into this market with its 6鈥 Elephone C1 Max.Let’s check out how well this phone fits in the scheme of things and if it’s worthy of your hard earned money.Elephone C1 Max ReviewThe Elephone C1 Max tries to offer quite a few things. It is cheap, starting at $129 on presale while sporting a full metal body. Specswise, it is entry level, an MTK6737 processor and 2GB of RAM.It also offers dual cameras, not in the style of the Huawei P9 or the UMi Z Pro, but rather the Redmi Pro with one 13MP rear camera and a second 5MP camera for Bokeh. However, this phone faces strong competition in the large phablet market if you do not mind forgoing the dual camera setup.Quite possibly its strongest competitor is the Bluboo Maya Max which sports the faster MTK6750 processor and costs about $20 more. Let鈥檚 see if it鈥檚 worth it.Phablet with dual camerasElephone C1 Max SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6737 Quad Core ProcessorDisplay6.0″ 1280×720 px, LCDRAM2GBStorage32GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras13MP + 5MP Rear, 2MP front (5MP interpolation)Battery2800mAhPhysical Dimensions227g, 164 x 83 x 8.5mmBig thanks to Elephone for providing this review unit. You can purchase one here.Elephone C1 Max HardwareI鈥檝e never been a fan of phablets, and I鈥檓 still not. The phone is huge, edging out even the Nexus 6 and the Bluboo Maya Max in size, albeit slightly. This is a two handed affair for all but basketball players and any other sport where huge hands are a benefit.It鈥檚 quite a heavy phone as well at 227g so I know at least one GizChina reader who will never purchase this device.I鈥檓 a huge fan of the build quality and the colour though. Deep red (rose gold is considered closer to pink) metal phones are not very common in the wild, with the recently released Red iPhone and Red Oneplus 3 coming to mind.So those of you who are looking for red devices are in luck, as the Elephone C1 Max comes in Red (dubbed wine red). The red body is quite eye catching and unique and I had one person asking whether this was the new red iPhone 7 Plus. It is deeper red than the new iPhone though.The body is full metal and feels good in hand. At the same time, it feels sturdy and durable as well, the slightly grained metal texture imparts a solid sense of feel and traction to the device. The curves on the front and the back make it slightly easier to hold as well.On the front we find the capacitive buttons that do not light up below the screen and they are dot matrix style. The front of my phone is black, and I cannot tell if there is a black bar going around the screen, but regardless this is still not a bezelless device.On the back we find the dual cameras as well as the fingerprint sensor. I found it slightly hard to reach because of my small hands, so again two hands are required this time.I absolutely love the build quality and colour of this phone, both of which are top notch. What I don鈥檛 like are the bezels, this phone could definitely be reduced in size as there is some bezel around the screen. The last rather unfair contention I have with this phone is the MicroUSB port. I want all phones to move to USB-C but that is probably too much to ask for a budget device.I love red metal phonesElephone C1 Max DisplayThe 6.0鈥 screen has a resolution of 1280×720. That works out to 244PPI, and in comparison a 5鈥 720p screen has 293PPI and a 5鈥 960×540 screen has 220PPI. That gives you an idea of what to expect from such a low resolution.There is a definite difference when I move from my Zuk Z2 which has almost double the PPI (440PPI) that this does. I suspect quite a few people will be turned off by this low resolution and I do not blame you. That being said, I quickly adjusted within 陆 an hour of using this phone and stopped noticing the low resolution.The screen itself is capable of producing some decent colours and contrast; no one will be blown away by what the screen is capable of showing but they won鈥檛 be disappointed by the colours and contrast either.Max brightness tops out around 400 nits which is respectable but still difficult to see in sunlight. There is Dragontrail glass protecting the screen and it does its job.Elephone C1 Max AudioThere is a single speaker on the bottom of the device and it pumps out decently loud audio but it is outstripped by more expensive phones like my Zuk Z2 or the UMi Z/Z Pro.Audio does start to distort slightly at loudest volume and there is a complete lack of bass as well when listening to audio.Elephone C1 Max Battery2800mAh is very small for such a large phone. I would think that Elephone could have fit a larger battery into such a large body, but that probably would have increased costs too much. I was not expecting great battery life out of this phone, and I didn鈥檛 get great battery life either.The maximum screen on time I could achieve was 3.5 hours, which would barely be enough for light users, let alone medium users. During that 3.5 hours of SOT, I browsed the web, browsed Reddit, and engaged in texting and social media. Nothing backbreaking like photos or gaming, so expect even less if you use your phone for that.Inadequate BatteryElephone C1 Max SoftwareI am very happy to see the latest Android 7.0 on this phone, and it is completely stock. Android 7.0 runs surprisingly fast on the MTK6737 quad core processor. Swiping between home screens is very fast and fluid and is most likely the result of well optimized software, as I鈥檝e had less than stellar experiences with other MTK6737 phones.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramOpening and closing apps also far exceeded my expectations. Light apps open instantly, medium apps hesitate for a microsecond before opening, and only the heaviest apps will cause the phone to pause for a significant amount of time before launching said app.As a device reviewer, I鈥檝e been spoilt with 4GB of Ram on my Zuk Z2, but multi-tasking on the 2GB C1 Max is quite fine. As long as you鈥檙e not constantly switching between 20 apps, the phone should more or less handle multi-tasking quite well. Because this is a 6鈥 device and Android 7.0 comes with new multi-window features, I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about that. You are able to run two apps side by side and it works decently well the for most part. Not all apps are compatible with multi-window and you do see slight lag if you run two apps at the same time.The fingerprint sensor on the back is decently fast, it unlocks the phone about as fast as the iPhone 6 which was no speed demon and is noticeably slower than other phones like the Redmi Note 4X. That being said, its speed is more than good enough for daily use. The sensor鈥檚 accuracy is pretty decent as well, it doesn鈥檛 reject my finger unless I have skin torn off or my fingers are wet.Moving on the gaming performance, the MTK6737 performs surprisingly well, it is able to play all the intense games on the play store with little to no stutter, but that is no endorsement of the MTK6737. Instead, the phone can handle games so well because the resolution is very low, and the MTK6737 can handle 720p games pretty easily. You won鈥檛 find much on the play store that you cannot play at a decent framerate.To be honest, performance even for a heavy user like me is not bad, I could conceivably see myself using this phone if my Zuk Z2 suddenly dies. Lighter users won鈥檛 find an issue here.Elephone C1 Max ConnectivityDouble check the network bands on this phone before you buy to ensure it works with your carrier. I was only able to get LTE in Ontario as the network bands did not support 3G in Canada.However, LTE performance is quite strong with me getting receptions in almost everywhere my dad鈥檚 iPhone gets LTE. Certain places like basements or large buildings saw that LTE drop though. WiFi, and Bluetooth are good, but GPS is definitely a little sluggish and sometimes likes to hop around, not enough to throw me off navigation though.Elephone C1 Max CameraIf you saw my UMi Z Pro review, I launched into a full blown explanation of why colour cameras are lower quality than monochrome cameras, and you can read that here. Sadly, the secondary camera here is only 5MP and does not capture monochrome or colour photos, it is purely there for Bokeh.The 13MP main camera isn鈥檛 the best. On the plus side, lower end cameras have definitely improved throughout the years, but lower end cameras weren鈥檛 great to begin with, so an improvement on a horrible product is a less horrible product. It captures sufficient detail but the camera is easily blown out if there is a strong light source pointed directly at the camera.Colours are adequate but not great, colours just are not very rich and saturated which is how many of us like to view pictures.Turning on HDR does fix some of that but it does not fix it completely. If you switch the phone into dual camera mode, the 5MP camera does an admirable job adding Bokeh to the shot, something I was not expecting.It adds Bokeh almost as naturally as the UMi Z Pro, and the Z Pro was not bad at adding Bokeh at all. However, the base picture captured on the C1 Max didn鈥檛 start out great, so you are adding Bokeh to a subpar photo.The front facing camera is 2MP (5MP interpolation) and is horrible.The video camera is capable of capturing up to 1080p and quality is not the best, video has sufficient detail but colours are washed out.Elephone C1 Max聽Camera Gallery Elephone C1 Max VerdictTo be honest, Elephone should have just used the 5MP camera as the front facing camera and ditched the dual camera concept altogether. But if they did, they would be losing out on the trend and the marketability of dual cameras, which is why I understand why they did it.However, that does not mean that I agree with that decision. This phone has three points that you have to be aware of before buying, the display, the battery, and the camera. The display is only 720p, you get around 3.5 hours of SOT, and the camera is not great. But on the other side of the fence, the phone is relatively cheap, has a very nice metal body, and runs the latest Android 7.0. Buy the Elephone C1 MaxAs someone who refuses to move up to 5.5鈥 devices, 6鈥 is just too big for me and using a phablet is almost out of the question for me personally. But if you are looking for a big phablet, your choices are much more limited, and if you鈥檙e looking for a large phablet (bigger than 5.5鈥? with a dual camera, you are even more limited with the C1 Max being one of the options out there.Elephone C1 Max Video Review

The large phablet market is slightly less crowded than other segments of said market, but it is competitive nonetheless. Elephone has a new budget entry into this market with its 6鈥 Elephone C1 Max.Let’s check out how well this phone fits in the scheme of things and if it’s worthy of your hard earned money.Elephone C1 Max ReviewThe Elephone C1 Max tries to offer quite a few things. It is cheap, starting at $129 on presale while sporting a full metal body. Specswise, it is entry level, an MTK6737 processor and 2GB of RAM.It also offers dual cameras, not in the style of the Huawei P9 or the UMi Z Pro, but rather the Redmi Pro with one 13MP rear camera and a second 5MP camera for Bokeh. However, this phone faces strong competition in the large phablet market if you do not mind forgoing the dual camera setup.Quite possibly its strongest competitor is the Bluboo Maya Max which sports the faster MTK6750 processor and costs about $20 more. Let鈥檚 see if it鈥檚 worth it.Phablet with dual camerasElephone C1 Max SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6737 Quad Core ProcessorDisplay6.0″ 1280×720 px, LCDRAM2GBStorage32GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras13MP + 5MP Rear, 2MP front (5MP interpolation)Battery2800mAhPhysical Dimensions227g, 164 x 83 x 8.5mmBig thanks to Elephone for providing this review unit. You can purchase one here.Elephone C1 Max HardwareI鈥檝e never been a fan of phablets, and I鈥檓 still not. The phone is huge, edging out even the Nexus 6 and the Bluboo Maya Max in size, albeit slightly. This is a two handed affair for all but basketball players and any other sport where huge hands are a benefit.It鈥檚 quite a heavy phone as well at 227g so I know at least one GizChina reader who will never purchase this device.I鈥檓 a huge fan of the build quality and the colour though. Deep red (rose gold is considered closer to pink) metal phones are not very common in the wild, with the recently released Red iPhone and Red Oneplus 3 coming to mind.So those of you who are looking for red devices are in luck, as the Elephone C1 Max comes in Red (dubbed wine red). The red body is quite eye catching and unique and I had one person asking whether this was the new red iPhone 7 Plus. It is deeper red than the new iPhone though.The body is full metal and feels good in hand. At the same time, it feels sturdy and durable as well, the slightly grained metal texture imparts a solid sense of feel and traction to the device. The curves on the front and the back make it slightly easier to hold as well.On the front we find the capacitive buttons that do not light up below the screen and they are dot matrix style. The front of my phone is black, and I cannot tell if there is a black bar going around the screen, but regardless this is still not a bezelless device.On the back we find the dual cameras as well as the fingerprint sensor. I found it slightly hard to reach because of my small hands, so again two hands are required this time.I absolutely love the build quality and colour of this phone, both of which are top notch. What I don鈥檛 like are the bezels, this phone could definitely be reduced in size as there is some bezel around the screen. The last rather unfair contention I have with this phone is the MicroUSB port. I want all phones to move to USB-C but that is probably too much to ask for a budget device.I love red metal phonesElephone C1 Max DisplayThe 6.0鈥 screen has a resolution of 1280×720. That works out to 244PPI, and in comparison a 5鈥 720p screen has 293PPI and a 5鈥 960×540 screen has 220PPI. That gives you an idea of what to expect from such a low resolution.There is a definite difference when I move from my Zuk Z2 which has almost double the PPI (440PPI) that this does. I suspect quite a few people will be turned off by this low resolution and I do not blame you. That being said, I quickly adjusted within 陆 an hour of using this phone and stopped noticing the low resolution.The screen itself is capable of producing some decent colours and contrast; no one will be blown away by what the screen is capable of showing but they won鈥檛 be disappointed by the colours and contrast either.Max brightness tops out around 400 nits which is respectable but still difficult to see in sunlight. There is Dragontrail glass protecting the screen and it does its job.Elephone C1 Max AudioThere is a single speaker on the bottom of the device and it pumps out decently loud audio but it is outstripped by more expensive phones like my Zuk Z2 or the UMi Z/Z Pro.Audio does start to distort slightly at loudest volume and there is a complete lack of bass as well when listening to audio.Elephone C1 Max Battery2800mAh is very small for such a large phone. I would think that Elephone could have fit a larger battery into such a large body, but that probably would have increased costs too much. I was not expecting great battery life out of this phone, and I didn鈥檛 get great battery life either.The maximum screen on time I could achieve was 3.5 hours, which would barely be enough for light users, let alone medium users. During that 3.5 hours of SOT, I browsed the web, browsed Reddit, and engaged in texting and social media. Nothing backbreaking like photos or gaming, so expect even less if you use your phone for that.Inadequate BatteryElephone C1 Max SoftwareI am very happy to see the latest Android 7.0 on this phone, and it is completely stock. Android 7.0 runs surprisingly fast on the MTK6737 quad core processor. Swiping between home screens is very fast and fluid and is most likely the result of well optimized software, as I鈥檝e had less than stellar experiences with other MTK6737 phones.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramOpening and closing apps also far exceeded my expectations. Light apps open instantly, medium apps hesitate for a microsecond before opening, and only the heaviest apps will cause the phone to pause for a significant amount of time before launching said app.As a device reviewer, I鈥檝e been spoilt with 4GB of Ram on my Zuk Z2, but multi-tasking on the 2GB C1 Max is quite fine. As long as you鈥檙e not constantly switching between 20 apps, the phone should more or less handle multi-tasking quite well. Because this is a 6鈥 device and Android 7.0 comes with new multi-window features, I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about that. You are able to run two apps side by side and it works decently well the for most part. Not all apps are compatible with multi-window and you do see slight lag if you run two apps at the same time.The fingerprint sensor on the back is decently fast, it unlocks the phone about as fast as the iPhone 6 which was no speed demon and is noticeably slower than other phones like the Redmi Note 4X. That being said, its speed is more than good enough for daily use. The sensor鈥檚 accuracy is pretty decent as well, it doesn鈥檛 reject my finger unless I have skin torn off or my fingers are wet.Moving on the gaming performance, the MTK6737 performs surprisingly well, it is able to play all the intense games on the play store with little to no stutter, but that is no endorsement of the MTK6737. Instead, the phone can handle games so well because the resolution is very low, and the MTK6737 can handle 720p games pretty easily. You won鈥檛 find much on the play store that you cannot play at a decent framerate.To be honest, performance even for a heavy user like me is not bad, I could conceivably see myself using this phone if my Zuk Z2 suddenly dies. Lighter users won鈥檛 find an issue here.Elephone C1 Max ConnectivityDouble check the network bands on this phone before you buy to ensure it works with your carrier. I was only able to get LTE in Ontario as the network bands did not support 3G in Canada.However, LTE performance is quite strong with me getting receptions in almost everywhere my dad鈥檚 iPhone gets LTE. Certain places like basements or large buildings saw that LTE drop though. WiFi, and Bluetooth are good, but GPS is definitely a little sluggish and sometimes likes to hop around, not enough to throw me off navigation though.Elephone C1 Max CameraIf you saw my UMi Z Pro review, I launched into a full blown explanation of why colour cameras are lower quality than monochrome cameras, and you can read that here. Sadly, the secondary camera here is only 5MP and does not capture monochrome or colour photos, it is purely there for Bokeh.The 13MP main camera isn鈥檛 the best. On the plus side, lower end cameras have definitely improved throughout the years, but lower end cameras weren鈥檛 great to begin with, so an improvement on a horrible product is a less horrible product. It captures sufficient detail but the camera is easily blown out if there is a strong light source pointed directly at the camera.Colours are adequate but not great, colours just are not very rich and saturated which is how many of us like to view pictures.Turning on HDR does fix some of that but it does not fix it completely. If you switch the phone into dual camera mode, the 5MP camera does an admirable job adding Bokeh to the shot, something I was not expecting.It adds Bokeh almost as naturally as the UMi Z Pro, and the Z Pro was not bad at adding Bokeh at all. However, the base picture captured on the C1 Max didn鈥檛 start out great, so you are adding Bokeh to a subpar photo.The front facing camera is 2MP (5MP interpolation) and is horrible.The video camera is capable of capturing up to 1080p and quality is not the best, video has sufficient detail but colours are washed out.Elephone C1 Max聽Camera Gallery Elephone C1 Max VerdictTo be honest, Elephone should have just used the 5MP camera as the front facing camera and ditched the dual camera concept altogether. But if they did, they would be losing out on the trend and the marketability of dual cameras, which is why I understand why they did it.However, that does not mean that I agree with that decision. This phone has three points that you have to be aware of before buying, the display, the battery, and the camera. The display is only 720p, you get around 3.5 hours of SOT, and the camera is not great. But on the other side of the fence, the phone is relatively cheap, has a very nice metal body, and runs the latest Android 7.0. Buy the Elephone C1 MaxAs someone who refuses to move up to 5.5鈥 devices, 6鈥 is just too big for me and using a phablet is almost out of the question for me personally. But if you are looking for a big phablet, your choices are much more limited, and if you鈥檙e looking for a large phablet (bigger than 5.5鈥? with a dual camera, you are even more limited with the C1 Max being one of the options out there.Elephone C1 Max Video ReviewThe first thing to get out of the way is UMi鈥檚 rebranding to UMiDigi. I鈥檓 personally not a fan, as UMi is much more recognizeable than UMiDigi, with the added benefit of being less confusing.Now with that out of the way, UMi has been on a roll lately releasing phones with many 鈥渇irsts鈥 and some gimmicks. The UMi Plus E was the first phone to use the Helio P20 processor, the UMi Z was the first to use the Helio X27, and now the UMi Z Pro is the first MTK device with identical cameras on the back, similar to what you see in phones like the Huawei P9 and the iPhone 7.UMi Z Pro ReviewThe specifications here are truly flagship worthy, a Helio X27 processor, 4GB of RAM, and now, dual cameras. It also has a large 3780mAh battery that will make it difficult for anyone to run down in one day. However, I do feel that UMi missed the boat in terms of marketing.They did not properly explain the advantages of using one colour and one monochrome camera, one that could have been very beneficial (more details in the camera section below).A true dual camera phoneUMi Z Pro SpecificationsProcessorMediatek Helio X27 ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1920×1080 px, Sharp LCDRAM4GBStorage32GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 6.0Cameras2x Sony, 1x Samsung 13MP CamerasBattery3780mAhPhysical Dimensions1.3kg, 76 x 156 x 8.2 mm UMi Z Pro HardwareThis phone is not small. In the post 鈥淢i Mix鈥 age, a 156x76mm phone is definitely sizeable. If you have small hands like me, the size could make you think twice about buying this phone as your daily driver.It is very slim, standing at 8.2mm which is quite a feat considering there are three 13MP Samsung cameras and a 3780mAh battery. The curved front and back edges do help in making this phone feel smaller than it really is, but it definitely can鈥檛 pass for a 5鈥 device.The build quality here is another story. They improved on the build and design of the UMi Plus E, which is quite a feat. The aerospace grade aluminum feels exquisite to the touch but is a little slippery. It鈥檚 not as slippery as glass, but it鈥檚 bad enough to be a minor complaint.The cameras do protrude out the back but this is necessary to achieve that 8.2mm thickness. My usual response to cameras sticking out of thin phones doesn鈥檛 apply here; they already put a huge battery to the UMi Z Pro. One sticking point I鈥檝e seen with the build of the UMi Z/Z Pro is the removal of a physical home button, but rather similar to the Mi5s鈥 ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, the button cannot be depressed but operates via a tap or a hold.I鈥檓 actually a fan of that so you won鈥檛 hear any complaints from me. There are also capacitive off screen buttons as well.UMi (or UMiDIGI) has created one handsome and well built phone.Handsome, well builtUMi Z Pro DisplayThere is a 1920×1080 Sharp branded IGZO screen that produces some good colours and is sharp and clear. Yes, it鈥檚 a good screen, but it also isn鈥檛 anything special. Max brightness tops out at 500 nits, making it easy enough to see in direct sunlight.Dragontrail glass was also used in place of Gorilla Glass and for all intents and purposes it works well.UMi Z Pro AudioOne of the marketing points that UMi used was how great the audio was going to be because of its dedicated audio chip that was capable of this and that. At the end of the day, the audio output from the phone is good but not amazing.Audio can be deafeningly loud and like UMi claimed, there is no distortion at max volume. Audio quality is quite good with clear mids and highs and sufficient bass.UMi Z Pro BatteryBattery life should no doubt be good, as the 3780mAh sony battery indicates. However, I don鈥檛 expect it to get better battery life than the Helio X20 Redmi Note 4 or even come close to the Redmi 4 Prime. Turns out I鈥檓 mostly right.I was able to get around 6 hours of screen on time over a 16 hour day with about 10-15% left. This use consisted mostly of web browsing and some texting, with the occasional game and photo. I performed a couple of tests as well and was able to browse the web for about 9 hours straight while I could play back video for around 11 hours straight as well.Battery life here is definitely good and will not be a dealbreaker. Even heavy users will be hard pressed to drain the battery completely in a day, and medium users can get 2 days easily.Good BatteryUMi Z Pro SoftwareThere is a completely stock version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow on the phone with the bare essentials, a very welcome change from something like MIUI or EMUI. Usage speed is very good, launching and switching apps is lightning fast, as fast as any flagship you will find.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramHowever, I find certain actions like swiping feel ever so slightly slower than top end phones like an iPhone or S7. I don鈥檛 know what is causing it, could be input lag or just software optimization, but either way it鈥檚 a very small difference.The fingerprint sensor is fast, but the phone is not and let me explain.The sensor is incredibly fast at recognizing your finger and sending the 鈥渁ll good鈥 signal to the phone itself, but the phone takes a long time to unlock and wake the phone from sleep. If the phone screen is already on, the phone unlocks in a jiffy. If the screen is off, it鈥檚 quite slow.The phone multitasks like a champ and has no problem at all. It performs as well as the UMi Plus E and better in some cases as the SoC in the Z Pro is faster. The phone also handles gaming beautifully with no stutter detected at all.UMi Z Pro ConnectivityCheck whether this phone is supported by your carriers before buying it, that goes without saying. I was able to get reception wherever my Zuk Z2 got reception, with a couple of exceptions such as basements, deep in buildings, etc. Speeds are quite good though. WiFi is fast as well, bluetooth works fine, and GPS was quite accurate as well.UMi Z Pro CameraThe dual cameras are setup so that one takes regular pictures, and the other takes monochrome (or black and white) pictures. The long and short of it is that capturing colour pictures lowers the quality of said picture, so capturing a monochrome photo and a separate colour photo should theoretically get around that.Skip this next paragraph if you already know or do not have any interest in finding out why colour photos lower picture quality.Since a monochrome picture is just black and white, the only information it has to capture is how bright and dark each pixel is. The normal camera has to capture each pixel鈥檚 brightness AND colour, and how all cameras capture colour is by utilizing light filters.Each pixel in the camera is given its own filter of only ONE COLOUR, and each pixel will alternate between red, green, and blue filters kind of like a chessboard with three colours. The result is that each pixel will only let one colour of light through, either red, green, or blue. However, in order to create an image, just a single red value is not enough, but a green and a blue value is needed as well.So we use some fancy math to take surrounding values and calculate the approximate RGB values for each tile. The downsides of this is that the fancy math basically cuts resolution in half, so if you had a 13MP camera, the resulting photo would just be 6.5MP.The other downside would be that the filter cuts the amount of light that enters the sensor, since it only lets one colour of light come in, and blocks the other two, so theoretically it cuts out 66.66% of light coming in. Therefore, a dual camera setup should effectively negate that problem, giving you full 13MP photos with 3x the light.The UMi Z’s 13MP camera was not a bad camera at all. It took deep, saturated colours if a bit underexposed, and detail was definitely not bad. This dual camera setup improves on the UMi Z. The dual camera combination works well together in melding the colour and detail into one photo, resulting in some photos that are able to be zoomed in quite far before grain starts to show.Colours were punchy and vibrant but still fall slightly behind my Zuk Z2. However, low light shots are difficult to make out because of how soft the photos are. Without any OIS (Optical Image Stabilization), I guess the effects of both cameras shaking at the same time is difficult for the camera to resolve and the resulting picture is soft. Grain is kept quite low though. However, if I place the camera on my tripod, pictures turn out quite well.UMi Z Pro Camera Gallery UMi Z Pro VerdictI really like the UMi Z Pro as a phone, even though its the exact same as the UMi Z except for the camera. I was initially quite excited and skeptical about this dual camera implementation, and while it still doesn’t match up to something like the Huawei P9, it does work quite well.This phone is more expensive than the UMi Z, and whether or not that dual camera setup is worth the extra cash is up to you. I personally would pay the extra $20 or so for the dual camera setup, but either way the UMi Z and the Pro are both good devices. UMiDigi Z Pro: Buy Nowdual camera for $20 moreUMi Z Pro Video ReviewThe UMiDiGi Z1 Pro is the newest phone from UMi with lower specifications than the UMiDiGi Z Pro and here are my first impressions.UMiDiGi Z1 Pro SpecificationsProcessorMTK6757 Octacore ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1080p IPS LCDRAM6GBStorage64 eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0 NougatCameras13MP/5MP Camera, 5MP FrontBattery4000mAhPhysical Dimensions148g, 15.44 x 7.51 x 0.70 cmBig thanks to UMiDiGi for providing this review unit. You can buy one here.UMiDiGi Z1 Pro UnboxingThe unboxing experience is a different, the box flips open the same way a phablet phone case does, and the charger and power cable case flip out the other way, a little bit like a transformer transforming. The phone is located right at the bottom which in my opinion is a better idea since it protects the screen. The phone comes with a basic TPU case and a glass screen protector.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramUMiDiGi Z1 Pro Hands OnThe phone itself is very similar to the previous UMiDiGi phones, similar design and metal, however it for some reason feels less high quality than the Z Pro (thinner metal maybe or just placebo?). The red colour is gorgeous, chilli red and catches your attention. Using it in a case is most likely the right choice, but man does it look great without. Size wise its not small for a 5.5″ phone but its relatively thin.UMiDiGi Z1 Pro First ImpressionsI setup the phone very quickly and played around with the phone, the screen is very saturated with a very slight purple tint that is more visible on video and photos than in real life. The audio is very loud and OK quality, more bass would be appreciated but its good enough for most things.Video quality is a little strange, with framerate seeming to jump between 30fps to 10fps constantly, giving a slightly jittery effect. I’m seeing if this is a problem with settings before talking more about it.

The Blackview BV8000 Pro is probably the first rugged phone to come with the hardware you’d normally find on a mid-range device but encased in a super durable outer shell. This means you can get a proper and smooth Android user experience in pretty much any real life scenario, without the risk of getting your handset damaged.聽This all sounds good on a spec sheet, but how does it actually behave in every day use? Let’s find out in our full review!Blackview BV8000 Pro SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6757 ProcessorDisplay5鈥 Full HDRAM6GBStorage64GB eMMC 鈥 microSD聽slotOperating SystemAndroid 7.0 NougatCameras16MP rear camera, 8MP frontBattery4180mAhPhysical Dimensions243g, 156.2聽x 79.2 x 13.2 mmBlackview BV8000 Pro UnboxingUnboxing the Blackview BV8000 Pro is an experience in and of itself. Being a smartphone out of the ordinary, the accessories you find inside its box are as well. More specifically we’re talking about the tiny screw driver and additional screws they provide you with. In the box you’ll also find an handy micro USB to USB type-C adapter so that you can use an older micro USB charging cable if you have forgotten the USB Type-C one.Micro USB to USB Type-C adapterOther accessories are pretty conventional, we go from the power adapter, to the USB Type-C cable, a pair of earphones and an OTG adapter. Everything neatly arranged in a premium looking聽鈥 at least on the inside聽鈥 package.Blackview BV8000 Pro聽Design &聽Build QualityBuild quality is probably the most important factor in a rugged phone and the BV8000 Pro doesn’t disappoint us, to say the least. The smartphone is really solid thanks to its metal frame and bits around the body, with some plastic parts which make it waterproof, dust proof and almost impossible to break, as we’ve seen in different videos released by the company.I didn’t go as far as throwing my phone to the ground but I’m quite confident it would take the hit like a champ. I did though bring the phone under the shower and, while I know that’s less demanding than completely submerging it under water, it didn’t give me any problems whatsoever; I must say I was actually surprised the smartphone was operable even with some water over the screen.The聽Blackview BV8000 Pro comes with a below-average 5-inch display but the overall footprint of the device is more than that of a 5.5-incher. That’s obviously what makes it so durable but it could bother users with smaller hands, it’s also quite heavy of course, at about 240 grams.Blackview’s smartphone features five total physical buttons, we have the power OFF/ ON button, the two volume rockers, a dedicated camera button and an additional PTT (push to talk) button which can be used to call for help when long pressed. Honestly I wish the buttons were easier to customize as it’s very unlikely I’m going to need the SOS function, plus the dedicated camera button doesn’t start the camera automatically unless you press it for 3 seconds, which is definitely too much. But most of these problems are fixable in a software update so I won’t complain too muchWhat bothers me slightly more is the capacitive touch back button. I’ve read of people saying it doesn’t always register your touch, but I honestly believe that’s not the issue. I think the problem is that the button is slightly offset to the right, that means if you use your muscle memory to go back, you’re probably missing it by few millimeters.Another minor issue I have is the notification LED, which in my opinion is too dim. That might be good at night, but during the day it’s quite hard to notice it if you are outdoors.What I definitely liked is the fingerprint scanner which has been placed on the right side of the device. It’s very accurate with a very high success rate and it never gives you “errors”, it just unlocks the device when it senses the correct fingerprint. This could be a minor security risk, but in a smartphone that can go underwater and get real dirty without worries, you don’t want it to constantly notify you of failed attempts and disable it altogether.As I mentioned in the first impressions a well, you should be aware that not all 3.5mm jack or USB Type-C connectors will plug-in flawlessly, as they’re both very deep because of the shock resistant outer frame. On the plus side, you don’t need any flaps to keep the smartphone waterproof, although the company suggests to dry up both ports before connecting external devices.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramBlackview BV8000 Pro聽DisplayI would rate the display as average. Sure it’s very sharp as it’s a Full HD display in a 5-inch size, but I’d have rather preferred have a brighter display than higher resolution. That said, the display is bright enough to be used out of the house, it’s just not as bright as I would have expected on a smartphone created for outdoors use.Other than that, colors seem to be accurate and viewing angles are quite good as well.Blackview BV8000 Pro聽Hardware & PerformanceThe聽Blackview BV8000 Pro is powered by a MediaTek 6757 also known as Helio P20, so we have enough juice to power through most apps and games. The company also added a whopping 6GB of RAM which some might consider overkill, but you probably aren’t paying much of a difference from a set of 4GB, thus you get two additional GB of RAM which we’re sure Android will find how to use. On the storage side, we have 64GB of internal storage, expandable via microSD to up to 256GB.Overall the smartphone is really snappy and I haven’t seen any slow downs. I got over 61000 score on AnTuTu, 3893 multi-core score on Geekbench and 841 for the single core.聽With the power efficient Helio P25 chip you’re also able to get more than 6 hours of screen on time; the smartphone fully charges in about two hours with the included 9V/2A charger.The “phone” part of the聽Blackview BV8000 Pro is definitely good, calls are clear and loud. GPS and 4G connectivity work perfectly as well, with GPS locking pretty much instantly and with high precision, and 4G sporting band 20 which is quite needed in Europe. The rear speaker on the BV8000 Pro is very loud but it doesn’t sound amazing, still having a loud speaker is a good achievement considering how waterproof phones usually sound.Blackview BV8000 Pro聽Camera聽The Blackview BV8000 Pro comes with a 16MP rear camera sporting F/2.0 aperture which can get some nice photos if you have a bit of patience. That’s because sometimes you might get over exposed photos or that are slightly out of focus, but if you play with the settings then you’ll be able to get better results.In low light situations the camera gets much worse as in many other smartphones in this price range; sharp photos with low noise are out of the way. But then you aren’t going to get night shoots with a rugged phone, are you?Either way, here below are some photo samples; judge for yourself! Blackview BV8000 Pro聽Gallery聽 Blackview BV8000 Pro聽ConclusionFor about $250 the聽Blackview BV8000 Pro is one of the best rugged smartphones you can get out there. It’s powerful, with good battery life and a durability which we haven’t seen on many smartphones, let alone devices with this kind of internal hardware.So, in conclusion, if you were looking for a rugged phone with good performance, there are no major reasons you shouldn’t consider getting the聽Blackview BV8000 Pro. If you don’t need a device this durable, then we’re sure there are better options in the market.The Blackview BV8000 Pro is probably the first rugged phone to come with the hardware you’d normally find on a mid-range device but encased in a super durable outer shell. This means you can get a proper and smooth Android user experience in pretty much any real life scenario, without the risk of getting your handset damaged.聽This all sounds good on a spec sheet, but how does it actually behave in every day use? Let’s find out in our full review!Blackview BV8000 Pro SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6757 ProcessorDisplay5鈥 Full HDRAM6GBStorage64GB eMMC 鈥 microSD聽slotOperating SystemAndroid 7.0 NougatCameras16MP rear camera, 8MP frontBattery4180mAhPhysical Dimensions243g, 156.2聽x 79.2 x 13.2 mmBlackview BV8000 Pro UnboxingUnboxing the Blackview BV8000 Pro is an experience in and of itself. Being a smartphone out of the ordinary, the accessories you find inside its box are as well. More specifically we’re talking about the tiny screw driver and additional screws they provide you with. In the box you’ll also find an handy micro USB to USB type-C adapter so that you can use an older micro USB charging cable if you have forgotten the USB Type-C one.Micro USB to USB Type-C adapterOther accessories are pretty conventional, we go from the power adapter, to the USB Type-C cable, a pair of earphones and an OTG adapter. Everything neatly arranged in a premium looking聽鈥 at least on the inside聽鈥 package.Blackview BV8000 Pro聽Design &聽Build QualityBuild quality is probably the most important factor in a rugged phone and the BV8000 Pro doesn’t disappoint us, to say the least. The smartphone is really solid thanks to its metal frame and bits around the body, with some plastic parts which make it waterproof, dust proof and almost impossible to break, as we’ve seen in different videos released by the company.I didn’t go as far as throwing my phone to the ground but I’m quite confident it would take the hit like a champ. I did though bring the phone under the shower and, while I know that’s less demanding than completely submerging it under water, it didn’t give me any problems whatsoever; I must say I was actually surprised the smartphone was operable even with some water over the screen.The聽Blackview BV8000 Pro comes with a below-average 5-inch display but the overall footprint of the device is more than that of a 5.5-incher. That’s obviously what makes it so durable but it could bother users with smaller hands, it’s also quite heavy of course, at about 240 grams.Blackview’s smartphone features five total physical buttons, we have the power OFF/ ON button, the two volume rockers, a dedicated camera button and an additional PTT (push to talk) button which can be used to call for help when long pressed. Honestly I wish the buttons were easier to customize as it’s very unlikely I’m going to need the SOS function, plus the dedicated camera button doesn’t start the camera automatically unless you press it for 3 seconds, which is definitely too much. But most of these problems are fixable in a software update so I won’t complain too muchWhat bothers me slightly more is the capacitive touch back button. I’ve read of people saying it doesn’t always register your touch, but I honestly believe that’s not the issue. I think the problem is that the button is slightly offset to the right, that means if you use your muscle memory to go back, you’re probably missing it by few millimeters.Another minor issue I have is the notification LED, which in my opinion is too dim. That might be good at night, but during the day it’s quite hard to notice it if you are outdoors.What I definitely liked is the fingerprint scanner which has been placed on the right side of the device. It’s very accurate with a very high success rate and it never gives you “errors”, it just unlocks the device when it senses the correct fingerprint. This could be a minor security risk, but in a smartphone that can go underwater and get real dirty without worries, you don’t want it to constantly notify you of failed attempts and disable it altogether.As I mentioned in the first impressions a well, you should be aware that not all 3.5mm jack or USB Type-C connectors will plug-in flawlessly, as they’re both very deep because of the shock resistant outer frame. On the plus side, you don’t need any flaps to keep the smartphone waterproof, although the company suggests to dry up both ports before connecting external devices.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramBlackview BV8000 Pro聽DisplayI would rate the display as average. Sure it’s very sharp as it’s a Full HD display in a 5-inch size, but I’d have rather preferred have a brighter display than higher resolution. That said, the display is bright enough to be used out of the house, it’s just not as bright as I would have expected on a smartphone created for outdoors use.Other than that, colors seem to be accurate and viewing angles are quite good as well.Blackview BV8000 Pro聽Hardware & PerformanceThe聽Blackview BV8000 Pro is powered by a MediaTek 6757 also known as Helio P20, so we have enough juice to power through most apps and games. The company also added a whopping 6GB of RAM which some might consider overkill, but you probably aren’t paying much of a difference from a set of 4GB, thus you get two additional GB of RAM which we’re sure Android will find how to use. On the storage side, we have 64GB of internal storage, expandable via microSD to up to 256GB.Overall the smartphone is really snappy and I haven’t seen any slow downs. I got over 61000 score on AnTuTu, 3893 multi-core score on Geekbench and 841 for the single core.聽With the power efficient Helio P25 chip you’re also able to get more than 6 hours of screen on time; the smartphone fully charges in about two hours with the included 9V/2A charger.The “phone” part of the聽Blackview BV8000 Pro is definitely good, calls are clear and loud. GPS and 4G connectivity work perfectly as well, with GPS locking pretty much instantly and with high precision, and 4G sporting band 20 which is quite needed in Europe. The rear speaker on the BV8000 Pro is very loud but it doesn’t sound amazing, still having a loud speaker is a good achievement considering how waterproof phones usually sound.Blackview BV8000 Pro聽Camera聽The Blackview BV8000 Pro comes with a 16MP rear camera sporting F/2.0 aperture which can get some nice photos if you have a bit of patience. That’s because sometimes you might get over exposed photos or that are slightly out of focus, but if you play with the settings then you’ll be able to get better results.In low light situations the camera gets much worse as in many other smartphones in this price range; sharp photos with low noise are out of the way. But then you aren’t going to get night shoots with a rugged phone, are you?Either way, here below are some photo samples; judge for yourself! Blackview BV8000 Pro聽Gallery聽 Blackview BV8000 Pro聽ConclusionFor about $250 the聽Blackview BV8000 Pro is one of the best rugged smartphones you can get out there. It’s powerful, with good battery life and a durability which we haven’t seen on many smartphones, let alone devices with this kind of internal hardware.So, in conclusion, if you were looking for a rugged phone with good performance, there are no major reasons you shouldn’t consider getting the聽Blackview BV8000 Pro. If you don’t need a device this durable, then we’re sure there are better options in the market.Chuwi are best known for their notebooks (and now, their convertibles). That said, the company seems to be eyeing other segments in the consumer electronics market now.The Chuwi Hi-Dock, about which we’ve written before, is a brand new 4-port charging station that will be of use to probably anyone who’s reading this post. In essence, the Hi-Dock is an adapter with four USB ports (with support for Qualcomm QC 3.0). It outputs current in 3.6 – 6.5V 3.0A / 6.5 – 9.0V 2A / 9.0 – 12.0V 1.5A.You can purchase one from GearBest鑱絝or around the $21.It’s a no-nonsense kit that comes with a cable and the adapter. You can choose between US and EU plugs.Unboxing the adapter was a rather nice experience. It does not feel like you’re taking apart the packing of a $21 device… instead, it feels like something 3-5x the cost. Of course, not something you would solely purchase the device for, but a nice touch anyway.Overall, the adapter feels really well made. I’ve been using an Aukey 5-port adapter for a while (which varies hugely in design), but this one should be interesting to test. I quite like the design, and I think I’m going to be using double sided tape to secure it to one spot around my desk.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramTake a look at some photos right below to get a better idea. Notice how you can use the flaps to secure your phone on one side. Definitely something I’m going to be using a lot. That said, this exposes the need for double sided tape (just a piece of it) even more. Something like that would’ve made the Hi-Dock a lot more useful.Besides that, I don’t think I have any quirks or complaints with this neat piece of kit. Chuwi have done a great job making the gadget feel like it’s not a cheap piece of kit, and time will tell if the device will last the test of time.Chuwi are best known for their notebooks (and now, their convertibles). That said, the company seems to be eyeing other segments in the consumer electronics market now.The Chuwi Hi-Dock, about which we’ve written before, is a brand new 4-port charging station that will be of use to probably anyone who’s reading this post. In essence, the Hi-Dock is an adapter with four USB ports (with support for Qualcomm QC 3.0). It outputs current in 3.6 – 6.5V 3.0A / 6.5 – 9.0V 2A / 9.0 – 12.0V 1.5A.You can purchase one from GearBest鑱絝or around the $21.It’s a no-nonsense kit that comes with a cable and the adapter. You can choose between US and EU plugs.Unboxing the adapter was a rather nice experience. It does not feel like you’re taking apart the packing of a $21 device… instead, it feels like something 3-5x the cost. Of course, not something you would solely purchase the device for, but a nice touch anyway.Overall, the adapter feels really well made. I’ve been using an Aukey 5-port adapter for a while (which varies hugely in design), but this one should be interesting to test. I quite like the design, and I think I’m going to be using double sided tape to secure it to one spot around my desk.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramTake a look at some photos right below to get a better idea. Notice how you can use the flaps to secure your phone on one side. Definitely something I’m going to be using a lot. That said, this exposes the need for double sided tape (just a piece of it) even more. Something like that would’ve made the Hi-Dock a lot more useful.Besides that, I don’t think I have any quirks or complaints with this neat piece of kit. Chuwi have done a great job making the gadget feel like it’s not a cheap piece of kit, and time will tell if the device will last the test of time.

Most of you know Cubot as the Chinese phone manufacturer that produces affordable smartphones with some rather good build quality, but that’s not all. Cubot also makes wearable devices, indeed the Cubot S1 we’ll be checking out in this review is actually their third fitness band, coming after the Cubot V1 and Cubot V2.Cubot S1 Fitness Band聽ReviewThe Cubot S1 is priced at around $50 and it packs most of the features you’d like to find on a聽fitness band; going from the heart rate monitoring to the sports activity tracking and other functionalities. Now that we have a general idea of what the Cubot S1 is, let’s get into the full review!Cubot S1 Fitness Band聽SpecificationsBuilt-in chip type: NRF52832Bluetooth Version: Bluetooth 4.0IP rating: IP65Bluetooth calling: Phone call reminderNotification type: Facebook,Twitter,Wechat,WhatsAppAnti-lost: YesAlert type: VibrationOther Function: Alarm,Altimeter,Barometer,ThermometerScreen: OLEDScreen size: 0.96 inchOperating mode: Touch KeyType of battery: Lithium-ion polymer batteryBattery Capacity: 85mAhCharging Time: About 60minsStandby time: 10 – 20 daysCubot S1 Fitness Band HardwareThe Cubot S1 is one of the more premium feeling fitness bands I’ve had the chance of trying, and I’ve tried many. The wristband is made of a nice TPU material which seems to be very durable, meanwhile the central piece is made of plastic and aluminum. The metal casing is a good touch but as you can see in the photos, in the black version of the band it’s really hard to distinguish it from the plastic anyway.Cubot’s fitness band comes with a WTHRM122聽heart rate monitor, a nRF52832 Nordic low-power Bluetooth chip, an advanced InvenSense 6-axis accelerometer and a聽ICM-30632 gyroscope. Lastly, the Cubot S1 features an 0.96-inch OLED screen with a resolution of 128 * 64.Cubot S1 Fitness Band User ExperienceLet’s begin with the last and probably most important piece of hardware we mentioned聽鈥 the display. As with many other fitness bands, the display is usually the weak point, they’re fine if you’re indoor but really hard to read outdoors; the display on the S1 is no exception.Sadly, display technology on these cheaper bands seem to be stuck in the past, and you can see the same even on much more expensive devices such as the聽Xiaomi Amazfit Health Zi聽Jin Cheng reviewed a couple weeks back. That said, you can get used to it and learn how to read it outside (creating a bit of shadow with your free hand).Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramWhat about the rest of the hardware? Well, it does what’s it’s supposed to. The step counter / distance calculator is quite accurate thanks to the high quality聽InvenSense 6-axis accelerometer and ICM-30632 gyroscope they packed into the band. It can automatically understand when you’re running, walking or even riding a bike.The Cubot S1 features smart notifications for calls, messages, alarm, sedentary reminder, music control and remote camera. It also has a built-in altimeter, a thermometer and barometer.As far as the heart rate monitor is concerned, the sensor on the band appears to be accurate after being compared to some gym equipment with built-in heart rate monitors. I just found it odd that sometimes it’d notify me of abnormally high heart rate when I was resting, hopefully that’s a bug on the device side and not my body. The sleeping monitor is also one of the most accurate ones I’ve ever tried.Autonomy wise, the built-in 85mAh battery will power the band for about a week if the 24/7 heart monitoring is enabled, otherwise you could get up to a month.Cubot S1 Fitness Band SoftwareIn line with many other fitness bands, the Cubot S1 app features a rather uninspired user interface and a slightly complicated experience for first time users. That said, the app works fine and once paired with the band it logs all the info correctly.Through the app you can enable or disable all the different smart notifications as well as setting up the heart rate monitor to grab info all day long, which appears to happen every 30 minutes or so.Down below you can see what a whole day heart rate data logging looks like.The Cubot S1 app works on Android 4.3 and above, iOS 8.0 and above. It’s also available in English,French,German,Italian,Russian,Simplified Chinese and Spanish. Cubot S1 Fitness Band VerdictFor the price, the Cubot S1 is probably one of the best fitness band you can currently get, mostly because it just works as it’s supposed to. It’ll monitor your heart rate, sleeping and physical activities pretty accurately, it also has a bunch of additional sensors for those who want to know weather info and other details.Most of you know Cubot as the Chinese phone manufacturer that produces affordable smartphones with some rather good build quality, but that’s not all. Cubot also makes wearable devices, indeed the Cubot S1 we’ll be checking out in this review is actually their third fitness band, coming after the Cubot V1 and Cubot V2.Cubot S1 Fitness Band聽ReviewThe Cubot S1 is priced at around $50 and it packs most of the features you’d like to find on a聽fitness band; going from the heart rate monitoring to the sports activity tracking and other functionalities. Now that we have a general idea of what the Cubot S1 is, let’s get into the full review!Cubot S1 Fitness Band聽SpecificationsBuilt-in chip type: NRF52832Bluetooth Version: Bluetooth 4.0IP rating: IP65Bluetooth calling: Phone call reminderNotification type: Facebook,Twitter,Wechat,WhatsAppAnti-lost: YesAlert type: VibrationOther Function: Alarm,Altimeter,Barometer,ThermometerScreen: OLEDScreen size: 0.96 inchOperating mode: Touch KeyType of battery: Lithium-ion polymer batteryBattery Capacity: 85mAhCharging Time: About 60minsStandby time: 10 – 20 daysCubot S1 Fitness Band HardwareThe Cubot S1 is one of the more premium feeling fitness bands I’ve had the chance of trying, and I’ve tried many. The wristband is made of a nice TPU material which seems to be very durable, meanwhile the central piece is made of plastic and aluminum. The metal casing is a good touch but as you can see in the photos, in the black version of the band it’s really hard to distinguish it from the plastic anyway.Cubot’s fitness band comes with a WTHRM122聽heart rate monitor, a nRF52832 Nordic low-power Bluetooth chip, an advanced InvenSense 6-axis accelerometer and a聽ICM-30632 gyroscope. Lastly, the Cubot S1 features an 0.96-inch OLED screen with a resolution of 128 * 64.Cubot S1 Fitness Band User ExperienceLet’s begin with the last and probably most important piece of hardware we mentioned聽鈥 the display. As with many other fitness bands, the display is usually the weak point, they’re fine if you’re indoor but really hard to read outdoors; the display on the S1 is no exception.Sadly, display technology on these cheaper bands seem to be stuck in the past, and you can see the same even on much more expensive devices such as the聽Xiaomi Amazfit Health Zi聽Jin Cheng reviewed a couple weeks back. That said, you can get used to it and learn how to read it outside (creating a bit of shadow with your free hand).Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramWhat about the rest of the hardware? Well, it does what’s it’s supposed to. The step counter / distance calculator is quite accurate thanks to the high quality聽InvenSense 6-axis accelerometer and ICM-30632 gyroscope they packed into the band. It can automatically understand when you’re running, walking or even riding a bike.The Cubot S1 features smart notifications for calls, messages, alarm, sedentary reminder, music control and remote camera. It also has a built-in altimeter, a thermometer and barometer.As far as the heart rate monitor is concerned, the sensor on the band appears to be accurate after being compared to some gym equipment with built-in heart rate monitors. I just found it odd that sometimes it’d notify me of abnormally high heart rate when I was resting, hopefully that’s a bug on the device side and not my body. The sleeping monitor is also one of the most accurate ones I’ve ever tried.Autonomy wise, the built-in 85mAh battery will power the band for about a week if the 24/7 heart monitoring is enabled, otherwise you could get up to a month.Cubot S1 Fitness Band SoftwareIn line with many other fitness bands, the Cubot S1 app features a rather uninspired user interface and a slightly complicated experience for first time users. That said, the app works fine and once paired with the band it logs all the info correctly.Through the app you can enable or disable all the different smart notifications as well as setting up the heart rate monitor to grab info all day long, which appears to happen every 30 minutes or so.Down below you can see what a whole day heart rate data logging looks like.The Cubot S1 app works on Android 4.3 and above, iOS 8.0 and above. It’s also available in English,French,German,Italian,Russian,Simplified Chinese and Spanish. Cubot S1 Fitness Band VerdictFor the price, the Cubot S1 is probably one of the best fitness band you can currently get, mostly because it just works as it’s supposed to. It’ll monitor your heart rate, sleeping and physical activities pretty accurately, it also has a bunch of additional sensors for those who want to know weather info and other details.

The Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 was subjected to a decent amount of hype especially because of its Surface Pro 4 screen.Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 ReviewThe Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 looks like my perfect laptop, a Surface Pro 4 screen, pretty slim bezels (lies) and an adequate battery. I’ve been looking for a portable laptop with a 3:2 screen and this seemed like it fit the bill. It also has 6GB of RAM which is definitely a plus, so let’s dive right into the review.Return to form?Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 SpecificationsProcessorIntel Apollo Lake Celeron N3450Display12.3閳 2736×1824 IPS LCDRAM6GBStorage64 eMMCOperating SystemWindows 10Cameras0.3MP CameraBattery10,000mAhPhysical Dimensions1.38kg, 30.0 x 22.30 x 1.70 cmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 HardwareThe Lapbook 12.3 is very well built, its easily the most solid laptop Chuwi has produced so far, even rivalling the build quality of their Hi13. While this laptop is nowhere near a Thinkpad milspec level of endurance, it certainly can take a heavier beating than other lighter and less solid laptops. However, along with that solid build also carries along with it a hefty size and weight, its relatively heavy and large for a 12.3″ screen. Granted, the screen is a different aspect ratio which does result in a larger device, but this also means the laptop is quite far from the portability of a MacBook 12.The Lapbook 12.3 is a winner in terms of ports. We have two USB ports one of which is USB 3.0, Mini HDMI out, as well as a MicroSD card slot. We also have the rather unique addition of a Kensington lock on the laptop and a spare M.2 SSD slot that is incredibly easy to access.The laptop goes downhill (in terms of aesthetics) when you open up the laptop. You see large bezels around the screen, something we are not used to after the convention in so many Apollo Lake laptops has been slim bezels. You see a lot of unused space in general not only around the screen, but around the keyboard and trackpad as well, there is definitely space to expand the keyboard and trackpad. The hinge on the laptop screen is definitely a bit wobbly as well.Moving on to the keyboard, this is definitely one of the better keyboards Chuwi has produced, not only are the plastic keys higher quality than what we are used to from Chuwi, but the key travel and feedback are very tactile and satisfying as well. I do have two complaints about the keyboard, first the keyboard is small, especially when there’s so much unused space around the keyboard, and the other would be the location of the power button, its pretty easy to press. I would have wished Chuwi increased the force required to depress the power button here.The trackpad is not very big but its quite accurate. Multifinger gestures actually work very well on this laptop, I’m seeing increasingly better trackpads in laptops from CHina nowadays, they work quite well even in Chrome. However, you cannot turn off trackpad gestures, which is a bit strange.Solid, port filled, but unattractiveChuwi Lapbook 12.3 DisplayThe display here is quite incredible. Its not a touch screen, but the matte display looks gorgeous. Its about as drop dead gorgeous as the Cube Thinker and Chuwi Hi13, and I’m not sure if its placebo but it does look slightly less brilliant in terms of colours and pixels than the Surface Book screen. Images look lifelike, and average people are wowed by how real animals look on the screen. Almost everyone will be wowed by this display (unless you already own a Surface or a Retina MacBook).There are a couple of issues though. First, the software seems to restrict the maximum brightness to 50%, trying to increase the brightness anymore than that doesn’t do anything. I’ve seen my display driver crash on two occasions, but it hasn’t happened since. You also get severe letterboxing when watching movies which is an issue to some but not others.Apart from the issues I talked about in this display, its absolutely gorgeous.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramChuwi Lapbook 12.3 AudioThe audio in this laptop gets very loud, making it a perfect option for watching movies and TV. However, the mids and highs are quite overpowering. Its not that the laptop doesn’t have bass, its just that what little bass there was is completely overpowered by the mids and highs which sound OK but at max volume it is unclear and noisy. All that being said the speakers are still adequate.Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 BatteryAlthough the Lapbook has a 10,000mAh battery (37Wh), its also powering a high resolution 12.3″ display, so I don’t have high hopes for battery life here. I was able to get on average about 7 hours of screen on time and was only able to get 8 hours of screen on time on one occasion.During normal use (7 hours SOT), I was generally browsing the web using Chrome, watching YouTube, reading news, and general social media, no games. I was able to get 8 hours of screen on time by switching over to Edge from Chrome. Gaming sucks up battery life like a Hummer on gas, I got 2.5 hours of gaming time before the laptop died.Average battery lifeChuwi Lapbook 12.3 SoftwareWindows 10 is activated and it runs OK on this laptop. I ran CrystalDiskMark and while it got some pretty slow speeds, general performance was OK for an eMMC but definitely far behind SSD performance. However, where you start seeing major slowdowns because of the hard disk is when doing hard disk intensive tasks such as copying files. The act of copying files is definitely slower, but its not that slow. However, your computer slows to a crawl while doing anything like that and you have to wait until the operation is finished before your computer magically speeds back up. And with 64GB of storage, you really have no space to install anything after Microsoft Office and a game or two.Photoshop/GIMP runs OK, but still slightly slower than what you find on an SSD laptop.In terms of gaming, you can do some light gaming on this laptop but you won’t be able to play too many games because of two reasons; first you won’t have enough space on the hard disk since its so small, and second, the heat. The laptop doesn’t get blazing hot to touch but CPU-Z pegs the CPU at 98C after 1/2 an hour of gaming, which is quite high.I was surprised to shoot past 90C even with heavy Chrome multitasking (think 12 tabs, 3 video, 2 heavy HTML5). However the laptop only got warm with light Chrome, Microsoft office, and mail.I’m surprised that Chuwi recently announced full support for Ubuntu on the Lapbook 12.3, but they are not furnishing the laptop with a dual boot system, you would presumably have to install Ubuntu yourself (article here).Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 ConnectivityChuwi did a great job with connectivity. Not only do we have a positively dazzling array of ports, but we also have Wireless AC and WLAN transfer speeds are… surprisingly slow. The laptop also lacks a USB-C port, but the rest of the ports more than make up for that. The webcam is pretty horrible also, barely adequate for Skype.Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 VerdictOverall, the Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 is a great device, however, it has quite a few small faults and a big one. Let’s start with the big one, and those are the thermals. I saw temperatures past 90C during heavy Chrome multitasking and gaming, only light use saw temperatures below that.There are a bunch of other small issues I have with the laptop, such as a max brightness of 50%, a lack of a USB-C port, the large bezels, and the rather small and slow hard disk. If you’re looking for the best performance for your money, you should look elsewhere, the Chuwi Lapbook 14.1 is stil lgreat. However, there aren’t many laptops with such gorgeous displays and this is overall a good laptop if you are not one to push a laptop too hard. Buy the Chuwi Lapbook 12.3Gearbest LinkWell rounded laptop with a鑱絧roblem…Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 Video ReviewThe Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 was subjected to a decent amount of hype especially because of its Surface Pro 4 screen.Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 ReviewThe Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 looks like my perfect laptop, a Surface Pro 4 screen, pretty slim bezels (lies) and an adequate battery. I’ve been looking for a portable laptop with a 3:2 screen and this seemed like it fit the bill. It also has 6GB of RAM which is definitely a plus, so let’s dive right into the review.Return to form?Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 SpecificationsProcessorIntel Apollo Lake Celeron N3450Display12.3閳 2736×1824 IPS LCDRAM6GBStorage64 eMMCOperating SystemWindows 10Cameras0.3MP CameraBattery10,000mAhPhysical Dimensions1.38kg, 30.0 x 22.30 x 1.70 cmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 HardwareThe Lapbook 12.3 is very well built, its easily the most solid laptop Chuwi has produced so far, even rivalling the build quality of their Hi13. While this laptop is nowhere near a Thinkpad milspec level of endurance, it certainly can take a heavier beating than other lighter and less solid laptops. However, along with that solid build also carries along with it a hefty size and weight, its relatively heavy and large for a 12.3″ screen. Granted, the screen is a different aspect ratio which does result in a larger device, but this also means the laptop is quite far from the portability of a MacBook 12.The Lapbook 12.3 is a winner in terms of ports. We have two USB ports one of which is USB 3.0, Mini HDMI out, as well as a MicroSD card slot. We also have the rather unique addition of a Kensington lock on the laptop and a spare M.2 SSD slot that is incredibly easy to access.The laptop goes downhill (in terms of aesthetics) when you open up the laptop. You see large bezels around the screen, something we are not used to after the convention in so many Apollo Lake laptops has been slim bezels. You see a lot of unused space in general not only around the screen, but around the keyboard and trackpad as well, there is definitely space to expand the keyboard and trackpad. The hinge on the laptop screen is definitely a bit wobbly as well.Moving on to the keyboard, this is definitely one of the better keyboards Chuwi has produced, not only are the plastic keys higher quality than what we are used to from Chuwi, but the key travel and feedback are very tactile and satisfying as well. I do have two complaints about the keyboard, first the keyboard is small, especially when there’s so much unused space around the keyboard, and the other would be the location of the power button, its pretty easy to press. I would have wished Chuwi increased the force required to depress the power button here.The trackpad is not very big but its quite accurate. Multifinger gestures actually work very well on this laptop, I’m seeing increasingly better trackpads in laptops from CHina nowadays, they work quite well even in Chrome. However, you cannot turn off trackpad gestures, which is a bit strange.Solid, port filled, but unattractiveChuwi Lapbook 12.3 DisplayThe display here is quite incredible. Its not a touch screen, but the matte display looks gorgeous. Its about as drop dead gorgeous as the Cube Thinker and Chuwi Hi13, and I’m not sure if its placebo but it does look slightly less brilliant in terms of colours and pixels than the Surface Book screen. Images look lifelike, and average people are wowed by how real animals look on the screen. Almost everyone will be wowed by this display (unless you already own a Surface or a Retina MacBook).There are a couple of issues though. First, the software seems to restrict the maximum brightness to 50%, trying to increase the brightness anymore than that doesn’t do anything. I’ve seen my display driver crash on two occasions, but it hasn’t happened since. You also get severe letterboxing when watching movies which is an issue to some but not others.Apart from the issues I talked about in this display, its absolutely gorgeous.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramChuwi Lapbook 12.3 AudioThe audio in this laptop gets very loud, making it a perfect option for watching movies and TV. However, the mids and highs are quite overpowering. Its not that the laptop doesn’t have bass, its just that what little bass there was is completely overpowered by the mids and highs which sound OK but at max volume it is unclear and noisy. All that being said the speakers are still adequate.Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 BatteryAlthough the Lapbook has a 10,000mAh battery (37Wh), its also powering a high resolution 12.3″ display, so I don’t have high hopes for battery life here. I was able to get on average about 7 hours of screen on time and was only able to get 8 hours of screen on time on one occasion.During normal use (7 hours SOT), I was generally browsing the web using Chrome, watching YouTube, reading news, and general social media, no games. I was able to get 8 hours of screen on time by switching over to Edge from Chrome. Gaming sucks up battery life like a Hummer on gas, I got 2.5 hours of gaming time before the laptop died.Average battery lifeChuwi Lapbook 12.3 SoftwareWindows 10 is activated and it runs OK on this laptop. I ran CrystalDiskMark and while it got some pretty slow speeds, general performance was OK for an eMMC but definitely far behind SSD performance. However, where you start seeing major slowdowns because of the hard disk is when doing hard disk intensive tasks such as copying files. The act of copying files is definitely slower, but its not that slow. However, your computer slows to a crawl while doing anything like that and you have to wait until the operation is finished before your computer magically speeds back up. And with 64GB of storage, you really have no space to install anything after Microsoft Office and a game or two.Photoshop/GIMP runs OK, but still slightly slower than what you find on an SSD laptop.In terms of gaming, you can do some light gaming on this laptop but you won’t be able to play too many games because of two reasons; first you won’t have enough space on the hard disk since its so small, and second, the heat. The laptop doesn’t get blazing hot to touch but CPU-Z pegs the CPU at 98C after 1/2 an hour of gaming, which is quite high.I was surprised to shoot past 90C even with heavy Chrome multitasking (think 12 tabs, 3 video, 2 heavy HTML5). However the laptop only got warm with light Chrome, Microsoft office, and mail.I’m surprised that Chuwi recently announced full support for Ubuntu on the Lapbook 12.3, but they are not furnishing the laptop with a dual boot system, you would presumably have to install Ubuntu yourself (article here).Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 ConnectivityChuwi did a great job with connectivity. Not only do we have a positively dazzling array of ports, but we also have Wireless AC and WLAN transfer speeds are… surprisingly slow. The laptop also lacks a USB-C port, but the rest of the ports more than make up for that. The webcam is pretty horrible also, barely adequate for Skype.Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 VerdictOverall, the Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 is a great device, however, it has quite a few small faults and a big one. Let’s start with the big one, and those are the thermals. I saw temperatures past 90C during heavy Chrome multitasking and gaming, only light use saw temperatures below that.There are a bunch of other small issues I have with the laptop, such as a max brightness of 50%, a lack of a USB-C port, the large bezels, and the rather small and slow hard disk. If you’re looking for the best performance for your money, you should look elsewhere, the Chuwi Lapbook 14.1 is stil lgreat. However, there aren’t many laptops with such gorgeous displays and this is overall a good laptop if you are not one to push a laptop too hard. Buy the Chuwi Lapbook 12.3Gearbest LinkWell rounded laptop with a鑱絧roblem…Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 Video ReviewThe rise in popularity of the newly founded Chinese company Geotel is quite easy to explain. They may not have a quite large portfolio of devices – yet – but each one of their models -within its price range- offers the best combination of good performance, interesting design and an affordable price tag, which – in some cases- could be considered as a bargain.This is one of these “cases” as the Geotel Amigo will be available for just 99,99$ starting tomorrow until the 26th of June, offering impressive performance for the amount of dollars you’re gonna pay. The device is well built, has decent specs for the average user, offers an adequate camera and excellent software inside, along with very good battery times.Its name (Amigo) means “friend” in Spanish and I can safely admit that it has become my “friendly” companion for all the days I used it聽as my main phone, leaving my OnePlus 3T aside to rest a bit. I enjoyed its 5.2 inch display, its extended usability and the pure Android UI, but surely the most attractive feature you’ll find on this device is its…“Friendly” price for an impressive performance.Geotel Amigo – Technical specificationsDisplay:聽5.2 inch, 1280 x 720 pixels HD 2.5D Arc screenCPU:聽MTK6753 Octa Core 1.3GHzSystem:聽Android 7.0Camera:聽5.0MP front camera + rear camera 13.0MPSensor:聽Light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Gravity SensorSIM Card:聽dual SIM dual standby, Micro SIM + Micro SIMFeature:聽GPS, A-GPSBluetooth:聽4.0Network:聽GSM聽850/900/1800/1900MHz – WCDMA聽900/2100MHz –聽FDD-LTE聽800/900/1800/2100/2600MHzUNBOXINGI guess one can say that Geotel has been influenced by OnePlus when designing the packing of the Amigo, as the whole thing looks like a clone of a budget OnePlus smartphone – which is not at all bad. After all I already own an OnePlus 3T and this seemed quite familiar. :pYou won’t find anything disappointing聽inside the main package, just the usual stuff:the Geotel Amigo with a non-removable 3000 mAh batteryA screen protectora micro USB cablea travel chargerquick start guideThat’s all guys, who would expect more at a price of 99,99$ (limited time offer) ?Geotel Amigo review: design and displayWhen it comes to the design, the phone is made entirely of metal with some plastic parts, showing impressive quality built for its price. It does not feel cheap at all and for the price you’ll pay, it’s surely a bargain to have a full metal body in your hands. The 5.2 display has only 720p resolution but honestly, this is one of the best HD panels Ive seen on a budget phone. Even the sunlight legibility is decent.聽The colors of the display may be rather saturated, but the images are crisp, with good viewing angles and a fully responsive panel if I may add.聽All in all a decent display – especially for a smartphone on this price range.聽On the back side of the device you will also find a聽fingerprint sensor which proves to be rather fast. It can unlock the phone in less than 0.1 second with almost 97% success rate. It can basically store up to 5 different fingerprints and can recognize them all from 360 degrees, something that’s a standard nowadays.Just above display you’ll find a 5MP front-facing camera with wide angle view and decent images during the day, along with an ambient light sensor and a proximity sensor.聽The backplate is matte and it looks great when it is clean. The device has a non-removable 3000 mAh battery inside, along with one SIM tray for two micro SIM cards and one microSD slot. 聽As for optics, we have a 13MP shooter along with a single LED flash.The buttons are made of metal (I think) too but they are clicky and tactile.聽As for loudspeaker, the quality is kind of average and the volume output could be better.Hardware & PerformanceWhen it comes to hardware, the Geotel Amigo has some decent specs for its price. It’s聽powered by an 8-core MediaTek MTK6753 SoC clocked at 1.3GHz, along with 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage with a microSD card (thankfully). Thanks to a Mali T720 MP3 GPU the gaming performance is decent if you play games like Asphalt 8 on medium graphics. Still, you should expect some skipped frames but no significant lag. It offers a rather decent user experience with good multi-tasking, enabling users to keep several applications open in the background with no significant impact on its everyday performance. To confirm our deductions, do have a look at the benchmark results of the device as they appear above, showing the Amigo scoring 37153 points in AnTuTu.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramI didn’t have any issues with GPS related apps but it uses only a handful of the available satellites every time. It could be connected to more I guess, in order to offer even better results when scanning for our location.I guess you already know it, but I will say it one more time. The Geotel Amigo聽is a 4G/LTE smartphone with average performance when it comes to LTE networks, achieving average data speeds of 45-55Mbps that surely offer a decent feeling when you use it, along with聽decent performance in everyday use. It has good GSM/WCDMA/LTE signal reception with flawless handovers and no dropped calls – during my tests that is.Geotel Amigo聽review: Android software and UI performanceOur “friendly” smartphone from Geotel runs on Android 7.0 Nougat but we have no official confirmation on when (and if) the company plans to upgrade it to Android 7.1.1 or (one can hope) Android O. In any case, the Android 7.0 gives you more control on the smartphone and also lets you customize the phone just like any other Nougat based device. There is no bloatware or other unnecessary apps inside, it supports all the classic Nougat features but the UI has been tampered a bit by Geotel and offers several gesture controls like SmartWake, Double Tap to Wake, Five Fingers Back, Three Fingers Screenshot etc.Thankfully there’s no theme support, so there’s no significant impact on the everyday performance of the device, and its available RAM is almost always between 1GB and 1.5GB after the first boot up. This means that it can offer decent everyday use for a novice Android user, as long as you don’t choose to put any extra pressure on it with severe multi-tasking, more than 8-9 apps opened simultaneously etc. It’s not a flagship guys, just a mid-range Android smartphone, don’t over-do it. 馃槈Camera performanceI guess we all know by now that the Geotel Amigo comes with a 13.0-megapixel main camera along with a 5.0-megapixel camera and a LED flash with generally acceptable photos as you can see for yourselves. The camera software is typical of what you will see in most Chinese smartphones, with settings for exposure, ISO, white balance, image resolution, HDR, Panorama shots, video capture etc.GOOD PHOTOS, AVERAGE VIDEOS BUT DISAPPOINTING聽LOW LIGHT PERFORMANCEIt’s quite easy to capture decent photos in daylight conditions, panoramic images with a helpful assistant that shows the way to do it correctly and the same goes for video capture. However when the sun goes down problems appear, such as low ISO, increased digital noise in photos and reduced framerate in videos.All of the above however are typical for this type of phones, and the final verdict is that using the Geotel Amigo you will be able to capture decent photos in daylight conditions but not that impressive photos during low light conditions.The LED flash works OK in close ups, portraits or distances up to 1 meter but it won’t do you any good if your subject is a bit further. Have a look at our photo samples below:Battery consumptionThe Geotel Amigo聽is equipped with a relatively average 3000mAh battery but numbers don’t mean anything in this situation. The device comes with an energy efficient processor and -in general- it performs well providing a full day’s usage with no problems and perhaps a bit more if you are able to be gentle with it.All in all we have a winner here, a mid-range smartphone with decent standby times if you’re an average user (6 hours of active screen) but the fact that it doesn’t support some type of quick charging is a bit disappointing. On the other hand it costs just 99,99$聽(limited time offer) so I guess it’s something we can live without 馃檪Conclusion – So what about it?impressive聽performance, quite AFFORDABLE price…We have something good here guys. Its current price is excellent for a smartphone with 3GB of RAM, a quite powerful Mediatek SoC, 32GB of storage, a 5.2 inch HD display and Android 7.0 Nougat with a… decent camera.I enjoyed the vanilla UI of the device, the smooth performance in everyday use and its impressive build quality. At the time this review is being written, the Geotel Amigo costs just 99,99$ (limited time offer) and I think that it can be a good option worth your while, so if you’re in the market for such a smartphone I believe it’s a good alternative.The Geotel Amigo will be available at the price of 99,99$ starting tomorrow June 19, until the 26th of the same month. After the end of this limited time offer its price will return to normal at 139,99$.Will the real Snapdragon 625 lovers please stand up? Technically I would have stood up, but not for the Mi Max 2. That鈥檚 not to say the Snapdragon 625 is not a good SoC, but Xiaomi set our expectations way too high with the Mi Max 1 so anything less seems like a disappointment (Opinion Piece here).Xiaomi Mi Max 2 ReviewThe previous generation of phones (Redmi Note 3 Pro, Redmi 3, Mi Max 1) all utilized different processors that aided in product differentiation. However with this new generation of phones, what we see are three different sizes of what looks to be almost the same device; the Redmi 4 Prime (5鈥 version), the Redmi Note 4X (5.5鈥 version), and now the Mi Max 2 (6.44鈥 version).Apart from the massive screen, the crowning feature for the Mi Max 2 is definitely the 5300mAh battery. Even as a battery fanatic, I did not look forward to testing the battery in this phone as it would probably take forever, and it did. There is also a potent and secret weapon this unassuming Mi Max 2 holds, which could be the extra bit needed to fight in this crowded smartphone market.The largest SD625 phone from XiaomiXiaomi Mi Max 2 SpecificationsProcessorQualcomm Snapdragon 625Display6.44鈥 1920×1080 IPS LCDRAM4GBStorage64/128GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0, MIUI 8.0Cameras12MP, 5MP frontBattery5300mAhPhysical Dimensions211g, 17.41 x 8.87 x 0.76 cmBig thanks to Gearbest聽for providing this review unit.Xiaomi Mi Max 2 HardwareThe excellent build we see on the Mi Max 2 is what we鈥檝e come to expect on Xiaomi鈥檚 higher end phones. The metal unibody is very well finished and while it lacks that extra polish an HTC phone would otherwise have, none but the most nitpicky will have issues with the quality of the body.Apart from the premium build, this phone is obviously massive, with a 6.44鈥 screen. The amount of bezels don鈥檛 seem to be lessened from the previous Mi Max, as there are significant but not overly large bezels surrounding the screen. What irks me the most is the prominent black bar surrounding the screen; it鈥檚 plenty visible when the front of the phone is white, and is less and less acceptable as the starting price for this phone is so high.The Mi Max 2 is an entirely two handed affair with little to no opportunity to (safely) use the phone with one hand. The rear mounted fingerprint sensor is definitely a reach for me as well, so unlocking it through the sensor is a bit of a chore at times.The Mi Max 2 is well built, very large, but also rather nondescript.Boringly decentXiaomi Mi Max 2 DisplayXiaomi seems very reluctant to bump up any of its phones to a resolution of 2K, and whether that is due to design, pricing, or battery reasons, I applaud this decision. In my opinion, the resolution war is a game of diminishing returns; colour gamut, brightness, and contrast are just some of the other areas where displays could be improved.The 1080p screen here is good, it reproduces the relatively pastel colour palette of MIUI well, and when looking at colourful stock photos or video, the screen still holds its own. The screen gets bright enough to put up a decent fight in direct sunlight but still gets overpowered on a hot, sunny day at noon. Minimum brightness is predictably good as well. Xiaomi has chosen to protect this phone using Gorilla Glass 4, so there鈥檚 no need to worry about scratches.Xiaomi Mi Max 2 AudioThe speakers are one of the areas of this phone that gave me a huge surprise. I was expecting an OK speaker, but what I got was a separate tweeter/subwoofer system, the tweeter on the top and the mid/sub driver on the bottom. Combined, they pump out some very loud sound and very good quality also, there is an “Oomph” that this Mi Max 2 that other phones, even the Mi6 don’t have.Xiaomi Mi Max 2 BatteryAs a battery fanatic, this is the first time I鈥檝e (rightfully) dreaded testing a phone for its battery. We here at Gizchina do plan to test the Oukitel K10000 Pro with a 10000mAh battery, and I really do pity the colleague who has to perform those battery tests. If my battery predictions are correct, the amount of time I spent testing this battery actually isn鈥檛 too far off from what my dear colleague will spend testing the K10000 Pro.And my pain is your gain. The Xiaomi Mi Max 2 managed a whopping 23 hours and 4 minutes of local video playback before conking out. A more real world example is this:Start the Wednesday at 6amBluetooth podcasts for an hourWatch YouTube videos for 6 hoursBluetooth podcast for another hourTake pictures and video for 陆 an hourPlay intense games for 2 hoursAn hour of miscellaneous news, social media, and RedditBed at 10 with 34% battery leftRedmi phones remove the term 鈥渂attery anxiety鈥 from our dictionary, and the Mi Max 2 does exactly that. It obviously does this better than the Redmi devices due to a 1200mAh increase in capacity, but the 6.44鈥 screen does suck up a little more juice. The phone is also Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 capable, so topping up that massive 5300mAh takes a rather normal two and a half hours.What is Battery Anxiety?Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramXiaomi Mi Max 2 SoftwareThe Snapdragon 625 paired with 4GB of RAM is able to push MIUI very quickly and fluidly. I did not see any slowdowns when interfacing with MIUI, but I did see very slight hesitation when launching apps when compared to my well used Zuk Z2. 4GB of RAM is plenty for multitasking, and filling up that much RAM at this point in Android鈥檚 evolution is more difficult than it looks under normal circumstances, meaning you won鈥檛 have any issues with multitasking unless doing something unusual. Performance is as one would expect from a Snapdragon 625 phone, within spitting distance of the Redmi 4 Prime and Note 4X. The Snapdragon 625 performs admirably in gaming, no slowdowns detected.The fingerprint sensor is fairly fast. The phone would be unlocked by the time I took the phone out of my pocket. To be fair, I did struggle taking the phone out of certain pant pockets that were too tight for my girth. Do note that the fingerprint sensor is hard to reach which results in awkward finger placement on the sensor. This resulted in lower than usual accuracy when tapping the sensor, I usually had to tap it a second time to successfully unlock the phone. However, when using this phone two handed, this allowed me to position my hand much more freely, cutting down on virtually all fingerprint errors.Xiaomi Mi Max 2 ConnectivityThe international version of the Mi Max 2 supports both TDD-LTE and FDD-LTE bands, meaning it will work almost anywhere. I was able to get 2G, 3G, 4G, and LTE on my carrier here in Canada. I never have issues with network speeds on this phone as evidenced by the speedtest performed here. I was able to connect to every single Bluetooth device I owned, and GPS performance is accurate and fast as well.Xiaomi Mi Max 2 CameraThe camera is the secret weapon I was talking about in the introduction. While the battery life might be the crowning achievement, the camera is why you鈥檒l buy this phone over the other Snapdragon 625 Redmis. The Mi Max 2 uses the same IMX386 sensor found in the Xiaomi Mi6. Software is just as important as hardware when creating a high quality picture; and the Mi Max 2 does quite a good job.In daylight with perfect lighting conditions and no camera shake (this is important), the difference in detail between the Mi6 and Mi Max 2 is negligible. There is still a slight but visible difference when zoomed in all the way, but it鈥檚 the same for all normal intents and purposes. The Mi6 does capture brighter, more vibrant colours while the Mi Max 2 settles with deeper, darker, and more accurate shades. I have a feeling that most individuals will prefer the vibrant colours from the Mi6 over the Mi Max 2, but this comes down to personal preference.Taking the previous situation with perfect lighting, let鈥檚 add in some camera shake. This is where we start seeing quality take a large deviation. Whereas the Mi6鈥檚 4 axis OIS kicks in to stabilize the camera, the Mi Max 2 takes blurrier shots. Do note that the blur is actually hard to detect if seen on a phone screen, but it is more apparent on a computer monitor.The gap in quality widens even more in low light conditions. The Mi Max 2 starts blowing out ISO to get the pictures bright enough and you do see more noise and grain in the Mi Max 2 compared to the Mi6. That鈥檚 not to say the Mi Max 2鈥檚 low light performance is horrible though. It鈥檚 still miles ahead of many other phones, and outpaces the Redmi Note 4X by quite a margin as well.The front camera is actually pretty typical for a Redmi device, meaning that it鈥檚 passable but quality isn鈥檛 great.You can capture up to 4K video on the phone, and footage is crispy, colours are still somewhat deep and dark, but footage is nevertheless great.I should say this though, comparing the Mi Max 2 to the Mi6 might have somewhat overshadowed how good the Mi Max 2鈥檚 camera is. To be frank, the Mi Max 2 has one of the best cameras I鈥檝e seen on a non flagship device so far, once the hype for the Mi Max 2 dies down and the price drops to somewhat normal levels, this is going to be one of the best camera phones you can get for the price.Xiaomi Mi Max 2聽Camera Gallery Xiaomi Mi Max 2 VerdictThe current iteration of the Mi Max 2 is the most intriguing Snapdragon 625 phone I鈥檝e tested because of two reasons; its crowning achievement and its secret weapon. Its crowning achievement is battery life so unreasonably good that even the Redmi 4 Prime and Redmi Note 4X have trouble keeping up. Second, its secret weapon, the camera, takes some amazing shots in daylight, keeping up with the flagship Xiaomi Mi6. On the other hand, its weaknesses are quite nondescript, mostly.It still has a black bar around the screen, the fingerprint sensor is difficult to reach, and the front facing camera is nothing to write home about (unlike the rear camera). I won鈥檛 spend any time ranting about Xiaomi using a Snapdragon 625 in yet another one of their phones as I鈥檝e discussed that at length here in this opinion piece. All in all, the Mi Max 2 is another great device from Xiaomi. My recommendations? Phablet lovers should buy this, Snapdragon 625 haters should not, and if you鈥檙e looking for a great camera in a non flagship device? Definitely. Buy the Xiaomi Mi Max 2The Best Xiaomi SD625 phone so far!Xiaomi Mi Max 2 Video Review

Will the real Snapdragon 625 lovers please stand up? Technically I would have stood up, but not for the Mi Max 2. That鈥檚 not to say the Snapdragon 625 is not a good SoC, but Xiaomi set our expectations way too high with the Mi Max 1 so anything less seems like a disappointment (Opinion Piece here).Xiaomi Mi Max 2 ReviewThe previous generation of phones (Redmi Note 3 Pro, Redmi 3, Mi Max 1) all utilized different processors that aided in product differentiation. However with this new generation of phones, what we see are three different sizes of what looks to be almost the same device; the Redmi 4 Prime (5鈥 version), the Redmi Note 4X (5.5鈥 version), and now the Mi Max 2 (6.44鈥 version).Apart from the massive screen, the crowning feature for the Mi Max 2 is definitely the 5300mAh battery. Even as a battery fanatic, I did not look forward to testing the battery in this phone as it would probably take forever, and it did. There is also a potent and secret weapon this unassuming Mi Max 2 holds, which could be the extra bit needed to fight in this crowded smartphone market.The largest SD625 phone from XiaomiXiaomi Mi Max 2 SpecificationsProcessorQualcomm Snapdragon 625Display6.44鈥 1920×1080 IPS LCDRAM4GBStorage64/128GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0, MIUI 8.0Cameras12MP, 5MP frontBattery5300mAhPhysical Dimensions211g, 17.41 x 8.87 x 0.76 cmBig thanks to Gearbest聽for providing this review unit.Xiaomi Mi Max 2 HardwareThe excellent build we see on the Mi Max 2 is what we鈥檝e come to expect on Xiaomi鈥檚 higher end phones. The metal unibody is very well finished and while it lacks that extra polish an HTC phone would otherwise have, none but the most nitpicky will have issues with the quality of the body.Apart from the premium build, this phone is obviously massive, with a 6.44鈥 screen. The amount of bezels don鈥檛 seem to be lessened from the previous Mi Max, as there are significant but not overly large bezels surrounding the screen. What irks me the most is the prominent black bar surrounding the screen; it鈥檚 plenty visible when the front of the phone is white, and is less and less acceptable as the starting price for this phone is so high.The Mi Max 2 is an entirely two handed affair with little to no opportunity to (safely) use the phone with one hand. The rear mounted fingerprint sensor is definitely a reach for me as well, so unlocking it through the sensor is a bit of a chore at times.The Mi Max 2 is well built, very large, but also rather nondescript.Boringly decentXiaomi Mi Max 2 DisplayXiaomi seems very reluctant to bump up any of its phones to a resolution of 2K, and whether that is due to design, pricing, or battery reasons, I applaud this decision. In my opinion, the resolution war is a game of diminishing returns; colour gamut, brightness, and contrast are just some of the other areas where displays could be improved.The 1080p screen here is good, it reproduces the relatively pastel colour palette of MIUI well, and when looking at colourful stock photos or video, the screen still holds its own. The screen gets bright enough to put up a decent fight in direct sunlight but still gets overpowered on a hot, sunny day at noon. Minimum brightness is predictably good as well. Xiaomi has chosen to protect this phone using Gorilla Glass 4, so there鈥檚 no need to worry about scratches.Xiaomi Mi Max 2 AudioThe speakers are one of the areas of this phone that gave me a huge surprise. I was expecting an OK speaker, but what I got was a separate tweeter/subwoofer system, the tweeter on the top and the mid/sub driver on the bottom. Combined, they pump out some very loud sound and very good quality also, there is an “Oomph” that this Mi Max 2 that other phones, even the Mi6 don’t have.Xiaomi Mi Max 2 BatteryAs a battery fanatic, this is the first time I鈥檝e (rightfully) dreaded testing a phone for its battery. We here at Gizchina do plan to test the Oukitel K10000 Pro with a 10000mAh battery, and I really do pity the colleague who has to perform those battery tests. If my battery predictions are correct, the amount of time I spent testing this battery actually isn鈥檛 too far off from what my dear colleague will spend testing the K10000 Pro.And my pain is your gain. The Xiaomi Mi Max 2 managed a whopping 23 hours and 4 minutes of local video playback before conking out. A more real world example is this:Start the Wednesday at 6amBluetooth podcasts for an hourWatch YouTube videos for 6 hoursBluetooth podcast for another hourTake pictures and video for 陆 an hourPlay intense games for 2 hoursAn hour of miscellaneous news, social media, and RedditBed at 10 with 34% battery leftRedmi phones remove the term 鈥渂attery anxiety鈥 from our dictionary, and the Mi Max 2 does exactly that. It obviously does this better than the Redmi devices due to a 1200mAh increase in capacity, but the 6.44鈥 screen does suck up a little more juice. The phone is also Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 capable, so topping up that massive 5300mAh takes a rather normal two and a half hours.What is Battery Anxiety?Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramXiaomi Mi Max 2 SoftwareThe Snapdragon 625 paired with 4GB of RAM is able to push MIUI very quickly and fluidly. I did not see any slowdowns when interfacing with MIUI, but I did see very slight hesitation when launching apps when compared to my well used Zuk Z2. 4GB of RAM is plenty for multitasking, and filling up that much RAM at this point in Android鈥檚 evolution is more difficult than it looks under normal circumstances, meaning you won鈥檛 have any issues with multitasking unless doing something unusual. Performance is as one would expect from a Snapdragon 625 phone, within spitting distance of the Redmi 4 Prime and Note 4X. The Snapdragon 625 performs admirably in gaming, no slowdowns detected.The fingerprint sensor is fairly fast. The phone would be unlocked by the time I took the phone out of my pocket. To be fair, I did struggle taking the phone out of certain pant pockets that were too tight for my girth. Do note that the fingerprint sensor is hard to reach which results in awkward finger placement on the sensor. This resulted in lower than usual accuracy when tapping the sensor, I usually had to tap it a second time to successfully unlock the phone. However, when using this phone two handed, this allowed me to position my hand much more freely, cutting down on virtually all fingerprint errors.Xiaomi Mi Max 2 ConnectivityThe international version of the Mi Max 2 supports both TDD-LTE and FDD-LTE bands, meaning it will work almost anywhere. I was able to get 2G, 3G, 4G, and LTE on my carrier here in Canada. I never have issues with network speeds on this phone as evidenced by the speedtest performed here. I was able to connect to every single Bluetooth device I owned, and GPS performance is accurate and fast as well.Xiaomi Mi Max 2 CameraThe camera is the secret weapon I was talking about in the introduction. While the battery life might be the crowning achievement, the camera is why you鈥檒l buy this phone over the other Snapdragon 625 Redmis. The Mi Max 2 uses the same IMX386 sensor found in the Xiaomi Mi6. Software is just as important as hardware when creating a high quality picture; and the Mi Max 2 does quite a good job.In daylight with perfect lighting conditions and no camera shake (this is important), the difference in detail between the Mi6 and Mi Max 2 is negligible. There is still a slight but visible difference when zoomed in all the way, but it鈥檚 the same for all normal intents and purposes. The Mi6 does capture brighter, more vibrant colours while the Mi Max 2 settles with deeper, darker, and more accurate shades. I have a feeling that most individuals will prefer the vibrant colours from the Mi6 over the Mi Max 2, but this comes down to personal preference.Taking the previous situation with perfect lighting, let鈥檚 add in some camera shake. This is where we start seeing quality take a large deviation. Whereas the Mi6鈥檚 4 axis OIS kicks in to stabilize the camera, the Mi Max 2 takes blurrier shots. Do note that the blur is actually hard to detect if seen on a phone screen, but it is more apparent on a computer monitor.The gap in quality widens even more in low light conditions. The Mi Max 2 starts blowing out ISO to get the pictures bright enough and you do see more noise and grain in the Mi Max 2 compared to the Mi6. That鈥檚 not to say the Mi Max 2鈥檚 low light performance is horrible though. It鈥檚 still miles ahead of many other phones, and outpaces the Redmi Note 4X by quite a margin as well.The front camera is actually pretty typical for a Redmi device, meaning that it鈥檚 passable but quality isn鈥檛 great.You can capture up to 4K video on the phone, and footage is crispy, colours are still somewhat deep and dark, but footage is nevertheless great.I should say this though, comparing the Mi Max 2 to the Mi6 might have somewhat overshadowed how good the Mi Max 2鈥檚 camera is. To be frank, the Mi Max 2 has one of the best cameras I鈥檝e seen on a non flagship device so far, once the hype for the Mi Max 2 dies down and the price drops to somewhat normal levels, this is going to be one of the best camera phones you can get for the price.Xiaomi Mi Max 2聽Camera Gallery Xiaomi Mi Max 2 VerdictThe current iteration of the Mi Max 2 is the most intriguing Snapdragon 625 phone I鈥檝e tested because of two reasons; its crowning achievement and its secret weapon. Its crowning achievement is battery life so unreasonably good that even the Redmi 4 Prime and Redmi Note 4X have trouble keeping up. Second, its secret weapon, the camera, takes some amazing shots in daylight, keeping up with the flagship Xiaomi Mi6. On the other hand, its weaknesses are quite nondescript, mostly.It still has a black bar around the screen, the fingerprint sensor is difficult to reach, and the front facing camera is nothing to write home about (unlike the rear camera). I won鈥檛 spend any time ranting about Xiaomi using a Snapdragon 625 in yet another one of their phones as I鈥檝e discussed that at length here in this opinion piece. All in all, the Mi Max 2 is another great device from Xiaomi. My recommendations? Phablet lovers should buy this, Snapdragon 625 haters should not, and if you鈥檙e looking for a great camera in a non flagship device? Definitely. Buy the Xiaomi Mi Max 2The Best Xiaomi SD625 phone so far!Xiaomi Mi Max 2 Video ReviewThe Elephone P8 Mini is aiming for the best price for the most specs crammed into the P8 Mini鈥檚 humble frame. This unassuming phone features some very impressive specs for the price.Elephone P8 Mini ReviewInside the modest frame (and price) of the P8 Mini lies a truly formidable lineup of specifications and performance. Apart from the rather undersized battery, Elephone has seen fit to pack this $140 phone with specs that belong in a phone $30 its senior.Genuinely Surprising Specs for the priceElephone P8 Mini SpecificationsProcessorMediaTek MTK6750T OctacoreDisplay5鈥 1920×1080 IPS LCDRAM4GBStorage64GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras13/2MP, 16MP frontBattery2860mAhPhysical Dimensions133g, 143.6*71*8.1mm Elephone P8 Mini Hardware5″ phones are rare nowadays, especially ones with specs worthy of mentioning. The phone is quite compact for a 5″ phone, measuring just a few mm taller and wider than my very compact Zuk Z2. The P8 Mini also feels incredibly light, most likely due to the mostly plastic build. The entire phone is plastic save for the metal plate on the back. It feels fine in hand, but doesn’t exude a premium feel above its price.On the front we have three capacitive buttons and some bezel around the screen, Elephone has definitely not made this as bezel free as possible.Fine BuildElephone P8 Mini DisplayThe 1080p IPS LCD here looks incredibly saturated, one of the most deeply saturated screens I’ve seen on an LCD so far, and that’s a good thing. Putting it side by side pretty much any phone I currently own (even the Xiaomi Mi6) and the colours on every other phone pale (literally) in comparison to how deep and saturated they are. I even checked Miravision and reset it to default settings but the screen stayed just as saturated. Needless to say, using the screen is a pleasure and everything looks great.Max brightness doesn’t go as high as I would like, topping out at 400 nits. I do have one complaint with the display and that is the touch sensitivity. it is slightly less sensitive than my Zuk Z2 and Mi6, such that regular touches are registered easily but my more calloused fingers (from guitar) have trouble being recognized unless I push down hard.Elephone P8 Mini AudioThe speakers pump out some very loud sound even with the volume enhancer turned off, and there is very slight distortion at max volume, audio gets slightly less clear. There isn’t a lot of bass though.Elephone P8 Mini BatteryThis is the one misstep Elephone made when designing this phone, at least that was what I thought; a 2860mAh battery in 2017 is just not going to cut it right? Well turns out I was only partially right, this phone has excellent standby battery drain, draining about 1% every 2-3 hours. However, i was only able to get around 3.5-4 hours of screen on time with this phone, so about average, and definitely not great.Average batteryElephone P8 Mini SoftwareAndroid 7.0 runs quite smoothly on the current hardware, noticeably slower on the Mi6 which also costs five times as much, but more than fast enough for the average user. Launching apps is quick enough, only a slight hesitation is detected when opening larger apps, there is next to none with smaller apps like the dialer, messaging, or the calculator. Multitasking is a non-issue, with the 4GB of RAM rarely filling all the way up with apps.Gaming was mostly fine, I did see some slight lag in Asphalt Extreme which I did not see in modern combat, so this could very well be a software issue. Casual games run fine as well.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramThe fingerprint sensor is fairly accurate and fairly fast, no issues here.Elephone P8 Mini ConnectivityNot much out of the ordinary here, it gets 2G, 3G, and LTE and no problems with speed. WiFi speeds are OK, Bluetooth works fine and GPS is a tiny bit slow to update, but nothing else bad here.Elephone P8 Mini CameraThe camera here is鈥 interesting. On one hand, it takes photos on par with the Redmi 4 Prime in good conditions, but other times the photos look incredibly blurry. There are three main modes you will take photos with, normal, HDR, and Bokeh mode, and picture quality stands in that order, with normal mode photos looking the best. Colours are very deep and saturated, detail is resolved fairly well, but a bit of dynamic range is lost, still the photos look nice.HDR tends to blow things out of proportion, it overcompensates for the lack of dynamic range resulting in washed out colours. Its also very hard to keep the camera still enough to avoid blur.Bokeh mode utilizes the secondary camera to create artificial Bokeh in a round shape which does look unnatural, and pictures take a dive in quality as well, I recommend staying in normal mode for all your camera needs. In low light, pictures start becoming grainy and noisy.The front facing camera has a higher MP count than the primary rear camera at 16MP, but here we see definite proof that MegaPixels are not everything in a camera, as the rear camera鈥檚 photos resolve much finer detail than the front facing camera.Video quality is OK for 1080p, but it has trouble focusing on the subject properly, you are usually required to aid it with a tap.Good at timesElephone P8 Mini聽Camera Gallery Elephone P8 Mini VerdictI鈥檓 left with quite an impressed impression after using the Elephone P8 Mini, as it is a surprisingly good phone from Elephone, with the very low price being the cherry on top. There are countless other MTK6750 phones and while I would have recommended phones like the Doogee Y6 Max or the Bluboo Maya Max, this phone represents better value and a better user experience than both the previous phones at a lower price.Yes, the touchscreen is a tad insensitive and the camera is inconsistent, but the user experience and specifications more than make up for that. Buy hereYou can purchase the phone here.Well rounded phoneElephone P8 Mini Video ReviewThe Elephone P8 Mini is aiming for the best price for the most specs crammed into the P8 Mini鈥檚 humble frame. This unassuming phone features some very impressive specs for the price.Elephone P8 Mini ReviewInside the modest frame (and price) of the P8 Mini lies a truly formidable lineup of specifications and performance. Apart from the rather undersized battery, Elephone has seen fit to pack this $140 phone with specs that belong in a phone $30 its senior.Genuinely Surprising Specs for the priceElephone P8 Mini SpecificationsProcessorMediaTek MTK6750T OctacoreDisplay5鈥 1920×1080 IPS LCDRAM4GBStorage64GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras13/2MP, 16MP frontBattery2860mAhPhysical Dimensions133g, 143.6*71*8.1mm Elephone P8 Mini Hardware5″ phones are rare nowadays, especially ones with specs worthy of mentioning. The phone is quite compact for a 5″ phone, measuring just a few mm taller and wider than my very compact Zuk Z2. The P8 Mini also feels incredibly light, most likely due to the mostly plastic build. The entire phone is plastic save for the metal plate on the back. It feels fine in hand, but doesn’t exude a premium feel above its price.On the front we have three capacitive buttons and some bezel around the screen, Elephone has definitely not made this as bezel free as possible.Fine BuildElephone P8 Mini DisplayThe 1080p IPS LCD here looks incredibly saturated, one of the most deeply saturated screens I’ve seen on an LCD so far, and that’s a good thing. Putting it side by side pretty much any phone I currently own (even the Xiaomi Mi6) and the colours on every other phone pale (literally) in comparison to how deep and saturated they are. I even checked Miravision and reset it to default settings but the screen stayed just as saturated. Needless to say, using the screen is a pleasure and everything looks great.Max brightness doesn’t go as high as I would like, topping out at 400 nits. I do have one complaint with the display and that is the touch sensitivity. it is slightly less sensitive than my Zuk Z2 and Mi6, such that regular touches are registered easily but my more calloused fingers (from guitar) have trouble being recognized unless I push down hard.Elephone P8 Mini AudioThe speakers pump out some very loud sound even with the volume enhancer turned off, and there is very slight distortion at max volume, audio gets slightly less clear. There isn’t a lot of bass though.Elephone P8 Mini BatteryThis is the one misstep Elephone made when designing this phone, at least that was what I thought; a 2860mAh battery in 2017 is just not going to cut it right? Well turns out I was only partially right, this phone has excellent standby battery drain, draining about 1% every 2-3 hours. However, i was only able to get around 3.5-4 hours of screen on time with this phone, so about average, and definitely not great.Average batteryElephone P8 Mini SoftwareAndroid 7.0 runs quite smoothly on the current hardware, noticeably slower on the Mi6 which also costs five times as much, but more than fast enough for the average user. Launching apps is quick enough, only a slight hesitation is detected when opening larger apps, there is next to none with smaller apps like the dialer, messaging, or the calculator. Multitasking is a non-issue, with the 4GB of RAM rarely filling all the way up with apps.Gaming was mostly fine, I did see some slight lag in Asphalt Extreme which I did not see in modern combat, so this could very well be a software issue. Casual games run fine as well.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramThe fingerprint sensor is fairly accurate and fairly fast, no issues here.Elephone P8 Mini ConnectivityNot much out of the ordinary here, it gets 2G, 3G, and LTE and no problems with speed. WiFi speeds are OK, Bluetooth works fine and GPS is a tiny bit slow to update, but nothing else bad here.Elephone P8 Mini CameraThe camera here is鈥 interesting. On one hand, it takes photos on par with the Redmi 4 Prime in good conditions, but other times the photos look incredibly blurry. There are three main modes you will take photos with, normal, HDR, and Bokeh mode, and picture quality stands in that order, with normal mode photos looking the best. Colours are very deep and saturated, detail is resolved fairly well, but a bit of dynamic range is lost, still the photos look nice.HDR tends to blow things out of proportion, it overcompensates for the lack of dynamic range resulting in washed out colours. Its also very hard to keep the camera still enough to avoid blur.Bokeh mode utilizes the secondary camera to create artificial Bokeh in a round shape which does look unnatural, and pictures take a dive in quality as well, I recommend staying in normal mode for all your camera needs. In low light, pictures start becoming grainy and noisy.The front facing camera has a higher MP count than the primary rear camera at 16MP, but here we see definite proof that MegaPixels are not everything in a camera, as the rear camera鈥檚 photos resolve much finer detail than the front facing camera.Video quality is OK for 1080p, but it has trouble focusing on the subject properly, you are usually required to aid it with a tap.Good at timesElephone P8 Mini聽Camera Gallery Elephone P8 Mini VerdictI鈥檓 left with quite an impressed impression after using the Elephone P8 Mini, as it is a surprisingly good phone from Elephone, with the very low price being the cherry on top. There are countless other MTK6750 phones and while I would have recommended phones like the Doogee Y6 Max or the Bluboo Maya Max, this phone represents better value and a better user experience than both the previous phones at a lower price.Yes, the touchscreen is a tad insensitive and the camera is inconsistent, but the user experience and specifications more than make up for that. Buy hereYou can purchase the phone here.Well rounded phoneElephone P8 Mini Video ReviewOukitel is one of many China-based smartphone OEMs and during the past few years has managed to launch some really interesting devices that boast impressive standby times and all-in-all decent聽performance. The Oukitel K4000 Plus is the mid-ranger of the “K series” family, and perhaps the best balanced device of their portfolio, (only) if you are on a “tight” budget.It’s the smallest (as far as battery capacity is concerned) of the K Series family, with the K10000 Pro and K6000 Plus aimed at more experienced (and more demanding) users. Our little friend here packs a聽4,100mAh battery inside, providing impressive stand by/talk time results that you will surely enjoy, but it’s still low priced (just $99-$102) and has decent everyday performance, with no problems or mishaps.Let’s have a closer look on what this small “monster” can do, OK?Solid Build, basically unbreakableOukitel K4000 Plus review – Technical specsThe Oukitel K4000 Plus packs聽a 5-inch 720p (1280 x 720) display which is extremely tough (up to 9H hardness), being able to withstand more than 800MPa of stress value. It’s equipped with Mediatek’s聽MT6737 SoC, paired with a Mali-T720 MP2 GPU, 2GB of RAM as well as聽16GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD card up to 32GB) for apps, games, and media. On its back we can find an 8-megapixel snapper (13-megapixel interpolated) with a LED flash next to it and a 2-megapixel shooter (for… really “basic” selfie shots I am afraid) is available up front.The device runs on聽Android 6.0 Marshmallow and it鈥檚 almost stock, with Oukitel only adding some of their very own features (mostly gestures), along with聽some additional pre-installed applications (360 Security, UC Browser, Freezer, Quick Touch).Oukitel K4000 Plus main Features:Display:聽5.0 inch, 1280 x 720 pixels HD screenCPU:聽MTK6737 Quad Core 1.3GHz2GB RAM, 16GB storage, microSD slotOperating System:聽Android 6.0Camera:聽8.0MP (SW 13.0MP) rear camera + 2.0MP (SW 5.0MP) front cameraAmbient Light Sensor, Gravity Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Touch SensorDual SIM dual standby, Micro SIM / Micro SIM4100 mAh batteryGSM聽850/900/1800/1900MHz – WCDMA聽900/1900/2100MHz -FDD-LTE聽800/900/1800/2100/2600MHzHardware And Build qualityLet’s start with the easy stuff OK? The first thing you notice when this phone appears in front of you (out of its box) is how heavy and thick it is. The Oukitel K4000 Plus weighs 215 grams and it’s approximately 10mm thick. However these numbers feel normal on this type of phones – specifically the ones with large batteries like most Oukitel smartphones. This one packs a 4100 mAh battery so it’s more or less expected to be this heavy, but it’s also really durable with a shatter proof display and an extremely solid build.Oukitel decided to create a number of videos recently, in order to promote this device, and pretty much every one of them boasted about its battery life and durability. Here’s one of them just for… the fun of it:The company actually hit the device with a hammer, used it as a hammer to knock nails into wood and even decided to use it to crack walnuts! Don’t worry, the device did great, its display is quite durable, but obviously these things are not to be made for fun so don’t try them at home. It’s a pity to damage a brand new device, isn’t it? In everyday use, the K4000 Plus may be heavy but still, there’s a reason one will choose this phone isn’t there? It has a small footprint however thanks to its 5 inch display, so it can easily fit into most pockets, or allow for one handed use with impressive performance (for a budget Android smartphone that is).Oh, let’s not forget that there’s a fingerprint scanner placed inside the Home Button of the device. It can be found just below the display, providing quite fast fingerprint recognition with almost 90% success rate. You can use it to lock applications, unlock the phone and it can “read” fingerprints in 360 degrees.Connectivity/Call performanceIt’s one of the most important (and deciding) factors for me, when I test a phone. How good it sounds, what type of signal reception it has and how well its speaker works. The Oukitel K4000 Plus did quite well in this test by my standards.聽The phone call quality was satisfactory, but nothing that is worth bragging about. I was able to call others and receive calls on this device without any issues, with quite good sound quality and volume.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramI found its speaker to be “rough” I guess, with loud “noise” when ringtones were played back, but nothing that could disappoint me I guess. I have to say that the microphone was quite solid and the overall connectivity via both data and Wi-Fi networks was consistent. I didn鈥檛 experience any problems with 3G/4G or Wi-Fi during my tests, all web pages/social networks were easily accessible via WiFi but the signal strength when I was a bit far from my router dropped quite easily.I didn’t face any disconnections thankfully but the WiFi range drops rapidly after 10-12 meters walk from the WiFi router. The 4G speeds were average, with good reception wherever I went, zero dropped calls/connections and a decent all in all performance.Battery consumptionWell here’s where this phone (and most Oukitel devices) shine! One of the main selling points of the Oukitel K4000 Plus is its battery life, and for a good reason. It comes with 4100 mAh capacity, but the Android 6.0 operating system is beautifully optimized to offer great standby and talk times, that will surely – SURELY – satisfy you.The K4000 Plus can stay away from its charger for more than 2 days if you use it wisely, and offers great stand by times when you put it to rest. I “pushed” the device as much as I could:聽I played some games, browsed the internet, did tons of messaging and YouTube, phone calls as well but it just went from 74% to 55% by the end of the first day, confirming that it’s a decent “energy” phone.In any case, I know you will ask yourselves, so here it is:if you鈥檙e looking an affordable handset with really good battery life, the Oukitel K4000 plus should definitely be one of your options.Operating System – Marshmallow insideIf you鈥檝e ever used a Chinese handset by聽Chinese OEMS (UMIDIGI, Doogee, Cubot) or any other similar brand, you鈥檒l feel at home with this model. The Oukitel K4000 Plus runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with a simple icon theme and a beautiful lockscreen made by the Chinese company, so it’s not “pure” Android, but it’s really “light” and easy to move around in the menus. Oukitel uses their own launcher with some special effects, desktop settings for those of you who love to tweak a bit their phones and includes a set of Gesture Options.聽You can, for example, double tap the capacitive home button in order to wake up the device, and you can do the same in order to lock it. All of these gestures can be disabled in settings by the way. As far as the notification shade, settings and a number of other parts of the software are concerned, this is stock Android. It’s one of the reasons Oukitel K4000 Plus manages to perform as it should, and it鈥檚 definitely a huge “plus” for this smartphone. Camera: not that bad at all…First of all: don’t choose the phones of this category (devices with large batteries) purely for their imaging features. It’s not where they’re good at, and they know it. You should know it too. So the K4000 Plus confirms all of the above and proves to be an average camera phone equipped with an聽8-megapixel snapper (13-megapixel interpolated) on the back, and a 2-megapixel camera up front.Its main camera can shoot decent photos in good lightning conditions (the colors could be better overall), but it tends to provide somewhat colder images than it should. When the light isn鈥檛 that good, however, it doesn鈥檛 perform that well, as expected with most Chinese smartphones in this category and price range. It can also shoot HD videos at 25 fps, with average quality and some high contrast issues as you can see below.The same goes for the selfie camera that’s placed in front, just above the display.聽The images lack details and are nothing to brag about, that鈥檚 for sure, but it will do more than a good job if you shoot selfies from time to time, and the same goes for video calls. There’s also a LED flash placed next to the main camera. It manages to light up the images, but it doesn’t do what it should: it basically ruins selfies, letting them turn out unnatural and you鈥檒l probably opt not to use flash, at least in most situations.So, is it worth it?Oukitel is surely one of the decent聽manufacturers if you’re in the market for an affordable device with really solid battery life. This Oukitel K4000 Plus is exceptional in its battery performance, it performs well in average – everyday use, and most novice or semi-experienced Android users will enjoy it – no doubt about it. After all its price nowadays (approximately 100$) is great for those who have limited budget to spend on a phone.

Blackview鈥檚 devices have been impressing me lately, and as a result I鈥檝e begun to look forward to the company鈥檚 next releases. With this, I now have the Blackview BV7000 Pro in my hands, and it鈥檚 ready for a full review. So, how does the Blackview BV7000 Pro fare?Blackview BV7000 Pro SpecificationsProcessorMTK6750T聽Octa CoreDisplay5″ 1920×1080 IPS LCDRAM4GBStorage64GBOperating SystemAndroid 6.0 MarshmallowCameras13MP, 8MP CameraBattery3,500mAhPhysical Dimensions222g, 153 x78.9 x 12.6 mmI’d like to thank Blackview for lending us a review unit of the BV7000 Pro.HardwareThe BV7000 Pro is a device designed to fit into a niche market, that market being the rugged design market. As such, the BV7000 Pro features all the hallmarks of a rugged phone like a rubberized design, metal everywhere and a covers for every slot and socket.As a result of this, the device looks very unique but also not too practical. It鈥檚 quite heavy at 222g, but it鈥檚 also incredibly solid and tough. It鈥檚 got thick bezels around the display, but this only makes the Gorilla Glass 3 coated display even safer. The thing is thick and chunky for a 5-inch device at 153mm x78.9mm x 12.6mm, but it makes up by feeling substantial in the hand.The build quality here is unparalleled as far as I鈥檓 concerned. This device is made up of a huge and solid CNC Metal frame, which makes it so incredibly solid. The parts that aren鈥檛 metal are rubberized, meaning they鈥檒l be more shock resistant and are easier to grip. Really, this design comes down to whether you like these types of devices or not.In terms of ports and slots, the device comes with a hybrid sim slot for either two sims or one micro sim and a microSD card slot. There are also the power button and volume rockers on the right, and on the bottom you鈥檒l find the USB-C 2.0 slot. The USB-C slot is deep in the phone, which means the cable you use needs to have a longer head or it won鈥檛 work.The top features a 3.5mm headphone jack, but because it鈥檚 deep in the phone, most earbuds and headphones might not work with them, which is very disappointing. Also of interest is the small oneclick button聽right under the power button and volume rockers on the right. It can be setup to perform simple actions with a single press, it’s pretty nifty.If it鈥檚 just build quality you鈥檙e after however, the BV7000 Pro stands tall above the rest. I鈥檝e thrown it onto a cement wall multiple times, and it鈥檚 barely scratched. This is a device that you could literally use as a weapon, it鈥檚 simply that tough. Also, it鈥檚 water resistant and dust resistant with an IP68 rating, which is always good.DisplayThe Blackview BV7000 Pro has a 5-inch full HD 1920脳1080 display, and it鈥檚 once again a very high quality panel for the device. The display is sharp, vibrant and accurate, just like any good display should be. Sunlight visibility is also good, though you鈥檒l have to crank it up to full brightness in harsh sunlight.Viewing angles are very good, though they are somewhat hampered by the thick bezels around the display. While they do protect the device, they also make the viewing experience less immersive. This however keeps the display extremely safe from danger, so it鈥檚 up to you to decide if it鈥檚 an acceptable trade off.So in conclusion, the BV7000 Pro has a very nice display, much like the P2 before it. It鈥檚 actually quite surprising to find a display like this on a rugged device, though it鈥檚 much appreciated. Hopefully future rugged devices will have displays like these instead of the almost TFT looking things a majority of them have.Software Blackview UNI Launcher makes another appearance here, and once again it鈥檚 pretty much stock Android with a skin on top and no app drawer. The BV7000 throws out the old icon design for a new Huawei Mate 8 look, which wasn鈥檛 really much of an improvement, so I threw on Nova Launcher.The settings menu has some options for unlocking the phone with gestures, but they鈥檙e not really all too useful when you consider the device fingerprint sensor. There’s also an option to setup the oneclick button on the bottom right. This allows you to configure what you want it to do.The oneclick button can do simple tasks like start up your flashlight with a single press or take a screenshot with a double press. You can also set it to start applications, so the possibilities are endless, and it’s pretty useful.聽Aside from that, everything else is pretty much stock Android 6.0. PerformanceThe Blackview BV7000 Pro comes with a MTK6750T chipset and 4GB of RAM. This is the exact same setup that comes with the Blackview P2, and as such the performance on display here is roughly the same as it is on the P2, which is great.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramThe UI is snappy and quick, with few to no slowdowns throughout this testing period. Opening multiple apps at the same time was also no problem thanks to the huge amount of RAM in the device.Moving onto gaming, The BV7000 Pro once again impresses with all around good showings. Playing simple games like Tetris and Prune proved to be no challenge for the BV7000 Pro. More graphic intensive games like NOVA 3 caused some minor slowdowns, but nothing that effected my enjoyment of the game.Overall, the performance of the Blackview BV7000 Pro is great. The combination of the MTK6750T and 4GB RAM provides a very good user experience, with everything being quick and snappy. It鈥檚 not the fastest device, but it provides reliable performance all throughout.Battery LifeThe Blackview BV7000 Pro features a 3,500mAh battery which is a fairly decent size for a 5-inch device. In terms of actual performance, it seems to match up just fine. The Blackview BV7000 Pro managed to get through an entire day, even with intensive usage.With 20 minutes of gaming and an hour of social media as well as mobile data constantly turned on and 60% brightness, the phone managed to get nearly 6 hours of screen on time, which is quite good.The BV7000 Pro also charges surprisingly quick thanks to that 5V2A charger. It can go from 0% to 100% in just over an hour, which is fairly impressive. So to summarize, the Blackview BV7000 Pro is great in terms of longevity and charging speeds.AudioAs is the case for many rugged devices, the sound quality is its downfall. The main speaker is adequately loud, but crank up the volume and you鈥檒l start to hear crackling, blurriness and distortion. The reason for this is the water resistant nature of these devices, which reduces the quality of the speaker.Following that, the in-ear speaker is also not really that good. It鈥檚 clear enough that you can understand what the person is saying, though it becomes harder once you鈥檙e in a public area with a lot of people. This is typical of rugged devices, but it鈥檚 still a con nonetheless.CameraThe Blackview BV7000 Pro鈥檚 camera is, at its best, decent. The phone suffers from the same problem most mid-range smartphones suffer from, the cameras rarely stand out amongst the competition. Their cameras are fully usable, but they aren鈥檛 going to be the reason you buy the device.The device can snap images quickly thanks to low shutter lag, but details get blurred out fairly often. Highlights can get overblown easily, requiring quite a bit of manual readjustment to get a decent shot. The lack of OIS also means that it鈥檚 tough to take a steady image.Once night hits however, things take a turn for the worse. The camera starts to become really slow, which presents the user with a terrible case of shutter lag. This, paired with the amount of noise generated by the camera in low light make low light photography pretty bad.Video recording doesn鈥檛 fare much better either. Videos are incredibly shaky and lack detail. The colours are also muted, which sometimes makes things look lifeless and uninspiring. Rugged devices aren鈥檛 known for their cameras, though I was still hoping for more. Camera Gallery ConnectivityBack to the positives, the Blackview BV7000 Pro definitely impresses in connectivity. The GPS locked-on quickly and managed to hold a strong connection every time I needed it, and mobile reception was fantastic, as I could get mobile reception from the middle of a bustling shopping mall.Bluetooth works well, and Hotknot also works though I鈥檓 not sure why you鈥檇 use it over Bluetooth. Everything ran as it should have and there weren鈥檛 any times where a problem with stop me from doing something. So in this case, the BV7000 Pro gets a thumbs up from me.ConclusionThe Blackview BV7000 Pro is a solid rugged device, that is also held back by the fact that it鈥檚 a rugged device. It has some incredible build quality, but now some of your headphones may not work and it gets some massive bezels. The display is tough, but the speakers suffer. This thing is made up of pros and cons, all of which boil up to the fact that it鈥檚 a rugged device.ProsStock software is snappyBuild quality is incredibleConnectivity is goodBattery life is solidGood displayGaming performance is good4GB of RAM allows for a lot of multitaskingDesign is uniqueBacklit buttons are finally hereIP68 ratingConsCameras are either average or badHeavyChunkyAudio quality isn鈥檛 goodRugged design prevents some headphones from being usableCovers for every single port and slot gets cumbersomeDesign is differentNo NFCWhether you鈥檒l like this device or not really comes down to whether you want a rugged device or not. The industrial design isn鈥檛 for everyone, but those who do like it will probably appreciate it greatly. Those who don鈥檛 however will probably want to look elsewhere for a device.I guess there’s no doubt, that one of the most popular trends in smartphones for 2017 is the implementation of dual cameras. Thankfully it’s no longer exclusive to high-end models, and it can be found as a special feature in a growing number of entry-level and mid-range phones, such as… this聽Bluboo D1 model that you’re going to meet today – upclose and personal.Bluboo promotes this model as one of the most affordable dual camera smartphones having launched with a $79.99 price tag, along with some… modest specifications and average performance. So how does this affordable dual camera model fare at the end of the day? What are its best attributes and where could we see it… do a bit better?Let’s have a look at this Bluboo D1 review.Decent Specs, great priceBLUBOO D1 – Technical specificationsQuad-core processor MediaTek MT6580A clocked at 1.3 GHz5.0-inch HD display by Sharp, 2.5D2GB of RAM16GB ROMmicroSD expansion up to 256GBDual camera (8.0-megapixel and 2.0-megapixel Sony sensors)5.0-megapixel聽front camera w/聽Selfie softlight, dual rear LED flash,聽Breathing LightMetal unibody made of aircraft-grade aluminum alloyDual SIM (2x micro SIM)Connectivity: GSM 5(850)/B8(900)/B3(1800)/B2(1900) – WCDMA:B8(900 ) /B1(2100)Rear fingerprint sensorAndroid 7.0 Nougat2600mAh batteryAvailable in Black, Blue and Gold colorsBluboo D1 review: Design and general appearanceI have to be honest, I really liked the basic design of the Bluboo D1. The phone is available in 3 color variants (as you just read on its technical specs) which are mainly: Black, Golden and Blue. It surely looks impressive however thanks to its metallic build and its general design that allows for excellent grip and usability. Note that the back side of the device is made out of聽aircraft-aluminum alloy which improves its durability and enhances the whole “appearance” factor.聽There’s also a selfie softlight placed above the display next to the camera and 3 soft keys placed just below the display but unfortunately they don’t light up.Don’t know about you, but I am a fan of 5 inch smartphones because I enjoy the one-handed use whenever I can. So the device comes with a really impressive 5 inch display with 2.5D glass and HD resolution with decent luminosity during those sunny days here in Southern Europe, along with an awesome “breathing” notification light that’s placed just under the main navigation bar and informs us on any type of notification!The colors of the display may be rather saturated, but the images are crisp, with good viewing angles and a fully responsive panel if I may add.聽All in all a decent display – especially for a smartphone on this price range.In the back side of the device you will also find a聽fingerprint sensor which proves to be rather fast. It can unlock the phone in less than 0.1 second with almost 97% success rate. It can basically store up to 5 different fingerprints and can recognize them all from 360 degrees, something that’s a standard nowadays.Hardware & PerformanceOK, I have told you that this is a budget dual camera smartphone and… here’s why. The Bluboo D1聽is powered by a MediaTek MTK6580A SoC, along with 2GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage with a microSD card (thankfully). It offers a rather decent user experience with minimal lags and good multi-tasking, enabling users to keep several applications open in the background with no significant impact on its everyday performance. Oh and if you’re into checking benchmark results, this Bluboo model scored 23622 points in AntuTu but had really average GPS reception. I didn’t have any issues with GPS related apps but it uses only a handful of the available satellites every time. It could be connected to more I guess, in order to offer even better results when scanning for our location.I guess you already know it, but I will say it one more time. The Bluboo D1 is NOT a 4G/LTE smartphone (thus the really affordable price), so you can expect normal WCDMA mobile internet speeds and decent performance in everyday use. It has good GSM/WCDMA signal reception, average in-call volume but the sound of its speaker is awesome!Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramBluboo D1 review: Android software and UI performanceThe Bluboo D1 runs on Android 7.0 Nougat but we have no official confirmation on when (and if) the company plans to upgrade it to Android 7.1.1 or (one can hope) Android O. In any case, the Android 7.0 gives you more control on the smartphone and also lets you customize the phone just like any other Nougat based smartphone. There is no bloatware or other unnecessary apps inside, it supports all the classic Nougat features but the UI has been tampered a bit by Bluboo. There’s themes support with certain pre installed themes waiting for us when we first boot up, along with some few widgets for the weather, time etc. 聽All in all this extra customization doesn’t seem to affect the performance of the device. Don’t forget it has 2GB of RAM, which is not… a lot, but still offers decent everyday use for a novice Android user, as long as you don’t choose to put any extra pressure on it with severe multi-tasking, more than 4-5 apps opened simultaneously etc. It’s not a flagship guys, just a budget Android smartphone, don’t over-do it. 馃槈Dual camera/Selfie camera performanceI guess we all know by now that the Bluboo D1 comes with an 8.0-megapixel main camera along and a 2.0-megapixel camera and a LED flash with generally acceptable photos as you can see for yourselves. Note that one camera is used for creating the bokeh effect and other will capture the image with quite impressive portrait photos, but poor performance in low light conditions.good photos, average videos but DISAPPOINTING聽low light performanceBoth cameras have independent vision processing unit, which enables background blurring in real time. It also allows you to choose where to focus (touch focus) and where to blur, with the ability to adjust the intensity of blurring, too. The only thing I have to mention is the performance of the main camera in night or low light conditions, where the LED flash isn’t strong enough to create the necessary light that will help shoot crisp photos. Such as the following:The little bluish light in the middle of the photo above, is the LED flash, trying to improve the light conditions, with really poor results however, as you can see.As we foretold you, the Bluboo D1 comes with a 5MP selfie camera and a soft light that illuminates the background in order to capture the image and create bokeh effects there as well.Battery consumptionThe Bluboo D1 is equipped with a relatively small 2600mAh battery but numbers don’t mean anything in this situation. The device comes with an energy efficient processor and in general performs well providing a full day’s usage with no problems and offers an extra battery super saver mode聽that can provide up to 12 more hours of usage. You can enable the saver mode by just holding the unlock button & you will see the option and tap on that. So simple yet efficient 馃槈Conclusion – So what about it?All in all, a decent budget Android…I really enjoyed this small beauty from Bluboo. It’s not featured as the super wow dual camera phone that everyone should buy, no. It’s a budget dual camera phone, with good photos in daylight conditions, average photos in low light conditions and… below average videos. It offers however excellent battery consumption, good performance for a novice Android user and decent build quality.It costs just 79,99$ (average price) in most Chinese retailer shops and – as I have already told you, I always judge a phone compared to how much it costs. So for this Bluboo D1 I think you get what you paid for: decent specs, good daylight photos with bokeh effects and impressive battery consumption.

I guess there’s no doubt, that one of the most popular trends in smartphones for 2017 is the implementation of dual cameras. Thankfully it’s no longer exclusive to high-end models, and it can be found as a special feature in a growing number of entry-level and mid-range phones, such as… this聽Bluboo D1 model that you’re going to meet today – upclose and personal.Bluboo promotes this model as one of the most affordable dual camera smartphones having launched with a $79.99 price tag, along with some… modest specifications and average performance. So how does this affordable dual camera model fare at the end of the day? What are its best attributes and where could we see it… do a bit better?Let’s have a look at this Bluboo D1 review.Decent Specs, great priceBLUBOO D1 – Technical specificationsQuad-core processor MediaTek MT6580A clocked at 1.3 GHz5.0-inch HD display by Sharp, 2.5D2GB of RAM16GB ROMmicroSD expansion up to 256GBDual camera (8.0-megapixel and 2.0-megapixel Sony sensors)5.0-megapixel聽front camera w/聽Selfie softlight, dual rear LED flash,聽Breathing LightMetal unibody made of aircraft-grade aluminum alloyDual SIM (2x micro SIM)Connectivity: GSM 5(850)/B8(900)/B3(1800)/B2(1900) – WCDMA:B8(900 ) /B1(2100)Rear fingerprint sensorAndroid 7.0 Nougat2600mAh batteryAvailable in Black, Blue and Gold colorsBluboo D1 review: Design and general appearanceI have to be honest, I really liked the basic design of the Bluboo D1. The phone is available in 3 color variants (as you just read on its technical specs) which are mainly: Black, Golden and Blue. It surely looks impressive however thanks to its metallic build and its general design that allows for excellent grip and usability. Note that the back side of the device is made out of聽aircraft-aluminum alloy which improves its durability and enhances the whole “appearance” factor.聽There’s also a selfie softlight placed above the display next to the camera and 3 soft keys placed just below the display but unfortunately they don’t light up.Don’t know about you, but I am a fan of 5 inch smartphones because I enjoy the one-handed use whenever I can. So the device comes with a really impressive 5 inch display with 2.5D glass and HD resolution with decent luminosity during those sunny days here in Southern Europe, along with an awesome “breathing” notification light that’s placed just under the main navigation bar and informs us on any type of notification!The colors of the display may be rather saturated, but the images are crisp, with good viewing angles and a fully responsive panel if I may add.聽All in all a decent display – especially for a smartphone on this price range.In the back side of the device you will also find a聽fingerprint sensor which proves to be rather fast. It can unlock the phone in less than 0.1 second with almost 97% success rate. It can basically store up to 5 different fingerprints and can recognize them all from 360 degrees, something that’s a standard nowadays.Hardware & PerformanceOK, I have told you that this is a budget dual camera smartphone and… here’s why. The Bluboo D1聽is powered by a MediaTek MTK6580A SoC, along with 2GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage with a microSD card (thankfully). It offers a rather decent user experience with minimal lags and good multi-tasking, enabling users to keep several applications open in the background with no significant impact on its everyday performance. Oh and if you’re into checking benchmark results, this Bluboo model scored 23622 points in AntuTu but had really average GPS reception. I didn’t have any issues with GPS related apps but it uses only a handful of the available satellites every time. It could be connected to more I guess, in order to offer even better results when scanning for our location.I guess you already know it, but I will say it one more time. The Bluboo D1 is NOT a 4G/LTE smartphone (thus the really affordable price), so you can expect normal WCDMA mobile internet speeds and decent performance in everyday use. It has good GSM/WCDMA signal reception, average in-call volume but the sound of its speaker is awesome!Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramBluboo D1 review: Android software and UI performanceThe Bluboo D1 runs on Android 7.0 Nougat but we have no official confirmation on when (and if) the company plans to upgrade it to Android 7.1.1 or (one can hope) Android O. In any case, the Android 7.0 gives you more control on the smartphone and also lets you customize the phone just like any other Nougat based smartphone. There is no bloatware or other unnecessary apps inside, it supports all the classic Nougat features but the UI has been tampered a bit by Bluboo. There’s themes support with certain pre installed themes waiting for us when we first boot up, along with some few widgets for the weather, time etc. 聽All in all this extra customization doesn’t seem to affect the performance of the device. Don’t forget it has 2GB of RAM, which is not… a lot, but still offers decent everyday use for a novice Android user, as long as you don’t choose to put any extra pressure on it with severe multi-tasking, more than 4-5 apps opened simultaneously etc. It’s not a flagship guys, just a budget Android smartphone, don’t over-do it. 馃槈Dual camera/Selfie camera performanceI guess we all know by now that the Bluboo D1 comes with an 8.0-megapixel main camera along and a 2.0-megapixel camera and a LED flash with generally acceptable photos as you can see for yourselves. Note that one camera is used for creating the bokeh effect and other will capture the image with quite impressive portrait photos, but poor performance in low light conditions.good photos, average videos but DISAPPOINTING聽low light performanceBoth cameras have independent vision processing unit, which enables background blurring in real time. It also allows you to choose where to focus (touch focus) and where to blur, with the ability to adjust the intensity of blurring, too. The only thing I have to mention is the performance of the main camera in night or low light conditions, where the LED flash isn’t strong enough to create the necessary light that will help shoot crisp photos. Such as the following:The little bluish light in the middle of the photo above, is the LED flash, trying to improve the light conditions, with really poor results however, as you can see.As we foretold you, the Bluboo D1 comes with a 5MP selfie camera and a soft light that illuminates the background in order to capture the image and create bokeh effects there as well.Battery consumptionThe Bluboo D1 is equipped with a relatively small 2600mAh battery but numbers don’t mean anything in this situation. The device comes with an energy efficient processor and in general performs well providing a full day’s usage with no problems and offers an extra battery super saver mode聽that can provide up to 12 more hours of usage. You can enable the saver mode by just holding the unlock button & you will see the option and tap on that. So simple yet efficient 馃槈Conclusion – So what about it?All in all, a decent budget Android…I really enjoyed this small beauty from Bluboo. It’s not featured as the super wow dual camera phone that everyone should buy, no. It’s a budget dual camera phone, with good photos in daylight conditions, average photos in low light conditions and… below average videos. It offers however excellent battery consumption, good performance for a novice Android user and decent build quality.It costs just 79,99$ (average price) in most Chinese retailer shops and – as I have already told you, I always judge a phone compared to how much it costs. So for this Bluboo D1 I think you get what you paid for: decent specs, good daylight photos with bokeh effects and impressive battery consumption.The Blackview A9 Pro is one of the many budget devices to come out of Blackview recently; and with budget devices like these, you can expect a metal body and entry level performance for a low price.Blackview A9 Pro ReviewThe A9 Pro looks pretty unremarkable in many respects. Specifications are nothing special, with a varied assortment of other phones boasting almost the exact same specifications. The price of this phone doesn鈥檛 do much to excite either, with more powerful phones to be had for $10-15 more. It does boast a dual camera setup and a USB-C port which are uncommon in this price range, but will these two features be enough to push this device ahead of the pack? Let鈥檚 find out.A budget blackviewBlackview A9 Pro SpecificationsProcessorMTk6737 Quad CoreDisplay5.0鈥 1280×720 IPS LCDRAM2GBStorage16GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0 NougatCameras8MP/0.3MP dual Camera, 2MP frontBattery3000mAhPhysical Dimensions175g, 14.36 x 7.24 x 0.92 cmBig thanks to Blackview for providing this review unit. You can buy one here.Blackview A9 Pro HardwareThe A9 Pro features a metal frame surrounding a rubber back and glass front. The rubber back imparts grip while the frame relays a more premium feel than what you would expect. No, it鈥檚 not full metal as is becoming more common in this price range but the body does not fall behind the competition. The phone is a little bulky for a 5鈥 device, weighing 175g and measuring in a good bit larger than other more compact 5鈥 phones like the Zuk Z2 or Redmi devices.The A9 Pro could definitely do with some slimming down (as do I), the phone exceeds 9mm, quite thick for a phone with a regular sized battery. In addition, there is significant bezel around the screen, especially for a 5鈥 phone. There is also a USB-C port flanked by a speaker grille and a microphone along the bottom edge of the phone. Blackview has strangely decided not to include capacitive buttons beside the home button which forces all offscreen interaction into the home button. You can turn on the navigation bar for more nuanced interaction but you can squeak by with just the home button.Fine build qualityBlackview A9 Pro DisplayBlackview has chosen a 720p IPS panel by AUO and also talk quite a large game about the zero air gap in the panel, something that would theoretically increase contrast and reduce reflections. In practice though, I found the former false but the latter true, with the screen producing some good colours and decent contrast, but nothing too amazing. The zero air gap does reduce reflections but it doesn鈥檛 cut them out all the way. Max brightness is around 400 nits, adequate, but not excellent.Blackview A9 Pro AudioThere is a single speaker on the bottom of the phone that pumps out some average volume and average quality. I had trouble hearing the speaker in loud environments and there is a lack of bass, something I鈥檝e come to expect in budget devices such as these.Blackview A9 Pro BatteryThe 3000mAh battery struggles to keep up with a full day of heavy use, which is to be expected for a typical battery size like this. Nevertheless, I obtained close to 4 hours of screen on time over a 16 hour day which is respectable and falling short of good. This use consisted of web browsing, quite a bit of Facebook, texting, and some Youtube. Definitely not the heaviest use, and by the time 10pm rolled around, I was at 6%. Heavy users will struggle greatly to get through a day without a charger while medium and light users will find the battery life sufficient.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramAverage batteryBlackview A9 Pro SoftwareWhat a surprise! We find the latest Android 7.0 Nougat preloaded on the A9 Pro, and general use is pretty smooth. Swiping between home screens is pretty smooth, but where we start to see the limitations of the hardware is launching apps and multitasking. I do see some hesitation when tapping on apps before they are completely launched. Multitasking was challenging as well, with the 2GB of RAM filling up quite quickly. Compared unfairly to my Xiaomi Mi6, the A9 Pro is noticeably slower when doing anything that concerns applications, but it doesn鈥檛 fall far behind when doing things like swiping between home screens etc.The phone games surprisingly well, with the MTK6737 pushing games quite easily on the 720p screen. I could play even the most intense games without any lag, quite an accomplishment on a budget phone like this.The fingerprint sensor here is fairly accurate but very slow. There were delays between 1 second to 3 seconds until the screen turned on, the fingerprint sensor is definitely slow.Blackview A9 Pro ConnectivityEnsure this phone works in your specific carrier before you make a purchase. I was able to obtain 4G and speeds on 4G are decent but not great. WiFi range is a little short, 3 storeys up from my router and speeds slow down to a crawl. Bluetooth does work fine, and GPS is fairly inaccurate as well, jumping around a great deal.Blackview A9 Pro CameraThe primary rear camera takes barely average pictures in good lighting conditions. The 8MP camera struggles to capture sufficient detail, but at least colours here are reproduced quite nicely. The already average photo quality takes a steep dive as light becomes less abundant, with noise and grain multiplied almost exponentially. The secondary rear camera doesn鈥檛 help either, it adds a faux bokeh effect to the photo, but the photo quality wasn鈥檛 good in the first place. The front facing camera is a meager 2MP, something I rarely see as most budget phones feature at least a 5MP camera. Quality is expectedly horrible, even in good lighting conditions.Video quality performs quite poorly, capturing blurry footage that in some cases is almost unuseable, even in the best lighting conditions.Weak CameraBlackview A9 Pro聽Camera Gallery Blackview A9 Pro VerdictBlackview has done an OK job in almost all areas of this budget phone with one glaring omission, the camera. The quality of the photo and video is poor enough that I would strongly hesitate recommending this phone. While the camera quality is the major failing of this device, the A9 Pro is not without its qualities. The combination of metal frame and rubber back is pleasant, and the display is quite lively. Gaming performance is surprisingly good as well.The Blackview A9 Pro can be had for about $100, which is cheap, but if you can afford to spend an extra $25, I would recommend to you the Redmi 4A, which is a much better all round phone than this.You can purchase the A9 Pro for around the $100 mark here.hmmm…Blackview A9 Pro Video Review

The MGCool Explorer is one of MGCool鈥檚 first products to be released, and it is incredibly cheap, starting at $49USD. It is capable of capturing up to 4K video at 15fps, and let鈥檚 get right into the unboxing.MGCOOL Explorer 4K聽SpecificationsProcessorAllWinner V3Display2.0鈥 TFT聽320×240 pxSensor16MP 1/3.2 IMX 179聽CMOS sensorLens170 deg wide angleOperating SystemAndroid/iOS CompatibleRecording options4K@15, 2K@30, FHD@60, 720p@120fpsBattery1050mAhPhysical Dimensions55g, 5.90 x 4.10 x 2.90 cmBig thanks to MGCool聽for providing this review unit. Buy one here.MGCool Explorer 4K聽UnboxingThe MGCool Explorer comes in quite an attractive black box with all the accessories inside. Opening up the box reveals the MGCool Explorer action cam itself already sitting inside its waterproof housing surrounded by foam, and removing the action cam and the protective foam we see the rest of the accessories inside, and there are quite a few. I won鈥檛 go through all of them in detail, but if you need to mount this action cam to something, you鈥檒l more often than not find the appropriate accessory.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramMGCool Explorer聽4K聽Hands OnMoving on to the action camera itself, the waterproof housing looks pretty sturdy and waterproof (which I will test) and undoing the top latch opens up the waterproof housing revealing the action cam itself. The action camera is small and light, and it is made of rubber. It is textured rubber which makes it incredibly easy to grip, and we have the power buttons on the front, up down buttons on the right, and the non touchscreen on the back.MGCool Explorer聽4K聽First ImpressionsThe MGCool Explorer is one of MGCool鈥檚 first products to be released, and it is incredibly cheap, starting at $49USD. It is capable of capturing up to 4K video at 15fps, and let鈥檚 get right into the unboxing.MGCOOL Explorer 4K聽SpecificationsProcessorAllWinner V3Display2.0鈥 TFT聽320×240 pxSensor16MP 1/3.2 IMX 179聽CMOS sensorLens170 deg wide angleOperating SystemAndroid/iOS CompatibleRecording options4K@15, 2K@30, FHD@60, 720p@120fpsBattery1050mAhPhysical Dimensions55g, 5.90 x 4.10 x 2.90 cmBig thanks to MGCool聽for providing this review unit. Buy one here.MGCool Explorer 4K聽UnboxingThe MGCool Explorer comes in quite an attractive black box with all the accessories inside. Opening up the box reveals the MGCool Explorer action cam itself already sitting inside its waterproof housing surrounded by foam, and removing the action cam and the protective foam we see the rest of the accessories inside, and there are quite a few. I won鈥檛 go through all of them in detail, but if you need to mount this action cam to something, you鈥檒l more often than not find the appropriate accessory.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramMGCool Explorer聽4K聽Hands OnMoving on to the action camera itself, the waterproof housing looks pretty sturdy and waterproof (which I will test) and undoing the top latch opens up the waterproof housing revealing the action cam itself. The action camera is small and light, and it is made of rubber. It is textured rubber which makes it incredibly easy to grip, and we have the power buttons on the front, up down buttons on the right, and the non touchscreen on the back.MGCool Explorer聽4K聽First ImpressionsGood, powerful laptops have been few and far between, as far as Chinese manufacturers are concerned. We have seen the recent deluge of Apollo Lake laptops, some good, some bad, flood the market, but those that use higher power Core M3/i5 processors are pretty scarce. Cube has entered with what appears to be a direct competitor with the Surface Laptop, a Core M3, Surface Book screen for a low price.Cube Thinker i35 ReviewFurther inspection of the laptop reveals that this is intended (or miraculous coincidence) as a Surface Laptop competitor. Where the Surface Laptop starts at $999 for an i5 processor and a gimped version of Windows, the Cube Thinker provides a very similar laptop with a slightly less powerful Core M3-7y30 processor.However, the price tag starts at a good $324 cheaper than the Surface laptop, and that doesn鈥檛 even count taxes that you would have to pay depending on where you live. Not only that, this laptop presents some serious competition to the new Kaby Lake Xiaomi Air 12, which starts at a relatively pricey $830USD for lesser specifications. However, is the Cube Thinker a complete product? Let鈥檚 find out.Taking aim at Microsoft and XiaomiCube Thinker i35 SpecificationsProcessorIntel Core M3-7y30 Kaby LakeDisplay13.5鈥 3000×2000 IPS LCD with Surface DigitizerRAM8GBStorage256GB SSDOperating SystemWindows 10Cameras2MP FrontBattery10,000mAh 3.6VPhysical Dimensions1680g, 312 x 238 x 15.2 mmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Cube Thinker i35 HardwareThe build on this laptop is incredibly premium. The entire body is made out of magnesium alloy and there isn鈥檛 much flex to speak of in any area. The size of the laptop is respectable but definitely not as compact as a 12鈥 Macbook or the Xiaomi Air 12.It鈥檚 quite a bit wider and taller than both aforementioned laptops due to the Surface Book鈥檚 3:2 display, and speaking of the display, we do find significant black bezels around the screen, they aren鈥檛 overly massive but they could definitely do with some reducing.Cube has placed two USB 3.0 ports on this computer along with a USB-C port that is capable of charging and data transfer at the same time assuming you have a proper USB hub. I was hoping for a MicroSD card slot and a full size HDMI port but we have to settle here.The keyboard on the Cube is not backlit and is plastic as well. The typing experience is definitely passable, it requires an above average amount of force to actuate each key and it springs back quite readily also. The power button is located just above the backspace key, and unlike other laptops, the power button requires the same amount of force to actuate as regular keys,resulting in the laptop sleeping when you wanted to delete a word. Other than that, I don鈥檛 think anyone will find fault with the keyboard, but neither will anyone rave about it either.The trackpad is not bad, single finger accuracy is great, and multi finger gestures are enabled as well. However, two finger scrolling is not as smooth as I would like, it鈥檚 definitely still useable, but it falls far behind the Macbook and XPS13, and fairly behind the Xiaomi Air 12. I hope this can be improved with software, but for now let鈥檚 assume that this is the best its going to get. The fingerprint sensor in the top left doesn鈥檛 get in the way much and is very accurate and fast as well.The build quality is top notch here, and I don鈥檛 have many complaints. It definitely feels quite a bit more sturdy than the Xiaomi Air 12. If I had to level a few against the Cube Thinker, it would be the multi-finger gestures on the trackpad and the size of the laptop. The Cube Thinker is by no means big, but compare it to other laptops like the XPS13 or the Macbook and the Cube Thinker starts looking pretty big.No complaints, almostCube Thinker i35 DisplayAs a jaded device reviewer you鈥檇 think that not much impresses me nowadays, but the Surface Book鈥檚 display still gets me. Every. Single. Time. I first laid eyes on the Surface Book display, well, in a Surface Book, and it looked absolutely brilliant back then. The second time was the Chuwi Hi13, and my jaw dropped when flipping through some high resolution pictures.I put my jaw back in place for the third time with the Cube Thinker, and the first thing I thought of was 鈥淗ow am I ever going to go back to the Xiaomi Air 12?鈥 Well, the display is going to play a huge role in deciding whether or not I switch to the Cube Thinker from the Xiaomi Air 12.I鈥檒l try to talk a bit more about the display without gushing too much. The 3000×2000 PixelSense display is incredibly crisp, text, photos, movies (Now I have an excuse to obtain 4K material) all look incredibly sharp. As someone who usually dismisses having anything higher than a 1080p resolution on a laptop, this PixelSense display is singlehandedly making me come around.This display not only excels in pixel density but in colour reproduction as well. The deep, vivid blacks are second to one (OLEDs) and colours pop consistently on the screen. It does have a modest colour gamut according to the myriad other reviews on the Surface Book, but it is more than enough to blow away any normal layman, even one used to high resolution displays. Max brightness is quite good for a laptop, topping out at around 450 nits.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramThe 3:2 aspect ratio means the screen is significantly taller than an equivalent 16:9 one. There is quite a considerable amount of screen real estate when browsing the web, working on Excel spreadsheets, or scrolling through tedious PDF documents. In fact, this screen is ideal for viewing two Letter or A4 size sheets side by side, as the resulting aspect ratio ranges from 1.4-1.54, an almost perfect fit for the 3:2 (1.5) screen.This makes this aspect ratio ideal for those looking to get some productivity out of this machine. You do get some incredibly severe letterboxing when watching movies, which is something certain people find a huge issue but others don鈥檛. I personally am not affected by this, and it actually allows me to watch a movie up top while doing something below.The last aspect of the display would be the touchscreen. It is quite sensitive, not as sensitive as a top end smartphone, but more than enough for a laptop. It also has an N-Trig digitizer which means any stylus that supports N-Trig will be compatible.I tried out the Chuwi HiPen H3 on it and it works well, I was able to sketch an X-Wing (the only thing I know how to draw decently) appropriately. However, I don鈥檛 think that using a stylus on a laptop is conducive to a hinge that is incapable of rotating into tablet mode.If I were to look for a downside to this display, it would be the minimum brightness, it is too bright to use in pitch dark.Cube Thinker i35 AudioThere are dual speakers located above the keyboard and they pump out some very loud sound, more than enough for most situations. Audio quality is not bad, I do hear some bass from the speakers but it is still quite far off from what you find on the Mi Pad 3 or the Air 12.Cube Thinker i35 BatteryThe battery life here is one of the weaker points of this laptop. There is a 10,000mAh battery powering a Core M and that power hungry Surface Book screen, and as expected, I was able to get 6 hours of screen on time performing relatively light tasks. I spent most of the time in Chrome, email, and Word as well. if you do more intense tasks, expect battery life to top out at 3 hours. I鈥檓 quite disappointed with the battery in this laptop, and I hope Cube doesn鈥檛 make the same mistake in any future iterations of the Thinker.Inadequate battery lifeCube Thinker i35 SoftwareWe find Windows 10 Home installed on this laptop with multiple languages available and performance here is great. The combination of the SSD and the Kaby Lake Core M3 makes it a breeze to perform light tasks such as Chrome, email, or word. You won鈥檛 see any slowdowns here, and streaming 4K Youtube is also easy as well.Moving on to items that tax systems a lot more, we go to Premiere. I was able to easily edit 1080p video using Premiere, timeline performance was great, but 4K editing is quite horrendous without using proxies. Rendering times are atrocious, taking upwards of 15 minutes to render every minute of 4K footage.I also tried installing AutoCAD education edition but it would not install on this laptop, telling me that the minimum specifications were not met.Moving on to gaming, performance on the Kaby Lake chipset is horrendous at the native 3000×2000 resolution. However, bump that down to a more reasonable 1920×1080 and you start getting playable framerates.Games like League of Legends were playable at around 30fps, Call of Duty was also playable, up to 45fps. You鈥檒l definitely be able to do some gaming on this laptop, but do note that the left side of the keyboard gets quite hot when gaming, and I recommend you do the thermal mod by Chris over at Techtablets.Cube Thinker i35 Connectivity and CameraI was able to get some decent speeds over WiFi and the Thinker connected to all my Bluetooth headsets easily as well. Both the USB ports powered my external hard drives as well. The camera here is still nothing to write home about, it does the job but it will be woefully inadequate for anything other than basic video calls.Cube Thinker i35 VerdictThe Cube Thinker is a great laptop. It boasts some good specifications for the price and also provides the user with an incredibly stunning display. But of course, the Cube Thinker has its weaknesses. I find the lack of battery capacity here frankly the biggest hurdle to my switch from the Xiaomi Air 12 to this laptop, even with that incredible screen beckoning me.That being said, I still consider the Cube Thinker a better laptop overall than the Xiaomi Air 12, even with the battery life pulling it down (the screen buoys it up significantly).Now that you know the major flaw in this laptop, if that doesn鈥檛 bother you, this is the best laptop you鈥檙e going to get from a chinese manufacturer in a while. Starting at $675, it鈥檚 quite well priced, but I鈥檝e seen the price go down as low as $616 with a coupon code, and that makes it quite an attractive proposition.If you asked me to pick between the Cube Thinker i35 and the current price of the new Xiaomi Air 12 with the kaby lake processor, this Cube Thinker is the clear winner, its $200 cheaper, has 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and has a way better screen. Buy the Cube Thinker i35Great LaptopCube Thinker i35 Video ReviewMeta鑱絟as launched a cheaper version of its last VR headset, the Meta Quest 3S. It maintains the core hardware as the non-S version. However, with a lower price tag, the company aims to make standalone virtual reality headsets a bit more accessible to all.Image: Quest 3s and Quest 3Meta Quest 3S Is a Blend of Quest 3 and Quest 2The Meta Quest 3S is essentially a combination of the Quest 2 and 3, designed to reduce costs. If you favor the older, more powerful model, you’ll be glad to know that its price is decreasing.This new VR headset starts at $300 but employs the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset and 8GB of RAM as the standard Quest 3. It also features the same color passthrough technology that was a significant improvement over the Quest 2 (utilizing a 4MP camera to integrate the real world for AR experiences). So, what sacrifices were made to lower the price?Unlike the dual LCDs in the Quest 3, the 3S utilizes a single LCD with a slightly lower resolution per eye. It is 1,832 x 1,920px compared to 2,064 x 2,208px. The new LCD still supports fast 90Hz and 120Hz refresh rates. But it lacks the 72Hz and 80Hz options. These two are beneficial when using PCVR, as reducing the refresh rate helps to enhance the render resolution.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramDisplay specs of Quest 3SMore significantly, the Quest 3’s slim pancake lenses have been replaced by the older Fresnel lenses found in the Quest 2. This results in a narrower field of view. It measures 96鎺 horizontally and 90鎺 vertically, compared to the 110鎺 and 96鎺 offered by the Quest 3.The 3S weighs nearly the same, 514g instead of 515g. But it boasts slightly improved battery life. The new VR headset can last 2 hours and 30 minutes. In comparison, the Quest 3 can offer 2 hours and 12 minutes. This is achieved despite having a smaller battery (4,324mAh vs. 5,060mAh).Pricing and AvailabilityThe Meta Quest 3S offers two storage capacities: 128GB and 256GB, priced at $300 and $400, respectively. Additionally, the price of the 512GB Quest 3 has been lowered to $500, making it another viable option if you prioritize a superior display experience.Meta鑱絟as launched a cheaper version of its last VR headset, the Meta Quest 3S. It maintains the core hardware as the non-S version. However, with a lower price tag, the company aims to make standalone virtual reality headsets a bit more accessible to all.Image: Quest 3s and Quest 3Meta Quest 3S Is a Blend of Quest 3 and Quest 2The Meta Quest 3S is essentially a combination of the Quest 2 and 3, designed to reduce costs. If you favor the older, more powerful model, you’ll be glad to know that its price is decreasing.This new VR headset starts at $300 but employs the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset and 8GB of RAM as the standard Quest 3. It also features the same color passthrough technology that was a significant improvement over the Quest 2 (utilizing a 4MP camera to integrate the real world for AR experiences). So, what sacrifices were made to lower the price?Unlike the dual LCDs in the Quest 3, the 3S utilizes a single LCD with a slightly lower resolution per eye. It is 1,832 x 1,920px compared to 2,064 x 2,208px. The new LCD still supports fast 90Hz and 120Hz refresh rates. But it lacks the 72Hz and 80Hz options. These two are beneficial when using PCVR, as reducing the refresh rate helps to enhance the render resolution.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramDisplay specs of Quest 3SMore significantly, the Quest 3’s slim pancake lenses have been replaced by the older Fresnel lenses found in the Quest 2. This results in a narrower field of view. It measures 96鎺 horizontally and 90鎺 vertically, compared to the 110鎺 and 96鎺 offered by the Quest 3.The 3S weighs nearly the same, 514g instead of 515g. But it boasts slightly improved battery life. The new VR headset can last 2 hours and 30 minutes. In comparison, the Quest 3 can offer 2 hours and 12 minutes. This is achieved despite having a smaller battery (4,324mAh vs. 5,060mAh).Pricing and AvailabilityThe Meta Quest 3S offers two storage capacities: 128GB and 256GB, priced at $300 and $400, respectively. Additionally, the price of the 512GB Quest 3 has been lowered to $500, making it another viable option if you prioritize a superior display experience.Bluboo have been releasing quite a few phones in the last period; the Bluboo Edge is one of those that聽doesn’t shine for the unique design 鈥 it’s kind of a Samsung S7 edge clone 鈥斅燽ut still manages to please your eyes, costing less than a third of the real deal.But how good is it if it doesn’t work properly or it’s too bad at any task? Well, we’re going to find out how well it does in this full review!Bluboo Edge ReviewDesign and BuildThe Bluboo Edge comes in quite simple packing, inside the box we find a micro-USB cable, 5V/1A power adapter, a plastic case and a screen protector which doesn’t actually cover the edges of the screen.The phone sports a聽metal frame and a plastic body, with fake antenna lines printed on the back just for looks. Despite聽using lighter materials for the body the Edge is still heavy at about 202 grams,聽also due to the thick glass layer they’ve used on the device. Side buttons are easy to reach but a tiny bit flimsy.The display on the Bluboo Edge is 5.5-inches in size, and is an IPS LCD and with HD resolution. And what had to be the bestselling feature of the phone is actually lacking: a curved display.Sure, the glass coating on top is curved and makes the screen look curved as well from the side, but in reality the screen is flat. Given the price of the phone聽this detail could have been overlooked, but since you’re buying the “Edge”, you should know they’re only talking about glass, not the actual display.Another small problem I’ve with the display is it not being聽oleophobic, after you use it for a bit you’re going to get stains and you will have to clean it up very often, somewhat annoying in the long run.This is, especially, a deal breaker for many including me.Hardware and PerformanceBluboo’s Edge聽comes with a MediaTek聽MT6737 quad-core CPU that goes up to 1.3GHz and is paired with a Mali T720 GPU, then we have 2GB of RAM and 16GB of memory. The storage is, as you would expect, expandable through the microSD slot. The edge is snappy when opening apps or running games that aren’t demanding, of course with “only” 2GB of RAM multitasking suffers a bit, so you might have to reload apps from the get-go now and then.The handset runs stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow, it might look nice for some and boring for others, it’s a really subjective matter. I wouldn’t bank on this phone really getting an update to 7.0.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramConnectivity wise, the Bluboo Edge can work with聽two SIMs and supports 4G LTE with speeds up to 150Mbps, also band 20 is available so the phone means it should聽work perfectly in Europe and most other countries. WiFi works on聽a/b/g/n networks聽and聽Bluetooth is 4.0 version. Interestingly聽enough, there’s also an heart rate monitor, just like on the Samsung S7 / S7 Edge.The speaker is placed at the bottom and its quality is average, although it can get pretty loud. It’s one of the first flaws you find in an inexpensive Chinese phone — most which cost much lesser than this handset.Battery life on the phone really depends on your usage habits… as you would expect. To be fair, however,聽if you’re not an extremely heavy user, you can expect to get to the end of a day with this. With any kind of heavy聽use, you can definitely forget that.Camera and PhotosBluboo’s Edge main camera has a resolution of 8MP which can be interpolated to 13MP and there’s a single LED flash. Photos taken with this phone aren’t that bad, actually. They’re mediocre with enough light but quality drops immensely in low light situations, photos get a red tint and image noise takes over.MediaTek uninspired camera software doesn’t make it any better, causing聽it to be slow at focusing and lacking many useful features available on more customized phones.Have a look at some samples. HDR does make things a bit more ‘interesting’, to say the least.Gallery ConclusionThe Bluboo Edge now costs about $115 from Chinese online retailers, at this price you’re getting a low to mid-range phone with a nice looking design and an overall good build quality. Get the Bluboo Edge

Bluboo have been releasing quite a few phones in the last period; the Bluboo Edge is one of those that聽doesn’t shine for the unique design 鈥 it’s kind of a Samsung S7 edge clone 鈥斅燽ut still manages to please your eyes, costing less than a third of the real deal.But how good is it if it doesn’t work properly or it’s too bad at any task? Well, we’re going to find out how well it does in this full review!Bluboo Edge ReviewDesign and BuildThe Bluboo Edge comes in quite simple packing, inside the box we find a micro-USB cable, 5V/1A power adapter, a plastic case and a screen protector which doesn’t actually cover the edges of the screen.The phone sports a聽metal frame and a plastic body, with fake antenna lines printed on the back just for looks. Despite聽using lighter materials for the body the Edge is still heavy at about 202 grams,聽also due to the thick glass layer they’ve used on the device. Side buttons are easy to reach but a tiny bit flimsy.The display on the Bluboo Edge is 5.5-inches in size, and is an IPS LCD and with HD resolution. And what had to be the bestselling feature of the phone is actually lacking: a curved display.Sure, the glass coating on top is curved and makes the screen look curved as well from the side, but in reality the screen is flat. Given the price of the phone聽this detail could have been overlooked, but since you’re buying the “Edge”, you should know they’re only talking about glass, not the actual display.Another small problem I’ve with the display is it not being聽oleophobic, after you use it for a bit you’re going to get stains and you will have to clean it up very often, somewhat annoying in the long run.This is, especially, a deal breaker for many including me.Hardware and PerformanceBluboo’s Edge聽comes with a MediaTek聽MT6737 quad-core CPU that goes up to 1.3GHz and is paired with a Mali T720 GPU, then we have 2GB of RAM and 16GB of memory. The storage is, as you would expect, expandable through the microSD slot. The edge is snappy when opening apps or running games that aren’t demanding, of course with “only” 2GB of RAM multitasking suffers a bit, so you might have to reload apps from the get-go now and then.The handset runs stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow, it might look nice for some and boring for others, it’s a really subjective matter. I wouldn’t bank on this phone really getting an update to 7.0.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramConnectivity wise, the Bluboo Edge can work with聽two SIMs and supports 4G LTE with speeds up to 150Mbps, also band 20 is available so the phone means it should聽work perfectly in Europe and most other countries. WiFi works on聽a/b/g/n networks聽and聽Bluetooth is 4.0 version. Interestingly聽enough, there’s also an heart rate monitor, just like on the Samsung S7 / S7 Edge.The speaker is placed at the bottom and its quality is average, although it can get pretty loud. It’s one of the first flaws you find in an inexpensive Chinese phone — most which cost much lesser than this handset.Battery life on the phone really depends on your usage habits… as you would expect. To be fair, however,聽if you’re not an extremely heavy user, you can expect to get to the end of a day with this. With any kind of heavy聽use, you can definitely forget that.Camera and PhotosBluboo’s Edge main camera has a resolution of 8MP which can be interpolated to 13MP and there’s a single LED flash. Photos taken with this phone aren’t that bad, actually. They’re mediocre with enough light but quality drops immensely in low light situations, photos get a red tint and image noise takes over.MediaTek uninspired camera software doesn’t make it any better, causing聽it to be slow at focusing and lacking many useful features available on more customized phones.Have a look at some samples. HDR does make things a bit more ‘interesting’, to say the least.Gallery ConclusionThe Bluboo Edge now costs about $115 from Chinese online retailers, at this price you’re getting a low to mid-range phone with a nice looking design and an overall good build quality. Get the Bluboo EdgeVernee has released strong entry after strong entry into the phone market, but the latest Vernee Apollo was expensive for the specs. Enter the Vernee Apollo X, a high end phone with a relatively budget price. It seems that Vernee intends to contend with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, a tough fight to pick.Vernee Apollo X ReviewAfter analyzing the specifications, I鈥檓 a little confused by the Vernee Apollo X. The cause for this confusion stems from the Vernee Apollo Lite, which features almost the exact same specifications at a slightly lower price. Both Apollos have the Helio X20 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 1080p screen.Where these phones start diverging is the battery capacity and the camera sensor; where the Apollo Lite featured the Samsung S5K3P3 sensor and a 3180mAh battery, the Apollo X has switched the Samsung sensor for the Sony IMX258 and a tidy 3500mAh battery as well.Both phones are close in price also, with the Vernee Apollo Lite retailing for slightly less than the Apollo X. However, its biggest competition comes from the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, as that is hailed as one of the best Helio X20 devices in the market.Picking a fight with the big guysVernee Apollo X SpecificationsProcessorMediaTek Helio X20 DecacoreDisplay5.5鈥 1920×1080 IPS LCD Gorilla Glass 3RAM4GBStorage64GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 6.0 with VOS (unconfirmed)Cameras13MP, 5MP frontBattery3500mAhPhysical Dimensions178g, 15.20 x 7.62 x 0.95 cmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Vernee Apollo X HardwareAll manufacturers are going for the bezelless look, but Vernee seems content to continue with the design they鈥檝e been utilizing for all their Apollo devices. It鈥檚 a sizeable phone, with generous bezels on the left and right and enough chin above and below the screen as well. the phone is surprisingly thick as well on paper, but not so in the hand. For a phone in 2017, it looks a little dated.There are no capacitive buttons on the front, and flipping the phone around the body is made out of metal, but feels significantly less premium than the Vernee Apollo. This is by no means a knock against the Apollo X鈥檚 build quality, but even higher praise for the Apollo鈥檚 build.There are no capacitive buttons on this phone and the fingerprint sensor is on the back. I鈥檓 glad to find a USB-C port on this phone as the other big battery phones I reviewed (except the P2 Lite) used MicroUSB ports.premium but boringVernee Apollo X DisplayWe have a 1080p IPS display that is quite run of the mill for this price range. It does do its job well, displaying good colours, saturation, and crispness. Max brightness tops out at around 450 nits which isn鈥檛 spectacular but will do the job just fine. It is also covered in Gorilla Glass so you don鈥檛 have to worry about scratches.Vernee Apollo X AudioAudio quality here is average, with not too loud sound and average quality as well. it is useable for music and TV, but it won鈥檛 be a stellar experience.Vernee Apollo X BatteryThere is a sizeable but not overly large 3500mAh battery in this phone that should power the Vernee Apollo X for at least a full day. I鈥檓 glad to report that battery life is good, I was barely able to eke out 6 hours of screen on time which is quite impressive.However, do note that I had 3% battery left at the end of the day; compare that with other phones containing larger batteries like the Redmi Note 4, the Xiaomi can achieve that with up to 20% charge left. My use was a mix of items, web browsing, Reddit, and taking photos.I did play a couple of light games here and there but nothing intense like a first person shooter. Light and medium users can get through a day with this phone no issue, heavy users in fact can probably make it through a whole day as well, you just don鈥檛 have a lot of buffer.Good batteryGizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramVernee Apollo X SoftwareThe Apollo X is the platform on which Vernee is launching their new operating system, VOS (Vernee OS). This consists of Android 6.0 Marshmallow as the base layer with Vernee鈥檚 proprietary OS on top. So I鈥檓 not sure if VOS is so close to stock that I cannot tell the difference or this phone is actually stock without VOS.There is no reference to VOS on the phone either which is strange. Either way, the speed of this new operating system is good. It is just as fast as a fully stock Android phone with no slowdowns detected. I did see some very slight lag when scrolling through a few specific settings, but it disappeared once I went to different ones.Multitasking performance is great as well, the Helio X20 and 4GB of RAM chew through apps like paper, cycling between multiple apps never presented an issue at all.Gaming performance is also stellar here. The Helio X20 pushed good frame rates in the most intensive games without any problems, no complaints here. You won鈥檛 be disappointed with the performance here, the Helio X20 still holds its own very well in regular use.Vernee Apollo X ConnectivityI was able to get some decent LTE speeds and WiFi speeds as well, I didn鈥檛 have any issues with connectivity here. I wasn鈥檛 able to connect to one of my Bluetooth wireless earbuds but a quick restart fixed that. No issues with GPS either, it does its job.Vernee Apollo X CameraThe Vernee Apollo X uses the IMX258 sensor in the rear, the same sensor used in the Xiaomi Mi4c and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X. Problem is, photos still don鈥檛 look as good as those on the Redmi Note 4X. I鈥檓 pretty sure this comes down to software, so if Vernee could improve on that they could squeeze out more performance from the sensor.In good lighting conditions the rear camera captures more than sufficient detail. Colours are relatively deep and saturated, photos look nice when you find yourself out in the sun. Low light performance is pretty bad, definitely worse than the aforementioned Xiaomi devices.The front facing camera does fine but nothing special.You should be able to film 4K video with this sensor and processor combination but for some reason I am not able to. I tried multiple camera apps to film 4K content but was only able to get a maximum of 1080p (anything higher defaults to 480p). I suspect Vernee has disabled 4K recording on this phone, the exact same thing that happened on the Vernee Apollo Lite, so hopefully this is able to be turned on with future updates.Vernee Apollo X Camera Gallery Vernee Apollo X VerdictTo be honest, the Vernee Apollo X is the most well rounded Vernee phone I鈥檝e reviewed so far, it鈥檚 got great build, a great screen, good performance, good battery, and a camera that can take good photos. However, it is also let down by average audio and an admittedly dated body.If you asked me to pick between the Vernee Apollo Lite, Vernee Apollo, and this Apollo X, my pick would be this phone no question, the bigger battery seals the deal for me.However, the MediaTek Redmi Note 4 features all the same specifications and a bigger battery at the same price, which makes this a tough sell. One reason you might purchase this over the Redmi is stock Android, although that would depend on personal preference. I personally would still pick the Redmi Note 4 over the Apollo X if they are the same price, but if the Apollo X is cheaper, then it just might be a hit. Buy the Vernee Apollo XWell rounded phoneVernee Apollo X Video Review

Vernee has released strong entry after strong entry into the phone market, but the latest Vernee Apollo was expensive for the specs. Enter the Vernee Apollo X, a high end phone with a relatively budget price. It seems that Vernee intends to contend with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, a tough fight to pick.Vernee Apollo X ReviewAfter analyzing the specifications, I鈥檓 a little confused by the Vernee Apollo X. The cause for this confusion stems from the Vernee Apollo Lite, which features almost the exact same specifications at a slightly lower price. Both Apollos have the Helio X20 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 1080p screen.Where these phones start diverging is the battery capacity and the camera sensor; where the Apollo Lite featured the Samsung S5K3P3 sensor and a 3180mAh battery, the Apollo X has switched the Samsung sensor for the Sony IMX258 and a tidy 3500mAh battery as well.Both phones are close in price also, with the Vernee Apollo Lite retailing for slightly less than the Apollo X. However, its biggest competition comes from the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, as that is hailed as one of the best Helio X20 devices in the market.Picking a fight with the big guysVernee Apollo X SpecificationsProcessorMediaTek Helio X20 DecacoreDisplay5.5鈥 1920×1080 IPS LCD Gorilla Glass 3RAM4GBStorage64GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 6.0 with VOS (unconfirmed)Cameras13MP, 5MP frontBattery3500mAhPhysical Dimensions178g, 15.20 x 7.62 x 0.95 cmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Vernee Apollo X HardwareAll manufacturers are going for the bezelless look, but Vernee seems content to continue with the design they鈥檝e been utilizing for all their Apollo devices. It鈥檚 a sizeable phone, with generous bezels on the left and right and enough chin above and below the screen as well. the phone is surprisingly thick as well on paper, but not so in the hand. For a phone in 2017, it looks a little dated.There are no capacitive buttons on the front, and flipping the phone around the body is made out of metal, but feels significantly less premium than the Vernee Apollo. This is by no means a knock against the Apollo X鈥檚 build quality, but even higher praise for the Apollo鈥檚 build.There are no capacitive buttons on this phone and the fingerprint sensor is on the back. I鈥檓 glad to find a USB-C port on this phone as the other big battery phones I reviewed (except the P2 Lite) used MicroUSB ports.premium but boringVernee Apollo X DisplayWe have a 1080p IPS display that is quite run of the mill for this price range. It does do its job well, displaying good colours, saturation, and crispness. Max brightness tops out at around 450 nits which isn鈥檛 spectacular but will do the job just fine. It is also covered in Gorilla Glass so you don鈥檛 have to worry about scratches.Vernee Apollo X AudioAudio quality here is average, with not too loud sound and average quality as well. it is useable for music and TV, but it won鈥檛 be a stellar experience.Vernee Apollo X BatteryThere is a sizeable but not overly large 3500mAh battery in this phone that should power the Vernee Apollo X for at least a full day. I鈥檓 glad to report that battery life is good, I was barely able to eke out 6 hours of screen on time which is quite impressive.However, do note that I had 3% battery left at the end of the day; compare that with other phones containing larger batteries like the Redmi Note 4, the Xiaomi can achieve that with up to 20% charge left. My use was a mix of items, web browsing, Reddit, and taking photos.I did play a couple of light games here and there but nothing intense like a first person shooter. Light and medium users can get through a day with this phone no issue, heavy users in fact can probably make it through a whole day as well, you just don鈥檛 have a lot of buffer.Good batteryGizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramVernee Apollo X SoftwareThe Apollo X is the platform on which Vernee is launching their new operating system, VOS (Vernee OS). This consists of Android 6.0 Marshmallow as the base layer with Vernee鈥檚 proprietary OS on top. So I鈥檓 not sure if VOS is so close to stock that I cannot tell the difference or this phone is actually stock without VOS.There is no reference to VOS on the phone either which is strange. Either way, the speed of this new operating system is good. It is just as fast as a fully stock Android phone with no slowdowns detected. I did see some very slight lag when scrolling through a few specific settings, but it disappeared once I went to different ones.Multitasking performance is great as well, the Helio X20 and 4GB of RAM chew through apps like paper, cycling between multiple apps never presented an issue at all.Gaming performance is also stellar here. The Helio X20 pushed good frame rates in the most intensive games without any problems, no complaints here. You won鈥檛 be disappointed with the performance here, the Helio X20 still holds its own very well in regular use.Vernee Apollo X ConnectivityI was able to get some decent LTE speeds and WiFi speeds as well, I didn鈥檛 have any issues with connectivity here. I wasn鈥檛 able to connect to one of my Bluetooth wireless earbuds but a quick restart fixed that. No issues with GPS either, it does its job.Vernee Apollo X CameraThe Vernee Apollo X uses the IMX258 sensor in the rear, the same sensor used in the Xiaomi Mi4c and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X. Problem is, photos still don鈥檛 look as good as those on the Redmi Note 4X. I鈥檓 pretty sure this comes down to software, so if Vernee could improve on that they could squeeze out more performance from the sensor.In good lighting conditions the rear camera captures more than sufficient detail. Colours are relatively deep and saturated, photos look nice when you find yourself out in the sun. Low light performance is pretty bad, definitely worse than the aforementioned Xiaomi devices.The front facing camera does fine but nothing special.You should be able to film 4K video with this sensor and processor combination but for some reason I am not able to. I tried multiple camera apps to film 4K content but was only able to get a maximum of 1080p (anything higher defaults to 480p). I suspect Vernee has disabled 4K recording on this phone, the exact same thing that happened on the Vernee Apollo Lite, so hopefully this is able to be turned on with future updates.Vernee Apollo X Camera Gallery Vernee Apollo X VerdictTo be honest, the Vernee Apollo X is the most well rounded Vernee phone I鈥檝e reviewed so far, it鈥檚 got great build, a great screen, good performance, good battery, and a camera that can take good photos. However, it is also let down by average audio and an admittedly dated body.If you asked me to pick between the Vernee Apollo Lite, Vernee Apollo, and this Apollo X, my pick would be this phone no question, the bigger battery seals the deal for me.However, the MediaTek Redmi Note 4 features all the same specifications and a bigger battery at the same price, which makes this a tough sell. One reason you might purchase this over the Redmi is stock Android, although that would depend on personal preference. I personally would still pick the Redmi Note 4 over the Apollo X if they are the same price, but if the Apollo X is cheaper, then it just might be a hit. Buy the Vernee Apollo XWell rounded phoneVernee Apollo X Video ReviewEveryone seems to be jumping onto the huge battery train, with 4,000mAh being scoffed at in favour of massive 6,000mAh juicers, not that I鈥檓 complaining. Blackview has released two phones with massive battery packs, the Blackview P2 and the Blackview P2 Lite, the latter of which we are reviewing today.Blackview P2 Lite ReviewBlackview is not known for making massive batteried phones, but they have decided to throw their hat into this ring. They released the Blackview P2 and the P2 Lite, both of which have 6,000mAh batteries inside. The P2 Lite can actually be had for quite a low price; $119 on flash sale.budget battery beastBlackview P2 Lite SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6753 Octacore ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1920×1080 px, LCD Gorilla Glass 3RAM3GBStorage32GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras13MP, 8MP frontBattery6000mAhPhysical Dimensions226g, 15.40 x 7.70 x 1.04 cmBig thanks to Blackview for providing this review unit. You can purchase one here.Blackview P2 Lite HardwareBuild quality is great. The body is metal and it feels good in hand. The only issue is that so many other midrange to low end devices feature similarly good build that metal like this no longer is special or exclusive to higher end devices.The metal actually feels very good, better than the Oukitel K6000 Plus or the Ulefone Power 2 in my opinion but it attracts fingerprints like the plague. The phone is large, definitely not compact for a 5.5鈥 device, nearing 1cm in thickness and 76mm wide. I suspect people with smaller hands will have trouble hefting this phone while those who do not mind big device might be less put off by the size.The fingerprint sensor聽is on the back while we have capacitive buttons below the screen. Overall the build quality here is good, but the phone is large, as is expected for phones with massive batteries.very well built, but fingerprints…Blackview P2 Lite DisplayThe Blackview P2 Lite uses a 5.5鈥 1920x1080px display by AUO and the display here does not disappoint. The display is quite strong, showing off crisp text, pictures and the like while colourizing each pixel quite well. Colours are quite vivid, blacks are pretty dark and whites are slightly on the blue side, so I don鈥檛 have any complaints about how this display looks.It has a maximum brightness of 450 nits which is respectable, viewable even in direct sunlight. The screen is also covered with Asahi Dragontrail Glass, so it is protected against scratches to a certain degree.Blackview P2 Lite AudioThere is a single speaker on the back that provides decently loud sound. Its still possible to get overpowered (e.g. on a highway) but the phone pumps out respectable sound. Audio quality is slightly above average, there is some decent clarity from the speakers and some bass as well. While the speaker here is not something to boast about, it is by no means a deal breaker either.Blackview P2 Lite BatteryBam bam! Another 6,000mAh battery in my hand, and I鈥檓 over the moon! The P2 Lite has a slightly larger battery than the Ulefone Power 2 (6,080mAh vs 6,050mAh) but that should not have any measurable effect on battery life compared to other factors like software optimization, screen brightness, etc.I put this phone through its paces, a 16 hour day with 5 hours of screen on time consumed about 38% of the battery, meaning there was 62% left.The next test was a two day test, two 16 hour days and about 10 hours of screen on time. I had about 17% left in the battery by the end of the second day. Can you kill this phone in a day? Yeah its possible. Will it be realistic? Definitely not, you will need to do some ridiculous things to kill this in a single day if you so desire.The phone also supports MediaTek鈥檚 PumpExpress fast charging, however the included charger was not a PumpExpress charger.Heavy users will not be able to kill the battery in a single day while medium and light users will be hard pressed to make a significant dent in the battery within 2 days.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramGreat but not insane batteryBlackview P2 Lite SoftwareThis phone comes with the latest Android 7.0 Nougat and let me start with a slight downside, the icons, notification shade and settings menu are not stock, you have custom Blackview icons for each of those sections of the phone. A custom launcher replaces the icon on the launcher but you鈥檒l have to live with the custom icons elsewhere.That being said, moving between home screens, swiping, and accessing the notifications shade was聽smooth but still not as smooth as MT6750T phones.The MediaTek聽processor does decently well at launching and closing apps, it does feel a bit slower than the Ulefone Power 2, but it鈥檚 still smooth enough for everyday use. Multitasking is decent with 3GB of RAM, but you can hit the max RAM allotment a lot faster than other phones with 4GB.Moving on to gaming performance, some intense games lag a little bit like Asphalt 8 and Mortal Kombat, but they are still very playable on the phone. Less intense games were perfectly fine though.The last thing I want to talk about is the fingerprint sensor, its fast, its accurate and works well.Blackview P2 Lite ConnectivityMoving on to connectivity, the Blackview P2 Lite does get decent LTE speeds as you can see in the speedtest here and reception is pretty decent as well. I didn鈥檛 find any issues with WiFi or Bluetooth, but聽GPS seems to be not that great, a lot of jumping around when navigating, which really isn’t the greatest, but at least it did get me where i want to go.Blackview P2 Lite CameraNo information was given as to the sensor used in either of the cameras found on this device, but whatever sensor was used in the rear, it鈥檚 doing a decent enough job at capturing photos. I say that because in this price range (except for maybe Xiaomi and other larger companies), not a lot of time and effort is placed into developing software processing, meaning that the camera sensor is not fully taken advantage of. The camera here takes decent photos, but compare the photos to the Redmi Note 4X and pictures are slightly less detailed and softer. Colour reproduction is average, pictures don鈥檛 contain washed out colours but neither are they vivid and saturated either. In perfect lighting conditions its actually possible to capture some pretty decent photos, anything but and what I mentioned before comes into play. Photos taken in dim lighting conditions and at night are quite grainy and noisy. That being said, camera quality is comparable to the Ulefone Power 2 and the Oukitel K6000 Plus.The front facing camera has 8MP and also takes some pretty soft photos as well, and performs about the same as the front facing camera in terms of colour reproduction and low light conditions.Video quality tops out at 1080p and there is an average amount of detail and colour reproduction is just average, nothing special here.Blackview P2 Lite Camera Gallery Blackview P2 Lite VerdictSo to conclude the Blackview P2 Lite is a pretty decent budget battery phone, but to be honest the biggest problem is CPU, its just a little slow. That being said, the P2 Lite has good build quality, good display and great聽battery life, and the camera is surprisingly good so not bad either.It costs about $120 on presale, so its also really cheap as well. That being said if your budget allows, I highly recommend spending more money on the Blackview P2, Ulefone Power 2 or the Oukitel K6000 Plus with the newer processor. Check out the Blackview P2 Lite here!good, but buy the p2 if possibleBlackview P2 Lite Video Review

Everyone seems to be jumping onto the huge battery train, with 4,000mAh being scoffed at in favour of massive 6,000mAh juicers, not that I鈥檓 complaining. Blackview has released two phones with massive battery packs, the Blackview P2 and the Blackview P2 Lite, the latter of which we are reviewing today.Blackview P2 Lite ReviewBlackview is not known for making massive batteried phones, but they have decided to throw their hat into this ring. They released the Blackview P2 and the P2 Lite, both of which have 6,000mAh batteries inside. The P2 Lite can actually be had for quite a low price; $119 on flash sale.budget battery beastBlackview P2 Lite SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6753 Octacore ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1920×1080 px, LCD Gorilla Glass 3RAM3GBStorage32GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras13MP, 8MP frontBattery6000mAhPhysical Dimensions226g, 15.40 x 7.70 x 1.04 cmBig thanks to Blackview for providing this review unit. You can purchase one here.Blackview P2 Lite HardwareBuild quality is great. The body is metal and it feels good in hand. The only issue is that so many other midrange to low end devices feature similarly good build that metal like this no longer is special or exclusive to higher end devices.The metal actually feels very good, better than the Oukitel K6000 Plus or the Ulefone Power 2 in my opinion but it attracts fingerprints like the plague. The phone is large, definitely not compact for a 5.5鈥 device, nearing 1cm in thickness and 76mm wide. I suspect people with smaller hands will have trouble hefting this phone while those who do not mind big device might be less put off by the size.The fingerprint sensor聽is on the back while we have capacitive buttons below the screen. Overall the build quality here is good, but the phone is large, as is expected for phones with massive batteries.very well built, but fingerprints…Blackview P2 Lite DisplayThe Blackview P2 Lite uses a 5.5鈥 1920x1080px display by AUO and the display here does not disappoint. The display is quite strong, showing off crisp text, pictures and the like while colourizing each pixel quite well. Colours are quite vivid, blacks are pretty dark and whites are slightly on the blue side, so I don鈥檛 have any complaints about how this display looks.It has a maximum brightness of 450 nits which is respectable, viewable even in direct sunlight. The screen is also covered with Asahi Dragontrail Glass, so it is protected against scratches to a certain degree.Blackview P2 Lite AudioThere is a single speaker on the back that provides decently loud sound. Its still possible to get overpowered (e.g. on a highway) but the phone pumps out respectable sound. Audio quality is slightly above average, there is some decent clarity from the speakers and some bass as well. While the speaker here is not something to boast about, it is by no means a deal breaker either.Blackview P2 Lite BatteryBam bam! Another 6,000mAh battery in my hand, and I鈥檓 over the moon! The P2 Lite has a slightly larger battery than the Ulefone Power 2 (6,080mAh vs 6,050mAh) but that should not have any measurable effect on battery life compared to other factors like software optimization, screen brightness, etc.I put this phone through its paces, a 16 hour day with 5 hours of screen on time consumed about 38% of the battery, meaning there was 62% left.The next test was a two day test, two 16 hour days and about 10 hours of screen on time. I had about 17% left in the battery by the end of the second day. Can you kill this phone in a day? Yeah its possible. Will it be realistic? Definitely not, you will need to do some ridiculous things to kill this in a single day if you so desire.The phone also supports MediaTek鈥檚 PumpExpress fast charging, however the included charger was not a PumpExpress charger.Heavy users will not be able to kill the battery in a single day while medium and light users will be hard pressed to make a significant dent in the battery within 2 days.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramGreat but not insane batteryBlackview P2 Lite SoftwareThis phone comes with the latest Android 7.0 Nougat and let me start with a slight downside, the icons, notification shade and settings menu are not stock, you have custom Blackview icons for each of those sections of the phone. A custom launcher replaces the icon on the launcher but you鈥檒l have to live with the custom icons elsewhere.That being said, moving between home screens, swiping, and accessing the notifications shade was聽smooth but still not as smooth as MT6750T phones.The MediaTek聽processor does decently well at launching and closing apps, it does feel a bit slower than the Ulefone Power 2, but it鈥檚 still smooth enough for everyday use. Multitasking is decent with 3GB of RAM, but you can hit the max RAM allotment a lot faster than other phones with 4GB.Moving on to gaming performance, some intense games lag a little bit like Asphalt 8 and Mortal Kombat, but they are still very playable on the phone. Less intense games were perfectly fine though.The last thing I want to talk about is the fingerprint sensor, its fast, its accurate and works well.Blackview P2 Lite ConnectivityMoving on to connectivity, the Blackview P2 Lite does get decent LTE speeds as you can see in the speedtest here and reception is pretty decent as well. I didn鈥檛 find any issues with WiFi or Bluetooth, but聽GPS seems to be not that great, a lot of jumping around when navigating, which really isn’t the greatest, but at least it did get me where i want to go.Blackview P2 Lite CameraNo information was given as to the sensor used in either of the cameras found on this device, but whatever sensor was used in the rear, it鈥檚 doing a decent enough job at capturing photos. I say that because in this price range (except for maybe Xiaomi and other larger companies), not a lot of time and effort is placed into developing software processing, meaning that the camera sensor is not fully taken advantage of. The camera here takes decent photos, but compare the photos to the Redmi Note 4X and pictures are slightly less detailed and softer. Colour reproduction is average, pictures don鈥檛 contain washed out colours but neither are they vivid and saturated either. In perfect lighting conditions its actually possible to capture some pretty decent photos, anything but and what I mentioned before comes into play. Photos taken in dim lighting conditions and at night are quite grainy and noisy. That being said, camera quality is comparable to the Ulefone Power 2 and the Oukitel K6000 Plus.The front facing camera has 8MP and also takes some pretty soft photos as well, and performs about the same as the front facing camera in terms of colour reproduction and low light conditions.Video quality tops out at 1080p and there is an average amount of detail and colour reproduction is just average, nothing special here.Blackview P2 Lite Camera Gallery Blackview P2 Lite VerdictSo to conclude the Blackview P2 Lite is a pretty decent budget battery phone, but to be honest the biggest problem is CPU, its just a little slow. That being said, the P2 Lite has good build quality, good display and great聽battery life, and the camera is surprisingly good so not bad either.It costs about $120 on presale, so its also really cheap as well. That being said if your budget allows, I highly recommend spending more money on the Blackview P2, Ulefone Power 2 or the Oukitel K6000 Plus with the newer processor. Check out the Blackview P2 Lite here!good, but buy the p2 if possibleBlackview P2 Lite Video ReviewThe DOOGEE Shoot 1 is the company’s first ever dual camera phone and it is a budget one costing about $100, as such I wasn’t expecting much from it to begin with. Have I been proven wrong? Let’s find out in our DOOGEE Shoot 1 Review!DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱絊pecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6737T ProcessorDisplay5.5閳 SHARP搴 FHD 2.5D G+FFRAM2GB LPDDR3Storage16GB eMMC 閳 microSD鑱絪lotOperating SystemAndroid 6.0 MarshmallowCameras13MP + 8MP rear cameras, 8MP frontBattery3300mAhPhysical Dimensions168g, 156.6鑱絰 77 x 8.7 mmDOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱経nboxingThere isn’t really much to say about DOOGEE’s Shoot 1 unboxing. It comes in a quite ordinary box with a case, screen protector, USB charger 5V/2A, a鑱絤icro USB cable and the SIM removal tool. There’s also an additional screen protector for those who will want to change it down the line.DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱紻esign & Build QualityI give the DOOGEE Shoot 1 quite an high score as far as design and build quality goes. While it’s made of plastic it doesn’t feel cheap in your hands, it’s just lighter than its metal counterparts, which is definitely a plus.Design wise, it’s the typical Chinese phone of 2016 and 2017: sleek, visible antenna lines, centered camera(s) on the back and a fingerprint scanner on the front accompanied by two touch buttons beside it.Regarding its overall size, the phone is definitely taller and wider than other smartphones, having bigger than average hands this didn’t bother me, but to somebody with smaller hands this could affect their ability of using the phone properly.鑱紾iven the averagely sized 3300mAh battery this slightly disappoints me.DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱紻isplayFor a phone that costs just about鑱?100, I’m honestly just glad it has a Full HD display. It isn’t the best I’ve seen and it has kind of a yellowish tint to it, but again in this price range I wasn’t expecting much more.Viewing angles are good and the touch screen panel is accurate and fast, so there are no problems during every day use.DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱紿ardware & PerformanceThe hardware on the鑱紻OOGEE Shoot 1 is mediocre at best. The phone is powered by a鑱組ediatek MTK6737T CPU paired with 2GB of RAM, which is alright for a budget phone but to me it’s somewhat weird that a phone with a Full HD panel only comes with 2GB of RAM.In my opinion, the amount of RAM should have a priority over screen resolution. We’ve seen 5.5-inch phones with HD displays and while they aren’t as sharp, they’re still bearable. What isn’t bearable in my opinion is running out of RAM and having to reload apps constantly. I’m not saying this has been happening to me on this handset as it’s new and there are few apps installed, but in the long run it might become a problem. Let me know in the comments below if you agree with me.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on Telegram That said, the phone is snappy for what it is and I haven’t had any problems during every day use.鑱結ou’ll also be able to run most games without excessive drops in frames, although you should probably look for something else if gaming is your No. 1 priority.The front-facing fingerprint scanner on the front works OK, it isn’t one of the most accurate on the market but it’s not too bad. I don’t like how the home button feels though and that’s probably because it protrudes from the glass, other smartphones only have the rim protruding, some not even that.As far as connectivity goes, 4G LTE is good, the DOOGEE Shoot 1 supports bands 1/3/7/8/20 so no problems over here in Europe and most other parts of the world. The phone part is alright and sound is clear.Battery life is average, you can get through a day of moderate use, albeit I’ve noticed standby times aren’t amazing, so you might find the phone will less battery even after not using it for some time.The phone’s speaker isn’t very loud and sound quality is average at best.DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1 Camera & PhotosThis is probably where the DOOGEE Shoot 1 disappointed me the most. I was really excited to try the dual camera setup as it’d be the first phone with this feature I ever used, other than a friend’s Honor 8.And what is there to say? The dual camera setup feels more like a single camera setup with an additional light sensor. The bokeh effect (shallow depth of field) appears to be software, indeed if you look at the image you can see the foreground is still in focus even if further away.Definitely disappointing as the main 13MP camera itself isn’t too bad, photos are sharp and color reproduction is on point, what’s bad is dynamic range and high noise even at low ISO.Either way, have a look at the images and judge for yourself! DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱紾allery DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱紺onclusionFor about $100 the DOOGEE Shoot 1 isn’t the best or worst phone in this price range. You can definitely get something better for your specific needs as this one tries to be good in everything but doesn’t really shine in nothing.How the鑱絪econdary rear camera works is a mystery to me, I’d rather preferred they had stuck with one but I understand phone manufacturers always want to get customers’ attention with the latest trend 閳 dual camera setups.

The DOOGEE Shoot 1 is the company’s first ever dual camera phone and it is a budget one costing about $100, as such I wasn’t expecting much from it to begin with. Have I been proven wrong? Let’s find out in our DOOGEE Shoot 1 Review!DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱絊pecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6737T ProcessorDisplay5.5閳 SHARP搴 FHD 2.5D G+FFRAM2GB LPDDR3Storage16GB eMMC 閳 microSD鑱絪lotOperating SystemAndroid 6.0 MarshmallowCameras13MP + 8MP rear cameras, 8MP frontBattery3300mAhPhysical Dimensions168g, 156.6鑱絰 77 x 8.7 mmDOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱経nboxingThere isn’t really much to say about DOOGEE’s Shoot 1 unboxing. It comes in a quite ordinary box with a case, screen protector, USB charger 5V/2A, a鑱絤icro USB cable and the SIM removal tool. There’s also an additional screen protector for those who will want to change it down the line.DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱紻esign & Build QualityI give the DOOGEE Shoot 1 quite an high score as far as design and build quality goes. While it’s made of plastic it doesn’t feel cheap in your hands, it’s just lighter than its metal counterparts, which is definitely a plus.Design wise, it’s the typical Chinese phone of 2016 and 2017: sleek, visible antenna lines, centered camera(s) on the back and a fingerprint scanner on the front accompanied by two touch buttons beside it.Regarding its overall size, the phone is definitely taller and wider than other smartphones, having bigger than average hands this didn’t bother me, but to somebody with smaller hands this could affect their ability of using the phone properly.鑱紾iven the averagely sized 3300mAh battery this slightly disappoints me.DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱紻isplayFor a phone that costs just about鑱?100, I’m honestly just glad it has a Full HD display. It isn’t the best I’ve seen and it has kind of a yellowish tint to it, but again in this price range I wasn’t expecting much more.Viewing angles are good and the touch screen panel is accurate and fast, so there are no problems during every day use.DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱紿ardware & PerformanceThe hardware on the鑱紻OOGEE Shoot 1 is mediocre at best. The phone is powered by a鑱組ediatek MTK6737T CPU paired with 2GB of RAM, which is alright for a budget phone but to me it’s somewhat weird that a phone with a Full HD panel only comes with 2GB of RAM.In my opinion, the amount of RAM should have a priority over screen resolution. We’ve seen 5.5-inch phones with HD displays and while they aren’t as sharp, they’re still bearable. What isn’t bearable in my opinion is running out of RAM and having to reload apps constantly. I’m not saying this has been happening to me on this handset as it’s new and there are few apps installed, but in the long run it might become a problem. Let me know in the comments below if you agree with me.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on Telegram That said, the phone is snappy for what it is and I haven’t had any problems during every day use.鑱結ou’ll also be able to run most games without excessive drops in frames, although you should probably look for something else if gaming is your No. 1 priority.The front-facing fingerprint scanner on the front works OK, it isn’t one of the most accurate on the market but it’s not too bad. I don’t like how the home button feels though and that’s probably because it protrudes from the glass, other smartphones only have the rim protruding, some not even that.As far as connectivity goes, 4G LTE is good, the DOOGEE Shoot 1 supports bands 1/3/7/8/20 so no problems over here in Europe and most other parts of the world. The phone part is alright and sound is clear.Battery life is average, you can get through a day of moderate use, albeit I’ve noticed standby times aren’t amazing, so you might find the phone will less battery even after not using it for some time.The phone’s speaker isn’t very loud and sound quality is average at best.DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1 Camera & PhotosThis is probably where the DOOGEE Shoot 1 disappointed me the most. I was really excited to try the dual camera setup as it’d be the first phone with this feature I ever used, other than a friend’s Honor 8.And what is there to say? The dual camera setup feels more like a single camera setup with an additional light sensor. The bokeh effect (shallow depth of field) appears to be software, indeed if you look at the image you can see the foreground is still in focus even if further away.Definitely disappointing as the main 13MP camera itself isn’t too bad, photos are sharp and color reproduction is on point, what’s bad is dynamic range and high noise even at low ISO.Either way, have a look at the images and judge for yourself! DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱紾allery DOOGEE鑱絊hoot 1鑱紺onclusionFor about $100 the DOOGEE Shoot 1 isn’t the best or worst phone in this price range. You can definitely get something better for your specific needs as this one tries to be good in everything but doesn’t really shine in nothing.How the鑱絪econdary rear camera works is a mystery to me, I’d rather preferred they had stuck with one but I understand phone manufacturers always want to get customers’ attention with the latest trend 閳 dual camera setups.Recently I got the chance to review the Blackview R6. While I found the device to be good enough for daily use, it had plenty of cons that prevented me from recommending it. So when I was offered the Blackview P2, I eagerly accepted the device. So, is the P2 a good phone, and has it improved upon the mistakes of the R6?Design and BuildIn terms of design, the Blackview P2 again chooses the functional route over the flashy route. Unlike before however, the P2 actually looks good and unique. One of my gripes about the R6 was how generic the design was.Once again we have a CNC Aluminum frame around the phone, with the power and volume button sitting comfortably on the right. On the bottom of the frame there鈥檚 a speaker and the USB-C port, and at the top there鈥檚 the usual 3.5mm headphone jack. The rear this time is completely metal. Unfortunately, the capacitive buttons are, again, not backlit. This is really quite disappointing since it鈥檚 such a basic thing to have in a device. On the bright side however, Blackview did decide to include an LED notification light this time around. The device is also quite a bit on the weighty side at 232g due to the 6000mAh battery.The design this time is much improved from the R6鈥檚 design. Where the R6 was quite generic looking, the P2 looks nice and svelte in black, though the thickness is instantly noticeable. That鈥檚 beside the point though. The Blackview R6 is a device that clearly puts substance over style, and it鈥檚 instantly apparent once you hold it in your hand. Blackview continues their excellence in build quality with the P2. The device simply feels fantastic in the hand, and it鈥檚 very solidly built. The weight is the main issue here, as it鈥檚 a noticeably heavy device. Thankfully, the weight distribution is very good.Overall, the device has some very good build quality paired with a nice svelte look that wouldn鈥檛 look out of place next to the iPhones and Samsung of the world. While there are some nitpicks to be had, it鈥檚 looking good for the P2.DisplayThe Blackview P2 has a full HD 1920×1080 display, and this time around Blackview have managed to get a quality panel for the device. The display is sharp, vibrant and accurate, as a good display should be. Sunlight visibility is also good, and I only needed to crank it to full brightness when under harsh sunlight.It鈥檚 good to see that Blackview have avoided the missteps of the Blackview R6. The color accuracy on the P2 is much improved. The device鈥檚 white balance leans towards the cooler end of the spectrum, but all too noticeable.Viewing angles on the Blackview P2 are once again good. It鈥檚 more than capable of matching up with similarly priced devices. Overall, this display is surprisingly good, especially at its price point. The Blackview P2 gets another thumbs up from me.SoftwareBlackview UNI Launcher makes another appearance here, and once again it鈥檚 pretty much stock Android with a skin on top and no app drawer. The icons are still bad, even worse than the R6 actually, so I threw on Nova Launcher. The settings menu has some options for unlocking the phone with gestures, but they鈥檙e not really all too useful when you consider the device fingerprint sensor. Aside from that, everything else is pretty much stock Android 6.0.PerformanceThe P2 comes with a MTK6750T chipset and 4GB of RAM, promising some good performance, and I鈥檓 happy to announce that it鈥檚 entirely as good as it sounds.The UI is snappy and quick, with few to no slowdowns throughout this testing period. Opening multiple apps at the same time was also no problem thanks to the huge amount of RAM in the device. Moving onto gaming, The P2 once again impresses with all around good showings. Playing simple games like Tetris and Prune proved to be no challenge for the P2. More graphic intensive games like NOVA 3 caused some minor slowdowns, but nothing that effected my enjoyment of the game.Overall, the performance of the P2 is great. The combination of the MTK6750T and 4GB RAM provides a very good user experience, with everything being quick and snappy. It鈥檚 not the fastest device, but it provides reliable performance all throughout.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramBattery LifeThe battery life of the P2 is fantastic, and what else would you expect from a 6000mAh battery. With standard usage and brightness set to 60%, the P2 easily powered through an entire day with 45-55% of battery life left. With heavier usage and brightness set to 80%, the battery managed to get through with 10-15% of battery left.The P2 also charges surprisingly quick. It can go from 0% to 100% in 1 hour and 30 minutes. And while this isn鈥檛 the best I鈥檝e seen, it鈥檚 really quite impressive for the price. So to summarize, the Blackview P2 does extremely well in terms of battery life.Audio QualityThe P2鈥檚 audio quality is decent, but it doesn鈥檛 impress. For starters, the phone鈥檚 main speaker lacks in volume, bass and sharpness. This is a real let down for me, because I was really hoping this phone would be exceptional in all aspects.Following that, the in-ear speaker is also lacking in volume. It is however clear, which means when you do hear the person on the other line, you can understand what they鈥檙e saying pretty easily. Also, it鈥檚 a shame the phone has two speaker grilles but only one speaker, a common and misleading practice that needs to stop.CameraThe Blackview P2鈥檚 camera is, at its best, decent. The phone suffers from the same problem most mid-range smartphones suffer from, the cameras rarely stand out amongst the competition. Their cameras are fully usable, but they aren鈥檛 going to be the reason you buy the device.Now to its credit, the P2 does do fairly well in daylight. Details are captured well, there鈥檚 minimal noise and colors are accurate, if not a tad understated. White balanace is also good, though things tend to lean towards the cool side. Once night hits however, things take a turn for the worse. The camera starts to become really slow, which presents the user with a terrible case of shutter lag. This, paired with the amount of noise generated by the camera in low light make low light photography pretty bad.Video recording doesn鈥檛 fare much better either. I do have to say that the sound quality of the recordings are decent, but aside from that it鈥檚 just average. And finally, the selfie camera is OK. It鈥檚 more than sufficient for the odd selfie every now and then, though it could definitely be better.ConnectivityThe P2, like its cousin the R6, impresses in connectivity. The GPS locked-on quickly and managed to hold a strong connection every time I needed it, and mobile reception was good as I could get a clear connection from inside a hospital.Bluetooth works well, and Hotknot also works though I鈥檓 not sure why you鈥檇 use it over Bluetooth. Everything ran as it should have and there weren鈥檛 any times where a problem with stop me from doing something. As such, the P2 gets a thumbs up from me.ConclusionBlackview have stepped up their game with the Blackview P2. It鈥檚 a quality device with a lot of good points going for it, but it does have some clear flaws. Though unlike the Blackview R6, the cons don鈥檛 really outweigh the pros.ProsStock software is snappyBuild quality is fantastic, as usualConnectivity is goodBattery that goes on and onGood displayGaming performance is good4GB of RAM allows for a lot of multitaskingDesign is unique and pleasantConsCameras are averageNo backlit buttonsHeavyAudio quality is lacking volume, bass and detailRecently I got the chance to review the Blackview R6. While I found the device to be good enough for daily use, it had plenty of cons that prevented me from recommending it. So when I was offered the Blackview P2, I eagerly accepted the device. So, is the P2 a good phone, and has it improved upon the mistakes of the R6?Design and BuildIn terms of design, the Blackview P2 again chooses the functional route over the flashy route. Unlike before however, the P2 actually looks good and unique. One of my gripes about the R6 was how generic the design was.Once again we have a CNC Aluminum frame around the phone, with the power and volume button sitting comfortably on the right. On the bottom of the frame there鈥檚 a speaker and the USB-C port, and at the top there鈥檚 the usual 3.5mm headphone jack. The rear this time is completely metal. Unfortunately, the capacitive buttons are, again, not backlit. This is really quite disappointing since it鈥檚 such a basic thing to have in a device. On the bright side however, Blackview did decide to include an LED notification light this time around. The device is also quite a bit on the weighty side at 232g due to the 6000mAh battery.The design this time is much improved from the R6鈥檚 design. Where the R6 was quite generic looking, the P2 looks nice and svelte in black, though the thickness is instantly noticeable. That鈥檚 beside the point though. The Blackview R6 is a device that clearly puts substance over style, and it鈥檚 instantly apparent once you hold it in your hand. Blackview continues their excellence in build quality with the P2. The device simply feels fantastic in the hand, and it鈥檚 very solidly built. The weight is the main issue here, as it鈥檚 a noticeably heavy device. Thankfully, the weight distribution is very good.Overall, the device has some very good build quality paired with a nice svelte look that wouldn鈥檛 look out of place next to the iPhones and Samsung of the world. While there are some nitpicks to be had, it鈥檚 looking good for the P2.DisplayThe Blackview P2 has a full HD 1920×1080 display, and this time around Blackview have managed to get a quality panel for the device. The display is sharp, vibrant and accurate, as a good display should be. Sunlight visibility is also good, and I only needed to crank it to full brightness when under harsh sunlight.It鈥檚 good to see that Blackview have avoided the missteps of the Blackview R6. The color accuracy on the P2 is much improved. The device鈥檚 white balance leans towards the cooler end of the spectrum, but all too noticeable.Viewing angles on the Blackview P2 are once again good. It鈥檚 more than capable of matching up with similarly priced devices. Overall, this display is surprisingly good, especially at its price point. The Blackview P2 gets another thumbs up from me.SoftwareBlackview UNI Launcher makes another appearance here, and once again it鈥檚 pretty much stock Android with a skin on top and no app drawer. The icons are still bad, even worse than the R6 actually, so I threw on Nova Launcher. The settings menu has some options for unlocking the phone with gestures, but they鈥檙e not really all too useful when you consider the device fingerprint sensor. Aside from that, everything else is pretty much stock Android 6.0.PerformanceThe P2 comes with a MTK6750T chipset and 4GB of RAM, promising some good performance, and I鈥檓 happy to announce that it鈥檚 entirely as good as it sounds.The UI is snappy and quick, with few to no slowdowns throughout this testing period. Opening multiple apps at the same time was also no problem thanks to the huge amount of RAM in the device. Moving onto gaming, The P2 once again impresses with all around good showings. Playing simple games like Tetris and Prune proved to be no challenge for the P2. More graphic intensive games like NOVA 3 caused some minor slowdowns, but nothing that effected my enjoyment of the game.Overall, the performance of the P2 is great. The combination of the MTK6750T and 4GB RAM provides a very good user experience, with everything being quick and snappy. It鈥檚 not the fastest device, but it provides reliable performance all throughout.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramBattery LifeThe battery life of the P2 is fantastic, and what else would you expect from a 6000mAh battery. With standard usage and brightness set to 60%, the P2 easily powered through an entire day with 45-55% of battery life left. With heavier usage and brightness set to 80%, the battery managed to get through with 10-15% of battery left.The P2 also charges surprisingly quick. It can go from 0% to 100% in 1 hour and 30 minutes. And while this isn鈥檛 the best I鈥檝e seen, it鈥檚 really quite impressive for the price. So to summarize, the Blackview P2 does extremely well in terms of battery life.Audio QualityThe P2鈥檚 audio quality is decent, but it doesn鈥檛 impress. For starters, the phone鈥檚 main speaker lacks in volume, bass and sharpness. This is a real let down for me, because I was really hoping this phone would be exceptional in all aspects.Following that, the in-ear speaker is also lacking in volume. It is however clear, which means when you do hear the person on the other line, you can understand what they鈥檙e saying pretty easily. Also, it鈥檚 a shame the phone has two speaker grilles but only one speaker, a common and misleading practice that needs to stop.CameraThe Blackview P2鈥檚 camera is, at its best, decent. The phone suffers from the same problem most mid-range smartphones suffer from, the cameras rarely stand out amongst the competition. Their cameras are fully usable, but they aren鈥檛 going to be the reason you buy the device.Now to its credit, the P2 does do fairly well in daylight. Details are captured well, there鈥檚 minimal noise and colors are accurate, if not a tad understated. White balanace is also good, though things tend to lean towards the cool side. Once night hits however, things take a turn for the worse. The camera starts to become really slow, which presents the user with a terrible case of shutter lag. This, paired with the amount of noise generated by the camera in low light make low light photography pretty bad.Video recording doesn鈥檛 fare much better either. I do have to say that the sound quality of the recordings are decent, but aside from that it鈥檚 just average. And finally, the selfie camera is OK. It鈥檚 more than sufficient for the odd selfie every now and then, though it could definitely be better.ConnectivityThe P2, like its cousin the R6, impresses in connectivity. The GPS locked-on quickly and managed to hold a strong connection every time I needed it, and mobile reception was good as I could get a clear connection from inside a hospital.Bluetooth works well, and Hotknot also works though I鈥檓 not sure why you鈥檇 use it over Bluetooth. Everything ran as it should have and there weren鈥檛 any times where a problem with stop me from doing something. As such, the P2 gets a thumbs up from me.ConclusionBlackview have stepped up their game with the Blackview P2. It鈥檚 a quality device with a lot of good points going for it, but it does have some clear flaws. Though unlike the Blackview R6, the cons don鈥檛 really outweigh the pros.ProsStock software is snappyBuild quality is fantastic, as usualConnectivity is goodBattery that goes on and onGood displayGaming performance is good4GB of RAM allows for a lot of multitaskingDesign is unique and pleasantConsCameras are averageNo backlit buttonsHeavyAudio quality is lacking volume, bass and detailBlackview is a company that I rarely pay much attention to. Their devices are usually decent, but also surprisingly generic, hence why I like to focus on more attention grabbing companies and their devices. When I was offered the Blackview R6 however, I decided to give it a try, if only to see if my suspicions and preconceptions were true. So, how is the Blackview R6?Design and BuildIn terms of design, the Blackview R6 is more focused on being simple and functional than flashy. My unit is the Titanium Grey model, which comes with a simple grey rear and a completely black front. Going around the device is a CNC Aluminum frame, with the power and volume button sitting comfortably on the right. On the bottom of the frame, there鈥檚 the microUSB port, and at the top there鈥檚 the usual 3.5mm headphone jack.  PerformanceThe R6 performs like any other MTK6737T powered device. It鈥檚 quick and snappy in the UI department, but once you start gaming things become more troublesome.Playing simple games is completely fine, for example Angry Birds or Tetris. Unfortunately, anything that requires even slightly more graphic fidelity is going to make you drop frames. Playing NOVA 3 results in a low of dropped frames, at some points rendering the game unplayable. The R6 is good at managing RAM, as it鈥檚 fully possible to run multiple apps in the background without slowdown. Unfortunately, I still stumbled freezes and slowdowns way more often than I would鈥檝e liked. The fingerprint sensor is accurate and quick, though it鈥檚 not much of a consolation.Overall, the performance is acceptable but may leave some desiring more. If you have any desire to game on your phone, then you will want to avoid the R6. If you don鈥檛 really game much or only play light games like Candy Crush, then the R6 should be sufficient.Battery LifeThe battery life on the R6 is above average, not more and not less. The 3000mAh battery in the R6 isn鈥檛 as beastly as the 6000mAh unit in its cousin the P2, and the results reflect that.With standard usage and brightness set to 60%, the R6 is fully capable of getting me through an entire day with 10-20% of battery life left. With heavier usage and brightness set to 80%, I managed to run out the battery before the end of the day. Realistically however, the R6鈥檚 battery life more than sufficient enough to get most people through the day.One more thing to take note off is that the device takes quite a while to charge with the included charger, about 2 hours and 20 minutes to go from 0% to 100%.Audio QualityThe R6鈥檚 audio quality is a mixed bag. The main speaker, located on the bottom right of the rear, is small and easy to muffle with a single finger. It is however very loud, though it lacks in clarity and bass. It鈥檚 good if you find it hard to hear your phone ringing, but it鈥檚 not optimal for music.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramSimilarly, the in-ear speaker is loud, but it can be somewhat blurry at times. It might get just a bit too loud since people around me could hear what the person on the other line was saying. On a more positive note, the person on the other hand could hear me just fine.CameraThe camera on the R6 isn鈥檛 very good. It can take some decent shots, but the white balance and saturation are incredibly inaccurate. Colors are blown way out of proportion and simply look unnatural or painful. 聽Just take a look at some of these samples.Now the R6 isn鈥檛 the worst camera I鈥檝e used, and these problems could be fixed by going through the settings, but the average user isn鈥檛 going to know that. They want to be able to point and shoot at a moments notice, needing to fiddle with settings just to take a usable photo simply isn鈥檛 acceptable. The front facing camera is similarly abysmal, with highlights getting blown to oblivion and details getting blurry and smudged. Low light shooting isn鈥檛 something you want to do with this device either as trying to snap a steady picture is a fight in itself.Video recording is also not really good. As is the case with most devices at this price point, the recorded footage is mediocre and the sound quality is also fairly bad. Still, if you鈥檙e looking at something in this price point, good video quality is simply something you don鈥檛 expect to get.ConnectivityMoving onto a more positive note, the R6鈥檚 GPS performance is fantastic. No matter where I went, the device managed to get a lock-on pretty quickly with minimal fuss. Reception was also great, as I could easily get 4G speeds anywhere I went.I never really faced any major connectivity issues throughout my testing. Everything ran as it should have and there weren鈥檛 any times where a problem with stop me from doing something. So for connectivity, the R6 gets a big thumbs up.ConclusionThe Blackview R6 is a device that leaves me quite conflicted. It鈥檚 a device that has some high highs, while also having some really low lows. Things like the build quality and connectivity of the device left me impressed, while the other aspects of the device were lacklustE.ProsStock software is snappyBuild quality is fantasticConnectivity is goodReliable battery lifeConsBad cameraMediocre video recordingNo backlit buttonsNo notification LEDGaming performance is poorDisplay isn鈥檛 great

Blackview is a company that I rarely pay much attention to. Their devices are usually decent, but also surprisingly generic, hence why I like to focus on more attention grabbing companies and their devices. When I was offered the Blackview R6 however, I decided to give it a try, if only to see if my suspicions and preconceptions were true. So, how is the Blackview R6?Design and BuildIn terms of design, the Blackview R6 is more focused on being simple and functional than flashy. My unit is the Titanium Grey model, which comes with a simple grey rear and a completely black front. Going around the device is a CNC Aluminum frame, with the power and volume button sitting comfortably on the right. On the bottom of the frame, there鈥檚 the microUSB port, and at the top there鈥檚 the usual 3.5mm headphone jack.  PerformanceThe R6 performs like any other MTK6737T powered device. It鈥檚 quick and snappy in the UI department, but once you start gaming things become more troublesome.Playing simple games is completely fine, for example Angry Birds or Tetris. Unfortunately, anything that requires even slightly more graphic fidelity is going to make you drop frames. Playing NOVA 3 results in a low of dropped frames, at some points rendering the game unplayable. The R6 is good at managing RAM, as it鈥檚 fully possible to run multiple apps in the background without slowdown. Unfortunately, I still stumbled freezes and slowdowns way more often than I would鈥檝e liked. The fingerprint sensor is accurate and quick, though it鈥檚 not much of a consolation.Overall, the performance is acceptable but may leave some desiring more. If you have any desire to game on your phone, then you will want to avoid the R6. If you don鈥檛 really game much or only play light games like Candy Crush, then the R6 should be sufficient.Battery LifeThe battery life on the R6 is above average, not more and not less. The 3000mAh battery in the R6 isn鈥檛 as beastly as the 6000mAh unit in its cousin the P2, and the results reflect that.With standard usage and brightness set to 60%, the R6 is fully capable of getting me through an entire day with 10-20% of battery life left. With heavier usage and brightness set to 80%, I managed to run out the battery before the end of the day. Realistically however, the R6鈥檚 battery life more than sufficient enough to get most people through the day.One more thing to take note off is that the device takes quite a while to charge with the included charger, about 2 hours and 20 minutes to go from 0% to 100%.Audio QualityThe R6鈥檚 audio quality is a mixed bag. The main speaker, located on the bottom right of the rear, is small and easy to muffle with a single finger. It is however very loud, though it lacks in clarity and bass. It鈥檚 good if you find it hard to hear your phone ringing, but it鈥檚 not optimal for music.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramSimilarly, the in-ear speaker is loud, but it can be somewhat blurry at times. It might get just a bit too loud since people around me could hear what the person on the other line was saying. On a more positive note, the person on the other hand could hear me just fine.CameraThe camera on the R6 isn鈥檛 very good. It can take some decent shots, but the white balance and saturation are incredibly inaccurate. Colors are blown way out of proportion and simply look unnatural or painful. 聽Just take a look at some of these samples.Now the R6 isn鈥檛 the worst camera I鈥檝e used, and these problems could be fixed by going through the settings, but the average user isn鈥檛 going to know that. They want to be able to point and shoot at a moments notice, needing to fiddle with settings just to take a usable photo simply isn鈥檛 acceptable. The front facing camera is similarly abysmal, with highlights getting blown to oblivion and details getting blurry and smudged. Low light shooting isn鈥檛 something you want to do with this device either as trying to snap a steady picture is a fight in itself.Video recording is also not really good. As is the case with most devices at this price point, the recorded footage is mediocre and the sound quality is also fairly bad. Still, if you鈥檙e looking at something in this price point, good video quality is simply something you don鈥檛 expect to get.ConnectivityMoving onto a more positive note, the R6鈥檚 GPS performance is fantastic. No matter where I went, the device managed to get a lock-on pretty quickly with minimal fuss. Reception was also great, as I could easily get 4G speeds anywhere I went.I never really faced any major connectivity issues throughout my testing. Everything ran as it should have and there weren鈥檛 any times where a problem with stop me from doing something. So for connectivity, the R6 gets a big thumbs up.ConclusionThe Blackview R6 is a device that leaves me quite conflicted. It鈥檚 a device that has some high highs, while also having some really low lows. Things like the build quality and connectivity of the device left me impressed, while the other aspects of the device were lacklustE.ProsStock software is snappyBuild quality is fantasticConnectivity is goodReliable battery lifeConsBad cameraMediocre video recordingNo backlit buttonsNo notification LEDGaming performance is poorDisplay isn鈥檛 greatMany people dream of the old days when phones lasted for three weeks straight and while that is no longer a reality, the Oukitel K6000 Plus offers the next best thing; up to 4 days of battery life.Oukitel K6000 Plus ReviewOukitel has been trying for quite a while to unseat the Ulefone Power 2 as one of the most popular MediaTek battery phones. This time, Oukitel is fighting Ulefone on its own turf, releasing a phone almost spec for spec with the Oukitel with a couple of minor differences. It uses the MTK6750 processor, 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM and of course, a massive 6080mAh battery as well. can the new Oukitel K6000 Plus successfully beat down the Ulefone Power 2? Let鈥檚 find out.Oukitel鈥檚 Ulefone Power 2Oukitel K6000 Plus SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6750 Octacore ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1920×1080 px, LCD Gorilla Glass 3RAM4GBStorage64GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras16MP, 8MP frontBattery6080mAhPhysical Dimensions208g, 15.70 x 7.6 x 0.98 cmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Oukitel K6000 Plus HardwareBuild quality is great. The body is metal and it feels good in hand. The only issue is that so many other midrange to low end devices feature similarly good build that metal like this no longer is special or exclusive to higher end devices.The phone is large, definitely not compact for a 5.5鈥 device, nearing 1cm in thickness and 76mm wide.I suspect people with smaller hands will have trouble hefting this phone while those who do not mind big device might be less put off by the size. The fingerprint sensor/home button combo is on the front with capacitive buttons flanking said button. Overall the build quality here is good, but the phone is large, as is expected for phones with massive batteries.Well built but bigOukitel K6000 Plus DisplayThe Oukitel K6000 Plus uses a 5.5鈥 1920x1080px display by AUO and the display here does not disappoint. The display is quite strong, showing off crisp text, pictures and the like while colourizing each pixel quite well.Colours are quite vivid, blacks are pretty dark and whites are slightly on the blue side, so I don鈥檛 have any complaints about how this display looks.It has a maximum brightness of 450 nits which is respectable, viewable even in direct sunlight. The screen is also covered with Asahi Dragontrail Glass, so it is protected against scratches to a certain degree.Oukitel K6000 Plus AudioThere is a single speaker on the back that provides decently loud sound. It鈥檚 still possible to get overpowered (e.g. on a highway) but the phone pumps out respectable sound.Audio quality is slightly above average, there is some decent clarity from the speakers and some bass as well. While the speaker here is not something to boast about, it is by no means a deal breaker either.Oukitel K6000 Plus BatteryBam bam! Another 6000mAh battery in my hand, and I鈥檓 over the moon! The K6000 Plus has a slightly larger battery than the Ulefone Power 2 (6080mAh vs 6050mAh) but that should not have any measurable effect on battery life compared to other factors like software optimization, screen brightness, etc.I put this phone through its paces, a 16 hour day with 5 hours of screen on time consumed about 38% of the battery, meaning there was 62% left.The next test was a two day test, two 16 hour days and about 10 hours of screen on time. I had about 17% left in the battery by the end of the second day. Can you kill this phone in a day? Yeah its possible. Will it be realistic? Definitely not, you will need to do some ridiculous things to kill this in a single day if you so desire.The phone also supports MediaTek鈥檚 PumpExpress fast charging, however the included charger was not a PumpExpress charger.Heavy users will not be able to kill the battery in a single day while medium and light users can stretch that to 3, even 4 days.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramTwice the battery, double the鈥attery?Oukitel K6000 Plus SoftwareThis phone comes with the latest Android 7.0 Nougat and let me start with a slight downside, the icons, notification shade and settings menu are not stock, you have custom Oukitel icons for each of those sections of the phone. A custom launcher replaces the icon on the launcher but you鈥檒l have to live with the custom icons elsewhere.That being said, moving between home screens, swiping, and accessing the notifications shade was all silky smooth. As fast as the Ulefone Power 2, but of course still slower than expensive flagships.Moving on to the fingerprint sensor, it is fast and accurate, there鈥檚 not much else to say here. As long as a fingerprint sensor passes a certain threshold of speed and accuracy, there isn鈥檛 much else to talk about.The processor handles opening and closing apps quite well, there wasn’t a lot of lag or hestitation when opening or closing apps, there definitely was some if you compare it directly with a higher end phoen, but it isn’t big enough to be an annoyance.Multi-tasking is handled very admirably as well, considering there鈥檚 4GB of RAM here. I faced no issues switching between many apps and even some games as well, so no issues there.I could run any game on this phone with no lag at all which is pretty impressive, you won’t have any issues gaming and you can do it for a long time as well.Oukitel K6000 Plus ConnectivityDouble check the network bands on this phone before you buy to ensure it works with your carrier. I was only able to get LTE in Ontario as the network bands did not support 3G in Canada. LTE speeds are not bad, not the fastest but not slow either. WiFi, bluetooth and GPS works quite well also, GPS works and doesn’t jump around at all.Oukitel K6000 Plus CameraSo the thing is, I was able to take good photos in good lighting conditions, pretty good pictures in fact, detail is good, colours are saturated and contrast is good, dynamic range isn’t the greatest and HDr does fix that, but it doesn’t fix it fully either.But the downside here is that the K6000 Plus’s camera quality actually dips pretty sharply once you enter less than ideal lighting conditions. It obviously doesn’t handle low light situations well either.The front facing camera has 8MP and takes some decent photos, and performs about the same as the front facing camera in terms of colour reproduction and low light conditions.You can film 1080p video and detail in the video just isn’t that great, but colours and saturation are fine.Oukitel K6000 Plus Camera Gallery Oukitel K6000 Plus VerdictThe Oukitel K6000 Plus isn’t backing down from the Ulefone Power 2 at all. In fact, it has almost all the same pros and cons as the Ulefone Power 2, tit for tat. With that in mind, the K6000 Plus is also a good option for a Mediatek battery phone, and the camera is the weakest part of this phone so far.It is very close, too close to call as to whether the Ulefone or the Oukitel is a better device. that being said, if you go either way both the Ulefone and Oukitel perform quite similar. However, the K6000 Plus and the Ulefone Power 2 both face competition with the Redmi Note 4X, and that is still the biggest challenge MediaTek battery phones face today. Buy the Oukitel K6000 PlusToo close to callOukitel K6000 Plus Video Review

Many people dream of the old days when phones lasted for three weeks straight and while that is no longer a reality, the Oukitel K6000 Plus offers the next best thing; up to 4 days of battery life.Oukitel K6000 Plus ReviewOukitel has been trying for quite a while to unseat the Ulefone Power 2 as one of the most popular MediaTek battery phones. This time, Oukitel is fighting Ulefone on its own turf, releasing a phone almost spec for spec with the Oukitel with a couple of minor differences. It uses the MTK6750 processor, 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM and of course, a massive 6080mAh battery as well. can the new Oukitel K6000 Plus successfully beat down the Ulefone Power 2? Let鈥檚 find out.Oukitel鈥檚 Ulefone Power 2Oukitel K6000 Plus SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6750 Octacore ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1920×1080 px, LCD Gorilla Glass 3RAM4GBStorage64GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras16MP, 8MP frontBattery6080mAhPhysical Dimensions208g, 15.70 x 7.6 x 0.98 cmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Oukitel K6000 Plus HardwareBuild quality is great. The body is metal and it feels good in hand. The only issue is that so many other midrange to low end devices feature similarly good build that metal like this no longer is special or exclusive to higher end devices.The phone is large, definitely not compact for a 5.5鈥 device, nearing 1cm in thickness and 76mm wide.I suspect people with smaller hands will have trouble hefting this phone while those who do not mind big device might be less put off by the size. The fingerprint sensor/home button combo is on the front with capacitive buttons flanking said button. Overall the build quality here is good, but the phone is large, as is expected for phones with massive batteries.Well built but bigOukitel K6000 Plus DisplayThe Oukitel K6000 Plus uses a 5.5鈥 1920x1080px display by AUO and the display here does not disappoint. The display is quite strong, showing off crisp text, pictures and the like while colourizing each pixel quite well.Colours are quite vivid, blacks are pretty dark and whites are slightly on the blue side, so I don鈥檛 have any complaints about how this display looks.It has a maximum brightness of 450 nits which is respectable, viewable even in direct sunlight. The screen is also covered with Asahi Dragontrail Glass, so it is protected against scratches to a certain degree.Oukitel K6000 Plus AudioThere is a single speaker on the back that provides decently loud sound. It鈥檚 still possible to get overpowered (e.g. on a highway) but the phone pumps out respectable sound.Audio quality is slightly above average, there is some decent clarity from the speakers and some bass as well. While the speaker here is not something to boast about, it is by no means a deal breaker either.Oukitel K6000 Plus BatteryBam bam! Another 6000mAh battery in my hand, and I鈥檓 over the moon! The K6000 Plus has a slightly larger battery than the Ulefone Power 2 (6080mAh vs 6050mAh) but that should not have any measurable effect on battery life compared to other factors like software optimization, screen brightness, etc.I put this phone through its paces, a 16 hour day with 5 hours of screen on time consumed about 38% of the battery, meaning there was 62% left.The next test was a two day test, two 16 hour days and about 10 hours of screen on time. I had about 17% left in the battery by the end of the second day. Can you kill this phone in a day? Yeah its possible. Will it be realistic? Definitely not, you will need to do some ridiculous things to kill this in a single day if you so desire.The phone also supports MediaTek鈥檚 PumpExpress fast charging, however the included charger was not a PumpExpress charger.Heavy users will not be able to kill the battery in a single day while medium and light users can stretch that to 3, even 4 days.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramTwice the battery, double the鈥attery?Oukitel K6000 Plus SoftwareThis phone comes with the latest Android 7.0 Nougat and let me start with a slight downside, the icons, notification shade and settings menu are not stock, you have custom Oukitel icons for each of those sections of the phone. A custom launcher replaces the icon on the launcher but you鈥檒l have to live with the custom icons elsewhere.That being said, moving between home screens, swiping, and accessing the notifications shade was all silky smooth. As fast as the Ulefone Power 2, but of course still slower than expensive flagships.Moving on to the fingerprint sensor, it is fast and accurate, there鈥檚 not much else to say here. As long as a fingerprint sensor passes a certain threshold of speed and accuracy, there isn鈥檛 much else to talk about.The processor handles opening and closing apps quite well, there wasn’t a lot of lag or hestitation when opening or closing apps, there definitely was some if you compare it directly with a higher end phoen, but it isn’t big enough to be an annoyance.Multi-tasking is handled very admirably as well, considering there鈥檚 4GB of RAM here. I faced no issues switching between many apps and even some games as well, so no issues there.I could run any game on this phone with no lag at all which is pretty impressive, you won’t have any issues gaming and you can do it for a long time as well.Oukitel K6000 Plus ConnectivityDouble check the network bands on this phone before you buy to ensure it works with your carrier. I was only able to get LTE in Ontario as the network bands did not support 3G in Canada. LTE speeds are not bad, not the fastest but not slow either. WiFi, bluetooth and GPS works quite well also, GPS works and doesn’t jump around at all.Oukitel K6000 Plus CameraSo the thing is, I was able to take good photos in good lighting conditions, pretty good pictures in fact, detail is good, colours are saturated and contrast is good, dynamic range isn’t the greatest and HDr does fix that, but it doesn’t fix it fully either.But the downside here is that the K6000 Plus’s camera quality actually dips pretty sharply once you enter less than ideal lighting conditions. It obviously doesn’t handle low light situations well either.The front facing camera has 8MP and takes some decent photos, and performs about the same as the front facing camera in terms of colour reproduction and low light conditions.You can film 1080p video and detail in the video just isn’t that great, but colours and saturation are fine.Oukitel K6000 Plus Camera Gallery Oukitel K6000 Plus VerdictThe Oukitel K6000 Plus isn’t backing down from the Ulefone Power 2 at all. In fact, it has almost all the same pros and cons as the Ulefone Power 2, tit for tat. With that in mind, the K6000 Plus is also a good option for a Mediatek battery phone, and the camera is the weakest part of this phone so far.It is very close, too close to call as to whether the Ulefone or the Oukitel is a better device. that being said, if you go either way both the Ulefone and Oukitel perform quite similar. However, the K6000 Plus and the Ulefone Power 2 both face competition with the Redmi Note 4X, and that is still the biggest challenge MediaTek battery phones face today. Buy the Oukitel K6000 PlusToo close to callOukitel K6000 Plus Video ReviewI guess no one knew this small company a couple of months ago but now almost everybody is talking about them 鈥 and for a VERY good reason if I might add. Geotel is one of the new additions in the mobile phone industry during the past few months and they already managed to produce a very decent budget Android smartphone, called Geotel Note. Have a look at its review to find out our thoughts about it.Geotel Note聽SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MT6737 ProcessorDisplay5.5″聽IPS – 1280 x 720 (HD 720)RAM3GB LPDDR3Storage16GB eMMC – microSD聽slotOperating SystemAndroid 6.0 MarshmallowCameras13MP, 8MP frontBattery3200mAhPhysical Dimensions110g, 152.3 x 76.8 x 8.2 mm UNBOXING聽Geotel NoteIt鈥檚 always typical to expect nothing from a鈥 budget Android smartphone when it comes to its package, but this isn鈥檛 the case with Geotel Note, since the device comes with several extra accessories, such as a screen protector and a hard plastic case.Pretty decent package for this price, I have seen less extra accessories given for much more expensive smartphones, so I cannot complain.Geotel Note聽鈥 Hardware (Camera, Display, Chipset)OK, let鈥檚 see how this little guy performs in everyday use. First of all, it鈥檚 made entirely out of plastic but still it doesn鈥檛 feel cheap at all. On the contrary, it has a special glossy finish on its back and the display (5,5 inch –聽 HD resolution) looks and feels impressive for a phone of this category.The Geotel Note packs an 8Mpixels front facing camera (f/2.0, 84 degrees wide angle), along with notification LED next to it, and customizable on-screen navigation keys on the front (yes, you can swipe to make them disappear and re-appear if you wish or change their placement).As we mentioned earlier, one of its most premium features is the glossy/shiny back plate that impresses everyone who looks at it, but on the other side 鈥 beware- it鈥檚 a huge fingerprint 鈥渕agnet鈥 as you will see from the images below.Below the back plate you will find room for 2 SIM cards along with a micro SD slot and a fully replaceable 3200 mAh Li-Ion battery. In the same area, you will also find the main camera of the device, a 13Mpixels shooter with LED flash and several functions (autofocus, touch focus, video recording, f/2.0, 5P camera lens etc.)I really liked the sound from its speaker for use with ringtones, but the loudspeaker could be a bit better in terms of quality and volume output during phone calls.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on Telegram On the other hand, I had no problem with the GPS signal of the device, so I could use it with Google Maps with no problems at all. The same goes for its WiFi/Bluetooth signal, nothing to impressive but also, nothing to blame it for.Geotel Note –聽Battery lifeGeotel Note 4G聽has used a removeable 3200mAh battery to power MT6737 SoC聽and battery life understandably won鈥檛 be great. After some testing, I was able to get around 3-4 hours of screen on time before the battery bar hit 0% and this was almost exclusively light use; web browsing, social networking聽and messenger with the occasional light game and photo.Heavy users will kill the battery before the day ends, medium users can stretch the battery out for a maximum of a day while light users won鈥檛 see this phone dying before the day completes.Geotel Note聽鈥撀燑/strong>Software, Benchmarks聽Let鈥檚 have a look now at its software. The device runs on stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow and it鈥檚 equipped with a quad-core MTK6737 chip, along with 3GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage. The device has average benchmark scores that clearly depict on its everyday performance but no one can ask for more, given the fact that its price is under 90$ most of the time. You will surely enjoy聽the usability of stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow (no significant lags, no extra battery hog applications, no bloatware 3rd party apps) and the device also comes with some extra gesture/motion controls such as “5 fingers back”, that enables us to return to Home just by shrinking the display with 5 fingers. Geotel Note –聽Camera qualityYou can鈥檛 possibly expect awesome imaging results from a budget Chinese smartphone, no matter what its camera resolution might be. The Geotel Note has a decent main camera, one that can offer quite pleasing photos in daylight conditions, but still most of the time its dynamic range is usually off and sometimes the colors may look washed out. Don鈥檛 complain however, these are good photos for a 90$ smartphone, be sure of this. I wouldn’t expect much from its selfie camera however. It’s has an 8MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 84 degrees wide-angle view but still it is plagued by slow viewfinder speed and average ISO in low light conditions. Don’t be alarmed: you will be able to shoot great selfies for social media sharing, but -as I told you- I wouldn’t expect something more.What I LikedGreat display, with impressive performance even under direct sunlightPure Android 6.0, no bloatware, no battery hog appsGreat value for moneyWhat Could Be ImprovedMediocre battery lifeAverage chipset powerCould use a better selfie cameraGeotel Note 鈥 Our impressionsI think Geotel has a winner here. I always try to judge a smartphone for its price and functions as a whole, and the Geotel Note 4G is one of the most decent, budget Android smartphones around. It surely deserves your attention if you are searching for an affordable smartphone with some decent specifications.

I guess no one knew this small company a couple of months ago but now almost everybody is talking about them 鈥 and for a VERY good reason if I might add. Geotel is one of the new additions in the mobile phone industry during the past few months and they already managed to produce a very decent budget Android smartphone, called Geotel Note. Have a look at its review to find out our thoughts about it.Geotel Note聽SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MT6737 ProcessorDisplay5.5″聽IPS – 1280 x 720 (HD 720)RAM3GB LPDDR3Storage16GB eMMC – microSD聽slotOperating SystemAndroid 6.0 MarshmallowCameras13MP, 8MP frontBattery3200mAhPhysical Dimensions110g, 152.3 x 76.8 x 8.2 mm UNBOXING聽Geotel NoteIt鈥檚 always typical to expect nothing from a鈥 budget Android smartphone when it comes to its package, but this isn鈥檛 the case with Geotel Note, since the device comes with several extra accessories, such as a screen protector and a hard plastic case.Pretty decent package for this price, I have seen less extra accessories given for much more expensive smartphones, so I cannot complain.Geotel Note聽鈥 Hardware (Camera, Display, Chipset)OK, let鈥檚 see how this little guy performs in everyday use. First of all, it鈥檚 made entirely out of plastic but still it doesn鈥檛 feel cheap at all. On the contrary, it has a special glossy finish on its back and the display (5,5 inch –聽 HD resolution) looks and feels impressive for a phone of this category.The Geotel Note packs an 8Mpixels front facing camera (f/2.0, 84 degrees wide angle), along with notification LED next to it, and customizable on-screen navigation keys on the front (yes, you can swipe to make them disappear and re-appear if you wish or change their placement).As we mentioned earlier, one of its most premium features is the glossy/shiny back plate that impresses everyone who looks at it, but on the other side 鈥 beware- it鈥檚 a huge fingerprint 鈥渕agnet鈥 as you will see from the images below.Below the back plate you will find room for 2 SIM cards along with a micro SD slot and a fully replaceable 3200 mAh Li-Ion battery. In the same area, you will also find the main camera of the device, a 13Mpixels shooter with LED flash and several functions (autofocus, touch focus, video recording, f/2.0, 5P camera lens etc.)I really liked the sound from its speaker for use with ringtones, but the loudspeaker could be a bit better in terms of quality and volume output during phone calls.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on Telegram On the other hand, I had no problem with the GPS signal of the device, so I could use it with Google Maps with no problems at all. The same goes for its WiFi/Bluetooth signal, nothing to impressive but also, nothing to blame it for.Geotel Note –聽Battery lifeGeotel Note 4G聽has used a removeable 3200mAh battery to power MT6737 SoC聽and battery life understandably won鈥檛 be great. After some testing, I was able to get around 3-4 hours of screen on time before the battery bar hit 0% and this was almost exclusively light use; web browsing, social networking聽and messenger with the occasional light game and photo.Heavy users will kill the battery before the day ends, medium users can stretch the battery out for a maximum of a day while light users won鈥檛 see this phone dying before the day completes.Geotel Note聽鈥撀燑/strong>Software, Benchmarks聽Let鈥檚 have a look now at its software. The device runs on stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow and it鈥檚 equipped with a quad-core MTK6737 chip, along with 3GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage. The device has average benchmark scores that clearly depict on its everyday performance but no one can ask for more, given the fact that its price is under 90$ most of the time. You will surely enjoy聽the usability of stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow (no significant lags, no extra battery hog applications, no bloatware 3rd party apps) and the device also comes with some extra gesture/motion controls such as “5 fingers back”, that enables us to return to Home just by shrinking the display with 5 fingers. Geotel Note –聽Camera qualityYou can鈥檛 possibly expect awesome imaging results from a budget Chinese smartphone, no matter what its camera resolution might be. The Geotel Note has a decent main camera, one that can offer quite pleasing photos in daylight conditions, but still most of the time its dynamic range is usually off and sometimes the colors may look washed out. Don鈥檛 complain however, these are good photos for a 90$ smartphone, be sure of this. I wouldn’t expect much from its selfie camera however. It’s has an 8MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 84 degrees wide-angle view but still it is plagued by slow viewfinder speed and average ISO in low light conditions. Don’t be alarmed: you will be able to shoot great selfies for social media sharing, but -as I told you- I wouldn’t expect something more.What I LikedGreat display, with impressive performance even under direct sunlightPure Android 6.0, no bloatware, no battery hog appsGreat value for moneyWhat Could Be ImprovedMediocre battery lifeAverage chipset powerCould use a better selfie cameraGeotel Note 鈥 Our impressionsI think Geotel has a winner here. I always try to judge a smartphone for its price and functions as a whole, and the Geotel Note 4G is one of the most decent, budget Android smartphones around. It surely deserves your attention if you are searching for an affordable smartphone with some decent specifications.The large phablet market is slightly less crowded than other segments of said market, but it is competitive nonetheless. Elephone has a new budget entry into this market with its 6鈥 Elephone C1 Max.Let’s check out how well this phone fits in the scheme of things and if it’s worthy of your hard earned money.Elephone C1 Max ReviewThe Elephone C1 Max tries to offer quite a few things. It is cheap, starting at $129 on presale while sporting a full metal body. Specswise, it is entry level, an MTK6737 processor and 2GB of RAM.It also offers dual cameras, not in the style of the Huawei P9 or the UMi Z Pro, but rather the Redmi Pro with one 13MP rear camera and a second 5MP camera for Bokeh. However, this phone faces strong competition in the large phablet market if you do not mind forgoing the dual camera setup.Quite possibly its strongest competitor is the Bluboo Maya Max which sports the faster MTK6750 processor and costs about $20 more. Let鈥檚 see if it鈥檚 worth it.Phablet with dual camerasElephone C1 Max SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6737 Quad Core ProcessorDisplay6.0″ 1280×720 px, LCDRAM2GBStorage32GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras13MP + 5MP Rear, 2MP front (5MP interpolation)Battery2800mAhPhysical Dimensions227g, 164 x 83 x 8.5mmBig thanks to Elephone for providing this review unit. You can purchase one here.Elephone C1 Max HardwareI鈥檝e never been a fan of phablets, and I鈥檓 still not. The phone is huge, edging out even the Nexus 6 and the Bluboo Maya Max in size, albeit slightly. This is a two handed affair for all but basketball players and any other sport where huge hands are a benefit.It鈥檚 quite a heavy phone as well at 227g so I know at least one GizChina reader who will never purchase this device.I鈥檓 a huge fan of the build quality and the colour though. Deep red (rose gold is considered closer to pink) metal phones are not very common in the wild, with the recently released Red iPhone and Red Oneplus 3 coming to mind.So those of you who are looking for red devices are in luck, as the Elephone C1 Max comes in Red (dubbed wine red). The red body is quite eye catching and unique and I had one person asking whether this was the new red iPhone 7 Plus. It is deeper red than the new iPhone though.The body is full metal and feels good in hand. At the same time, it feels sturdy and durable as well, the slightly grained metal texture imparts a solid sense of feel and traction to the device. The curves on the front and the back make it slightly easier to hold as well.On the front we find the capacitive buttons that do not light up below the screen and they are dot matrix style. The front of my phone is black, and I cannot tell if there is a black bar going around the screen, but regardless this is still not a bezelless device.On the back we find the dual cameras as well as the fingerprint sensor. I found it slightly hard to reach because of my small hands, so again two hands are required this time.I absolutely love the build quality and colour of this phone, both of which are top notch. What I don鈥檛 like are the bezels, this phone could definitely be reduced in size as there is some bezel around the screen. The last rather unfair contention I have with this phone is the MicroUSB port. I want all phones to move to USB-C but that is probably too much to ask for a budget device.I love red metal phonesElephone C1 Max DisplayThe 6.0鈥 screen has a resolution of 1280×720. That works out to 244PPI, and in comparison a 5鈥 720p screen has 293PPI and a 5鈥 960×540 screen has 220PPI. That gives you an idea of what to expect from such a low resolution.There is a definite difference when I move from my Zuk Z2 which has almost double the PPI (440PPI) that this does. I suspect quite a few people will be turned off by this low resolution and I do not blame you. That being said, I quickly adjusted within 陆 an hour of using this phone and stopped noticing the low resolution.The screen itself is capable of producing some decent colours and contrast; no one will be blown away by what the screen is capable of showing but they won鈥檛 be disappointed by the colours and contrast either.Max brightness tops out around 400 nits which is respectable but still difficult to see in sunlight. There is Dragontrail glass protecting the screen and it does its job.Elephone C1 Max AudioThere is a single speaker on the bottom of the device and it pumps out decently loud audio but it is outstripped by more expensive phones like my Zuk Z2 or the UMi Z/Z Pro.Audio does start to distort slightly at loudest volume and there is a complete lack of bass as well when listening to audio.Elephone C1 Max Battery2800mAh is very small for such a large phone. I would think that Elephone could have fit a larger battery into such a large body, but that probably would have increased costs too much. I was not expecting great battery life out of this phone, and I didn鈥檛 get great battery life either.The maximum screen on time I could achieve was 3.5 hours, which would barely be enough for light users, let alone medium users. During that 3.5 hours of SOT, I browsed the web, browsed Reddit, and engaged in texting and social media. Nothing backbreaking like photos or gaming, so expect even less if you use your phone for that.Inadequate BatteryElephone C1 Max SoftwareI am very happy to see the latest Android 7.0 on this phone, and it is completely stock. Android 7.0 runs surprisingly fast on the MTK6737 quad core processor. Swiping between home screens is very fast and fluid and is most likely the result of well optimized software, as I鈥檝e had less than stellar experiences with other MTK6737 phones.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramOpening and closing apps also far exceeded my expectations. Light apps open instantly, medium apps hesitate for a microsecond before opening, and only the heaviest apps will cause the phone to pause for a significant amount of time before launching said app.As a device reviewer, I鈥檝e been spoilt with 4GB of Ram on my Zuk Z2, but multi-tasking on the 2GB C1 Max is quite fine. As long as you鈥檙e not constantly switching between 20 apps, the phone should more or less handle multi-tasking quite well. Because this is a 6鈥 device and Android 7.0 comes with new multi-window features, I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about that. You are able to run two apps side by side and it works decently well the for most part. Not all apps are compatible with multi-window and you do see slight lag if you run two apps at the same time.The fingerprint sensor on the back is decently fast, it unlocks the phone about as fast as the iPhone 6 which was no speed demon and is noticeably slower than other phones like the Redmi Note 4X. That being said, its speed is more than good enough for daily use. The sensor鈥檚 accuracy is pretty decent as well, it doesn鈥檛 reject my finger unless I have skin torn off or my fingers are wet.Moving on the gaming performance, the MTK6737 performs surprisingly well, it is able to play all the intense games on the play store with little to no stutter, but that is no endorsement of the MTK6737. Instead, the phone can handle games so well because the resolution is very low, and the MTK6737 can handle 720p games pretty easily. You won鈥檛 find much on the play store that you cannot play at a decent framerate.To be honest, performance even for a heavy user like me is not bad, I could conceivably see myself using this phone if my Zuk Z2 suddenly dies. Lighter users won鈥檛 find an issue here.Elephone C1 Max ConnectivityDouble check the network bands on this phone before you buy to ensure it works with your carrier. I was only able to get LTE in Ontario as the network bands did not support 3G in Canada.However, LTE performance is quite strong with me getting receptions in almost everywhere my dad鈥檚 iPhone gets LTE. Certain places like basements or large buildings saw that LTE drop though. WiFi, and Bluetooth are good, but GPS is definitely a little sluggish and sometimes likes to hop around, not enough to throw me off navigation though.Elephone C1 Max CameraIf you saw my UMi Z Pro review, I launched into a full blown explanation of why colour cameras are lower quality than monochrome cameras, and you can read that here. Sadly, the secondary camera here is only 5MP and does not capture monochrome or colour photos, it is purely there for Bokeh.The 13MP main camera isn鈥檛 the best. On the plus side, lower end cameras have definitely improved throughout the years, but lower end cameras weren鈥檛 great to begin with, so an improvement on a horrible product is a less horrible product. It captures sufficient detail but the camera is easily blown out if there is a strong light source pointed directly at the camera.Colours are adequate but not great, colours just are not very rich and saturated which is how many of us like to view pictures.Turning on HDR does fix some of that but it does not fix it completely. If you switch the phone into dual camera mode, the 5MP camera does an admirable job adding Bokeh to the shot, something I was not expecting.It adds Bokeh almost as naturally as the UMi Z Pro, and the Z Pro was not bad at adding Bokeh at all. However, the base picture captured on the C1 Max didn鈥檛 start out great, so you are adding Bokeh to a subpar photo.The front facing camera is 2MP (5MP interpolation) and is horrible.The video camera is capable of capturing up to 1080p and quality is not the best, video has sufficient detail but colours are washed out.Elephone C1 Max聽Camera Gallery Elephone C1 Max VerdictTo be honest, Elephone should have just used the 5MP camera as the front facing camera and ditched the dual camera concept altogether. But if they did, they would be losing out on the trend and the marketability of dual cameras, which is why I understand why they did it.However, that does not mean that I agree with that decision. This phone has three points that you have to be aware of before buying, the display, the battery, and the camera. The display is only 720p, you get around 3.5 hours of SOT, and the camera is not great. But on the other side of the fence, the phone is relatively cheap, has a very nice metal body, and runs the latest Android 7.0. Buy the Elephone C1 MaxAs someone who refuses to move up to 5.5鈥 devices, 6鈥 is just too big for me and using a phablet is almost out of the question for me personally. But if you are looking for a big phablet, your choices are much more limited, and if you鈥檙e looking for a large phablet (bigger than 5.5鈥? with a dual camera, you are even more limited with the C1 Max being one of the options out there.Elephone C1 Max Video Review

The large phablet market is slightly less crowded than other segments of said market, but it is competitive nonetheless. Elephone has a new budget entry into this market with its 6鈥 Elephone C1 Max.Let’s check out how well this phone fits in the scheme of things and if it’s worthy of your hard earned money.Elephone C1 Max ReviewThe Elephone C1 Max tries to offer quite a few things. It is cheap, starting at $129 on presale while sporting a full metal body. Specswise, it is entry level, an MTK6737 processor and 2GB of RAM.It also offers dual cameras, not in the style of the Huawei P9 or the UMi Z Pro, but rather the Redmi Pro with one 13MP rear camera and a second 5MP camera for Bokeh. However, this phone faces strong competition in the large phablet market if you do not mind forgoing the dual camera setup.Quite possibly its strongest competitor is the Bluboo Maya Max which sports the faster MTK6750 processor and costs about $20 more. Let鈥檚 see if it鈥檚 worth it.Phablet with dual camerasElephone C1 Max SpecificationsProcessorMediatek MTK6737 Quad Core ProcessorDisplay6.0″ 1280×720 px, LCDRAM2GBStorage32GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 7.0Cameras13MP + 5MP Rear, 2MP front (5MP interpolation)Battery2800mAhPhysical Dimensions227g, 164 x 83 x 8.5mmBig thanks to Elephone for providing this review unit. You can purchase one here.Elephone C1 Max HardwareI鈥檝e never been a fan of phablets, and I鈥檓 still not. The phone is huge, edging out even the Nexus 6 and the Bluboo Maya Max in size, albeit slightly. This is a two handed affair for all but basketball players and any other sport where huge hands are a benefit.It鈥檚 quite a heavy phone as well at 227g so I know at least one GizChina reader who will never purchase this device.I鈥檓 a huge fan of the build quality and the colour though. Deep red (rose gold is considered closer to pink) metal phones are not very common in the wild, with the recently released Red iPhone and Red Oneplus 3 coming to mind.So those of you who are looking for red devices are in luck, as the Elephone C1 Max comes in Red (dubbed wine red). The red body is quite eye catching and unique and I had one person asking whether this was the new red iPhone 7 Plus. It is deeper red than the new iPhone though.The body is full metal and feels good in hand. At the same time, it feels sturdy and durable as well, the slightly grained metal texture imparts a solid sense of feel and traction to the device. The curves on the front and the back make it slightly easier to hold as well.On the front we find the capacitive buttons that do not light up below the screen and they are dot matrix style. The front of my phone is black, and I cannot tell if there is a black bar going around the screen, but regardless this is still not a bezelless device.On the back we find the dual cameras as well as the fingerprint sensor. I found it slightly hard to reach because of my small hands, so again two hands are required this time.I absolutely love the build quality and colour of this phone, both of which are top notch. What I don鈥檛 like are the bezels, this phone could definitely be reduced in size as there is some bezel around the screen. The last rather unfair contention I have with this phone is the MicroUSB port. I want all phones to move to USB-C but that is probably too much to ask for a budget device.I love red metal phonesElephone C1 Max DisplayThe 6.0鈥 screen has a resolution of 1280×720. That works out to 244PPI, and in comparison a 5鈥 720p screen has 293PPI and a 5鈥 960×540 screen has 220PPI. That gives you an idea of what to expect from such a low resolution.There is a definite difference when I move from my Zuk Z2 which has almost double the PPI (440PPI) that this does. I suspect quite a few people will be turned off by this low resolution and I do not blame you. That being said, I quickly adjusted within 陆 an hour of using this phone and stopped noticing the low resolution.The screen itself is capable of producing some decent colours and contrast; no one will be blown away by what the screen is capable of showing but they won鈥檛 be disappointed by the colours and contrast either.Max brightness tops out around 400 nits which is respectable but still difficult to see in sunlight. There is Dragontrail glass protecting the screen and it does its job.Elephone C1 Max AudioThere is a single speaker on the bottom of the device and it pumps out decently loud audio but it is outstripped by more expensive phones like my Zuk Z2 or the UMi Z/Z Pro.Audio does start to distort slightly at loudest volume and there is a complete lack of bass as well when listening to audio.Elephone C1 Max Battery2800mAh is very small for such a large phone. I would think that Elephone could have fit a larger battery into such a large body, but that probably would have increased costs too much. I was not expecting great battery life out of this phone, and I didn鈥檛 get great battery life either.The maximum screen on time I could achieve was 3.5 hours, which would barely be enough for light users, let alone medium users. During that 3.5 hours of SOT, I browsed the web, browsed Reddit, and engaged in texting and social media. Nothing backbreaking like photos or gaming, so expect even less if you use your phone for that.Inadequate BatteryElephone C1 Max SoftwareI am very happy to see the latest Android 7.0 on this phone, and it is completely stock. Android 7.0 runs surprisingly fast on the MTK6737 quad core processor. Swiping between home screens is very fast and fluid and is most likely the result of well optimized software, as I鈥檝e had less than stellar experiences with other MTK6737 phones.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramOpening and closing apps also far exceeded my expectations. Light apps open instantly, medium apps hesitate for a microsecond before opening, and only the heaviest apps will cause the phone to pause for a significant amount of time before launching said app.As a device reviewer, I鈥檝e been spoilt with 4GB of Ram on my Zuk Z2, but multi-tasking on the 2GB C1 Max is quite fine. As long as you鈥檙e not constantly switching between 20 apps, the phone should more or less handle multi-tasking quite well. Because this is a 6鈥 device and Android 7.0 comes with new multi-window features, I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about that. You are able to run two apps side by side and it works decently well the for most part. Not all apps are compatible with multi-window and you do see slight lag if you run two apps at the same time.The fingerprint sensor on the back is decently fast, it unlocks the phone about as fast as the iPhone 6 which was no speed demon and is noticeably slower than other phones like the Redmi Note 4X. That being said, its speed is more than good enough for daily use. The sensor鈥檚 accuracy is pretty decent as well, it doesn鈥檛 reject my finger unless I have skin torn off or my fingers are wet.Moving on the gaming performance, the MTK6737 performs surprisingly well, it is able to play all the intense games on the play store with little to no stutter, but that is no endorsement of the MTK6737. Instead, the phone can handle games so well because the resolution is very low, and the MTK6737 can handle 720p games pretty easily. You won鈥檛 find much on the play store that you cannot play at a decent framerate.To be honest, performance even for a heavy user like me is not bad, I could conceivably see myself using this phone if my Zuk Z2 suddenly dies. Lighter users won鈥檛 find an issue here.Elephone C1 Max ConnectivityDouble check the network bands on this phone before you buy to ensure it works with your carrier. I was only able to get LTE in Ontario as the network bands did not support 3G in Canada.However, LTE performance is quite strong with me getting receptions in almost everywhere my dad鈥檚 iPhone gets LTE. Certain places like basements or large buildings saw that LTE drop though. WiFi, and Bluetooth are good, but GPS is definitely a little sluggish and sometimes likes to hop around, not enough to throw me off navigation though.Elephone C1 Max CameraIf you saw my UMi Z Pro review, I launched into a full blown explanation of why colour cameras are lower quality than monochrome cameras, and you can read that here. Sadly, the secondary camera here is only 5MP and does not capture monochrome or colour photos, it is purely there for Bokeh.The 13MP main camera isn鈥檛 the best. On the plus side, lower end cameras have definitely improved throughout the years, but lower end cameras weren鈥檛 great to begin with, so an improvement on a horrible product is a less horrible product. It captures sufficient detail but the camera is easily blown out if there is a strong light source pointed directly at the camera.Colours are adequate but not great, colours just are not very rich and saturated which is how many of us like to view pictures.Turning on HDR does fix some of that but it does not fix it completely. If you switch the phone into dual camera mode, the 5MP camera does an admirable job adding Bokeh to the shot, something I was not expecting.It adds Bokeh almost as naturally as the UMi Z Pro, and the Z Pro was not bad at adding Bokeh at all. However, the base picture captured on the C1 Max didn鈥檛 start out great, so you are adding Bokeh to a subpar photo.The front facing camera is 2MP (5MP interpolation) and is horrible.The video camera is capable of capturing up to 1080p and quality is not the best, video has sufficient detail but colours are washed out.Elephone C1 Max聽Camera Gallery Elephone C1 Max VerdictTo be honest, Elephone should have just used the 5MP camera as the front facing camera and ditched the dual camera concept altogether. But if they did, they would be losing out on the trend and the marketability of dual cameras, which is why I understand why they did it.However, that does not mean that I agree with that decision. This phone has three points that you have to be aware of before buying, the display, the battery, and the camera. The display is only 720p, you get around 3.5 hours of SOT, and the camera is not great. But on the other side of the fence, the phone is relatively cheap, has a very nice metal body, and runs the latest Android 7.0. Buy the Elephone C1 MaxAs someone who refuses to move up to 5.5鈥 devices, 6鈥 is just too big for me and using a phablet is almost out of the question for me personally. But if you are looking for a big phablet, your choices are much more limited, and if you鈥檙e looking for a large phablet (bigger than 5.5鈥? with a dual camera, you are even more limited with the C1 Max being one of the options out there.Elephone C1 Max Video ReviewThe first thing to get out of the way is UMi鈥檚 rebranding to UMiDigi. I鈥檓 personally not a fan, as UMi is much more recognizeable than UMiDigi, with the added benefit of being less confusing.Now with that out of the way, UMi has been on a roll lately releasing phones with many 鈥渇irsts鈥 and some gimmicks. The UMi Plus E was the first phone to use the Helio P20 processor, the UMi Z was the first to use the Helio X27, and now the UMi Z Pro is the first MTK device with identical cameras on the back, similar to what you see in phones like the Huawei P9 and the iPhone 7.UMi Z Pro ReviewThe specifications here are truly flagship worthy, a Helio X27 processor, 4GB of RAM, and now, dual cameras. It also has a large 3780mAh battery that will make it difficult for anyone to run down in one day. However, I do feel that UMi missed the boat in terms of marketing.They did not properly explain the advantages of using one colour and one monochrome camera, one that could have been very beneficial (more details in the camera section below).A true dual camera phoneUMi Z Pro SpecificationsProcessorMediatek Helio X27 ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1920×1080 px, Sharp LCDRAM4GBStorage32GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 6.0Cameras2x Sony, 1x Samsung 13MP CamerasBattery3780mAhPhysical Dimensions1.3kg, 76 x 156 x 8.2 mm UMi Z Pro HardwareThis phone is not small. In the post 鈥淢i Mix鈥 age, a 156x76mm phone is definitely sizeable. If you have small hands like me, the size could make you think twice about buying this phone as your daily driver.It is very slim, standing at 8.2mm which is quite a feat considering there are three 13MP Samsung cameras and a 3780mAh battery. The curved front and back edges do help in making this phone feel smaller than it really is, but it definitely can鈥檛 pass for a 5鈥 device.The build quality here is another story. They improved on the build and design of the UMi Plus E, which is quite a feat. The aerospace grade aluminum feels exquisite to the touch but is a little slippery. It鈥檚 not as slippery as glass, but it鈥檚 bad enough to be a minor complaint.The cameras do protrude out the back but this is necessary to achieve that 8.2mm thickness. My usual response to cameras sticking out of thin phones doesn鈥檛 apply here; they already put a huge battery to the UMi Z Pro. One sticking point I鈥檝e seen with the build of the UMi Z/Z Pro is the removal of a physical home button, but rather similar to the Mi5s鈥 ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, the button cannot be depressed but operates via a tap or a hold.I鈥檓 actually a fan of that so you won鈥檛 hear any complaints from me. There are also capacitive off screen buttons as well.UMi (or UMiDIGI) has created one handsome and well built phone.Handsome, well builtUMi Z Pro DisplayThere is a 1920×1080 Sharp branded IGZO screen that produces some good colours and is sharp and clear. Yes, it鈥檚 a good screen, but it also isn鈥檛 anything special. Max brightness tops out at 500 nits, making it easy enough to see in direct sunlight.Dragontrail glass was also used in place of Gorilla Glass and for all intents and purposes it works well.UMi Z Pro AudioOne of the marketing points that UMi used was how great the audio was going to be because of its dedicated audio chip that was capable of this and that. At the end of the day, the audio output from the phone is good but not amazing.Audio can be deafeningly loud and like UMi claimed, there is no distortion at max volume. Audio quality is quite good with clear mids and highs and sufficient bass.UMi Z Pro BatteryBattery life should no doubt be good, as the 3780mAh sony battery indicates. However, I don鈥檛 expect it to get better battery life than the Helio X20 Redmi Note 4 or even come close to the Redmi 4 Prime. Turns out I鈥檓 mostly right.I was able to get around 6 hours of screen on time over a 16 hour day with about 10-15% left. This use consisted mostly of web browsing and some texting, with the occasional game and photo. I performed a couple of tests as well and was able to browse the web for about 9 hours straight while I could play back video for around 11 hours straight as well.Battery life here is definitely good and will not be a dealbreaker. Even heavy users will be hard pressed to drain the battery completely in a day, and medium users can get 2 days easily.Good BatteryUMi Z Pro SoftwareThere is a completely stock version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow on the phone with the bare essentials, a very welcome change from something like MIUI or EMUI. Usage speed is very good, launching and switching apps is lightning fast, as fast as any flagship you will find.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramHowever, I find certain actions like swiping feel ever so slightly slower than top end phones like an iPhone or S7. I don鈥檛 know what is causing it, could be input lag or just software optimization, but either way it鈥檚 a very small difference.The fingerprint sensor is fast, but the phone is not and let me explain.The sensor is incredibly fast at recognizing your finger and sending the 鈥渁ll good鈥 signal to the phone itself, but the phone takes a long time to unlock and wake the phone from sleep. If the phone screen is already on, the phone unlocks in a jiffy. If the screen is off, it鈥檚 quite slow.The phone multitasks like a champ and has no problem at all. It performs as well as the UMi Plus E and better in some cases as the SoC in the Z Pro is faster. The phone also handles gaming beautifully with no stutter detected at all.UMi Z Pro ConnectivityCheck whether this phone is supported by your carriers before buying it, that goes without saying. I was able to get reception wherever my Zuk Z2 got reception, with a couple of exceptions such as basements, deep in buildings, etc. Speeds are quite good though. WiFi is fast as well, bluetooth works fine, and GPS was quite accurate as well.UMi Z Pro CameraThe dual cameras are setup so that one takes regular pictures, and the other takes monochrome (or black and white) pictures. The long and short of it is that capturing colour pictures lowers the quality of said picture, so capturing a monochrome photo and a separate colour photo should theoretically get around that.Skip this next paragraph if you already know or do not have any interest in finding out why colour photos lower picture quality.Since a monochrome picture is just black and white, the only information it has to capture is how bright and dark each pixel is. The normal camera has to capture each pixel鈥檚 brightness AND colour, and how all cameras capture colour is by utilizing light filters.Each pixel in the camera is given its own filter of only ONE COLOUR, and each pixel will alternate between red, green, and blue filters kind of like a chessboard with three colours. The result is that each pixel will only let one colour of light through, either red, green, or blue. However, in order to create an image, just a single red value is not enough, but a green and a blue value is needed as well.So we use some fancy math to take surrounding values and calculate the approximate RGB values for each tile. The downsides of this is that the fancy math basically cuts resolution in half, so if you had a 13MP camera, the resulting photo would just be 6.5MP.The other downside would be that the filter cuts the amount of light that enters the sensor, since it only lets one colour of light come in, and blocks the other two, so theoretically it cuts out 66.66% of light coming in. Therefore, a dual camera setup should effectively negate that problem, giving you full 13MP photos with 3x the light.The UMi Z’s 13MP camera was not a bad camera at all. It took deep, saturated colours if a bit underexposed, and detail was definitely not bad. This dual camera setup improves on the UMi Z. The dual camera combination works well together in melding the colour and detail into one photo, resulting in some photos that are able to be zoomed in quite far before grain starts to show.Colours were punchy and vibrant but still fall slightly behind my Zuk Z2. However, low light shots are difficult to make out because of how soft the photos are. Without any OIS (Optical Image Stabilization), I guess the effects of both cameras shaking at the same time is difficult for the camera to resolve and the resulting picture is soft. Grain is kept quite low though. However, if I place the camera on my tripod, pictures turn out quite well.UMi Z Pro Camera Gallery UMi Z Pro VerdictI really like the UMi Z Pro as a phone, even though its the exact same as the UMi Z except for the camera. I was initially quite excited and skeptical about this dual camera implementation, and while it still doesn’t match up to something like the Huawei P9, it does work quite well.This phone is more expensive than the UMi Z, and whether or not that dual camera setup is worth the extra cash is up to you. I personally would pay the extra $20 or so for the dual camera setup, but either way the UMi Z and the Pro are both good devices. UMiDigi Z Pro: Buy Nowdual camera for $20 moreUMi Z Pro Video ReviewThe first thing to get out of the way is UMi鈥檚 rebranding to UMiDigi. I鈥檓 personally not a fan, as UMi is much more recognizeable than UMiDigi, with the added benefit of being less confusing.Now with that out of the way, UMi has been on a roll lately releasing phones with many 鈥渇irsts鈥 and some gimmicks. The UMi Plus E was the first phone to use the Helio P20 processor, the UMi Z was the first to use the Helio X27, and now the UMi Z Pro is the first MTK device with identical cameras on the back, similar to what you see in phones like the Huawei P9 and the iPhone 7.UMi Z Pro ReviewThe specifications here are truly flagship worthy, a Helio X27 processor, 4GB of RAM, and now, dual cameras. It also has a large 3780mAh battery that will make it difficult for anyone to run down in one day. However, I do feel that UMi missed the boat in terms of marketing.They did not properly explain the advantages of using one colour and one monochrome camera, one that could have been very beneficial (more details in the camera section below).A true dual camera phoneUMi Z Pro SpecificationsProcessorMediatek Helio X27 ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1920×1080 px, Sharp LCDRAM4GBStorage32GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 6.0Cameras2x Sony, 1x Samsung 13MP CamerasBattery3780mAhPhysical Dimensions1.3kg, 76 x 156 x 8.2 mm UMi Z Pro HardwareThis phone is not small. In the post 鈥淢i Mix鈥 age, a 156x76mm phone is definitely sizeable. If you have small hands like me, the size could make you think twice about buying this phone as your daily driver.It is very slim, standing at 8.2mm which is quite a feat considering there are three 13MP Samsung cameras and a 3780mAh battery. The curved front and back edges do help in making this phone feel smaller than it really is, but it definitely can鈥檛 pass for a 5鈥 device.The build quality here is another story. They improved on the build and design of the UMi Plus E, which is quite a feat. The aerospace grade aluminum feels exquisite to the touch but is a little slippery. It鈥檚 not as slippery as glass, but it鈥檚 bad enough to be a minor complaint.The cameras do protrude out the back but this is necessary to achieve that 8.2mm thickness. My usual response to cameras sticking out of thin phones doesn鈥檛 apply here; they already put a huge battery to the UMi Z Pro. One sticking point I鈥檝e seen with the build of the UMi Z/Z Pro is the removal of a physical home button, but rather similar to the Mi5s鈥 ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, the button cannot be depressed but operates via a tap or a hold.I鈥檓 actually a fan of that so you won鈥檛 hear any complaints from me. There are also capacitive off screen buttons as well.UMi (or UMiDIGI) has created one handsome and well built phone.Handsome, well builtUMi Z Pro DisplayThere is a 1920×1080 Sharp branded IGZO screen that produces some good colours and is sharp and clear. Yes, it鈥檚 a good screen, but it also isn鈥檛 anything special. Max brightness tops out at 500 nits, making it easy enough to see in direct sunlight.Dragontrail glass was also used in place of Gorilla Glass and for all intents and purposes it works well.UMi Z Pro AudioOne of the marketing points that UMi used was how great the audio was going to be because of its dedicated audio chip that was capable of this and that. At the end of the day, the audio output from the phone is good but not amazing.Audio can be deafeningly loud and like UMi claimed, there is no distortion at max volume. Audio quality is quite good with clear mids and highs and sufficient bass.UMi Z Pro BatteryBattery life should no doubt be good, as the 3780mAh sony battery indicates. However, I don鈥檛 expect it to get better battery life than the Helio X20 Redmi Note 4 or even come close to the Redmi 4 Prime. Turns out I鈥檓 mostly right.I was able to get around 6 hours of screen on time over a 16 hour day with about 10-15% left. This use consisted mostly of web browsing and some texting, with the occasional game and photo. I performed a couple of tests as well and was able to browse the web for about 9 hours straight while I could play back video for around 11 hours straight as well.Battery life here is definitely good and will not be a dealbreaker. Even heavy users will be hard pressed to drain the battery completely in a day, and medium users can get 2 days easily.Good BatteryUMi Z Pro SoftwareThere is a completely stock version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow on the phone with the bare essentials, a very welcome change from something like MIUI or EMUI. Usage speed is very good, launching and switching apps is lightning fast, as fast as any flagship you will find.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramHowever, I find certain actions like swiping feel ever so slightly slower than top end phones like an iPhone or S7. I don鈥檛 know what is causing it, could be input lag or just software optimization, but either way it鈥檚 a very small difference.The fingerprint sensor is fast, but the phone is not and let me explain.The sensor is incredibly fast at recognizing your finger and sending the 鈥渁ll good鈥 signal to the phone itself, but the phone takes a long time to unlock and wake the phone from sleep. If the phone screen is already on, the phone unlocks in a jiffy. If the screen is off, it鈥檚 quite slow.The phone multitasks like a champ and has no problem at all. It performs as well as the UMi Plus E and better in some cases as the SoC in the Z Pro is faster. The phone also handles gaming beautifully with no stutter detected at all.UMi Z Pro ConnectivityCheck whether this phone is supported by your carriers before buying it, that goes without saying. I was able to get reception wherever my Zuk Z2 got reception, with a couple of exceptions such as basements, deep in buildings, etc. Speeds are quite good though. WiFi is fast as well, bluetooth works fine, and GPS was quite accurate as well.UMi Z Pro CameraThe dual cameras are setup so that one takes regular pictures, and the other takes monochrome (or black and white) pictures. The long and short of it is that capturing colour pictures lowers the quality of said picture, so capturing a monochrome photo and a separate colour photo should theoretically get around that.Skip this next paragraph if you already know or do not have any interest in finding out why colour photos lower picture quality.Since a monochrome picture is just black and white, the only information it has to capture is how bright and dark each pixel is. The normal camera has to capture each pixel鈥檚 brightness AND colour, and how all cameras capture colour is by utilizing light filters.Each pixel in the camera is given its own filter of only ONE COLOUR, and each pixel will alternate between red, green, and blue filters kind of like a chessboard with three colours. The result is that each pixel will only let one colour of light through, either red, green, or blue. However, in order to create an image, just a single red value is not enough, but a green and a blue value is needed as well.So we use some fancy math to take surrounding values and calculate the approximate RGB values for each tile. The downsides of this is that the fancy math basically cuts resolution in half, so if you had a 13MP camera, the resulting photo would just be 6.5MP.The other downside would be that the filter cuts the amount of light that enters the sensor, since it only lets one colour of light come in, and blocks the other two, so theoretically it cuts out 66.66% of light coming in. Therefore, a dual camera setup should effectively negate that problem, giving you full 13MP photos with 3x the light.The UMi Z’s 13MP camera was not a bad camera at all. It took deep, saturated colours if a bit underexposed, and detail was definitely not bad. This dual camera setup improves on the UMi Z. The dual camera combination works well together in melding the colour and detail into one photo, resulting in some photos that are able to be zoomed in quite far before grain starts to show.Colours were punchy and vibrant but still fall slightly behind my Zuk Z2. However, low light shots are difficult to make out because of how soft the photos are. Without any OIS (Optical Image Stabilization), I guess the effects of both cameras shaking at the same time is difficult for the camera to resolve and the resulting picture is soft. Grain is kept quite low though. However, if I place the camera on my tripod, pictures turn out quite well.UMi Z Pro Camera Gallery UMi Z Pro VerdictI really like the UMi Z Pro as a phone, even though its the exact same as the UMi Z except for the camera. I was initially quite excited and skeptical about this dual camera implementation, and while it still doesn’t match up to something like the Huawei P9, it does work quite well.This phone is more expensive than the UMi Z, and whether or not that dual camera setup is worth the extra cash is up to you. I personally would pay the extra $20 or so for the dual camera setup, but either way the UMi Z and the Pro are both good devices. UMiDigi Z Pro: Buy Nowdual camera for $20 moreUMi Z Pro Video ReviewNow why does this phone exist? I ask this as a genuine question, when great phones like the Redmi Note 4 (review here) and the Redmi 4 Prime (review here) already exist.Let鈥檚 switch gears for a moment. Why did Xiaomi choose to use the Snapdragon 625 in a Note device when the Note 3 used a 650 series chip? This decision seems like it would cannibalize sales of the aforementioned Redmi 4 Prime.Nevertheless, the Redmi Note 4X is another great phone by Xiaomi that doesn鈥檛 need to exist.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X Review5.5鈥 devices are still the most popular screen size by far with individuals like me (who prefer smaller phones) being the exception. The Redmi Note 4X is almost identical to the Redmi 4, but that might not be a bad thing as the Redmi 4 Prime was a great device in its own right.I was seriously contemplating replacing my Zuk Z2 with the Redmi 4 Prime, but I was not willing to give up the speed of a Snapdragon 820 for the battery life of the Prime. However I am considering making the switch again.A 5.5鈥 Redmi 4Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X SpecificationsProcessorSnapdragon 625 ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1920×1080 px, Sharp LCDRAM3GBStorage32GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 6.0 (MIUI 8.1)Cameras13MP/5MP CamerasBattery4100mAhPhysical Dimensions0.175kg, 76 x 151 x 8.4 mmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X HardwareOther companies are scrambling to catch up to Xiaomi鈥檚 Mi Mix, so this was (one of) Xiaomi鈥檚 opportunities to at least shrink the bezels on its Redmi Note series of phones. However, the physical dimensions of this phone are the exact same size as the older Redmi Note 4. It retains the same size, a similar shape, and the same amount of bezels as its older big brother. It鈥檚 a bit unwieldy for someone with small hands (like me), but the curved back and chamfered edges to help with that.The black bar around the screen is very apparent on the white version of this phone and I had wished this was eliminated as it is unsightly enough to be a dealbreaker for some. We have backlit capacitive buttons below the screen and the fingerprint sensor on the back. The hardware buttons are slightly mushy and lack the crisp feedback on other more expensive devices.Xiaomi most likely used the exact same physical design as the older Redmi Note 4 to reduce costs, but the phone could have been smaller. The last point of contention I have with the build is the use of the older MicroUSB port instead of the newer USB-C port, but I suspect that not everyone will have an issue with that.Well built, a little bigXiaomi Redmi Note 4X DisplayThe Note 4X sports a 5.5鈥 full HD IPS display and it is quite a pleasure to use. Colours are quite vivid and deep and the display is sharp. However, devices in the $200 range all feature similarly great screens so the excellent display used in here stands out a lot less. reading news on the screen is razor sharp and is generally a pleasure to use.Maximum brightness is good at around 450 nits, easily viewable in direct sunlight. However, the display is reflective so it might be tough to see it in strong sunlight. Viewing angles are great though.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X AudioSpeaker quality here is pretty much the exact same as the older Redmi Note 4, meaning decently loud sound with some slight distortion in certain tracks at max volume. However lower the volume a tad and its gone. Mids and highs are decently clear but bass is lacking in this phone.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X BatteryIf you go back to my Redmi 4 Prime review, you will remember that the Prime blew me, a battery fanatic, away completely. The Redmi Note 4X for all intents and purposes should get the same, if slightly less battery life than the Redmi 4 Prime due to the bigger screen. I was only able to perform one round of battery tests due to the incredible length of each test, and battery life is absolutely amazing.I got 11 hours of screen on time with 18% left at the end of the day. This was incredibly heavy use, with about 6 hours of intense gaming, an hour of snapping photos, 2 hours of Youtube, and the rest was web browsing, SMS, news. This actually edges out my Redmi 4 Prime battery tests which you can check out here. Becaue the battery life on the Redmi 4 Prime and Note 4X are so similar, I thought some further anecdotal evidence might be useful here.My sister who uses my Redmi 4 Prime regularly ends the day with about 80% battery life. This is mostly Snapchat, Snapchat, Snapchat, and a bit of Instagram. She has gone 4-5 days without charging before, but most of the time she still plugs it in at the end of the day by habit.Quick charge via the microUSB cable stands at about 2 hours to a full charge.Heavy users like me can get through two days of heavy use with no issue while light and medium users will be able to get at least 4 days of light use.Stupid long BatteryGizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramXiaomi Redmi Note 4X SoftwareBy this point I鈥檝e gotten used to custom versions of Android, with phones using EMUI, MIUI, and ZUI popping up just as frequently as stock Android. That being said, MIUI is one of the best, complete, and most optimized versions available out there in the market and it works well. System animations are fluid and polished, swiping between screens is silky smooth and its generally a pleasure to use.However, the Snapdragon 625 is the first point of contention I have with this phone. Because this is a Note device, its only fair we compare performance to other Note devices. The Snapdragon 625 does lag slightly behind the Helio X20 (and up) and the Snapdragon 650 series in opening and closing apps.There is a slight moment of hesitation in this 625 that is either drastically reduced or non existent in more powerful chips. That being said, its still plenty useable and perfect for normal use even for someone like me. Do note that MIUI tends to clear out your RAM quite frequently forcing you to relaunch apps, but you can turn that off in developer options.The Snapdragon 625 is powerful enough to run even the most intense games without hiccups. This is quite impressive especially at the 1080p resolution. There will be a game here and there that might require lowered graphical settings to run at a high framerate, but those are few and far between.I ran just one benchmark, Antutu, and it obtained a score of around 60,000, exactly what I expected from a Snapdragon 625 chip.Performance here is very good and the snapdragon 625 is a very good chip as well. however, my complaint stems from the fact that Redmi Note devices have traditionally been more powerful than Redmi devices, but here we have the exact same chipset in both Redmi and Note devices. This seems to be an anomaly that some will not want repeated.The fingerprint sensor is fast and accurate, I didn鈥檛 see any issues here. It is slightly slower than top end sensors on S7s and iPhones, but its still more than fast enough for the average user. It does have trouble trying to detect my fingers if the skin is wet though.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X ConnectivityConnectivity here is strong, but not as strong as my Zuk Z2. I still saw more frequent drops to HSPA+ compared to the latter device, but speeds were still good. My speedtest results yielded very decent speeds as well. Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS reception was all very good and I did not see any issues with those.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X CameraThe Redmi Note 4 has a 13MP camera with f/2.0 lens and PDAF. The camera does a great job taking photos in well lit conditions with detailed photos and saturated colours. Colours and detail improve when HDR is turned on, but it does take longer to take a photo. Other smartphones have improved the HDR snap time quite a bit, leaving the Redmi Note 4’s HDR snap time a little slower.The camera does have trouble with low light shots, but much less so The front facing camera takes passable shots in good lighting conditions, indoors its a hit or miss, and the camera struggles with low light.The phone is capable of up to 1080p video and quality is good enough. You can actually shoot in 4K if you use a third party camera app like Open Camera, and the quality is good.The camera app is quite feature rich, allowing you to tweak various camera related settings to get better shots.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X Camera Gallery Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X VerdictI said it once and I鈥檒l say it again; the Redmi Note 4X is a great phone that doesn鈥檛 need to exist. You can either take a step down in size to the Redmi 4 Prime or a step up in processing power to the original Redmi Note 4. Still though, those who feel compelled to purchase this phone won鈥檛 be disappointed.While this phone鈥檚 processor is fairly weak for a Note device, it more than makes up for that in battery life, matching the Redmi 4 Prime鈥檚 battery life tit for tat. The Snapdragon 625 utilized in this device is no slouch either, pushing anything it throws your way.If you do purchase this device, I recommend getting at least the 3GB version of the Redmi Note 4X as MIUI does use more resources than stock Android does. I also highly recommend reading both Gizchina鈥檚 reviews for the Redmi Note 4 (review here) and the Redmi 4 Prime (review here) before making your decision as you might find one of the other two devices more appealing.You can buy the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X here.Good device, but look at the Note 4 and the PrimeXiaomi Redmi Note 4X Video Review

Now why does this phone exist? I ask this as a genuine question, when great phones like the Redmi Note 4 (review here) and the Redmi 4 Prime (review here) already exist.Let鈥檚 switch gears for a moment. Why did Xiaomi choose to use the Snapdragon 625 in a Note device when the Note 3 used a 650 series chip? This decision seems like it would cannibalize sales of the aforementioned Redmi 4 Prime.Nevertheless, the Redmi Note 4X is another great phone by Xiaomi that doesn鈥檛 need to exist.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X Review5.5鈥 devices are still the most popular screen size by far with individuals like me (who prefer smaller phones) being the exception. The Redmi Note 4X is almost identical to the Redmi 4, but that might not be a bad thing as the Redmi 4 Prime was a great device in its own right.I was seriously contemplating replacing my Zuk Z2 with the Redmi 4 Prime, but I was not willing to give up the speed of a Snapdragon 820 for the battery life of the Prime. However I am considering making the switch again.A 5.5鈥 Redmi 4Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X SpecificationsProcessorSnapdragon 625 ProcessorDisplay5.5″ 1920×1080 px, Sharp LCDRAM3GBStorage32GB eMMCOperating SystemAndroid 6.0 (MIUI 8.1)Cameras13MP/5MP CamerasBattery4100mAhPhysical Dimensions0.175kg, 76 x 151 x 8.4 mmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X HardwareOther companies are scrambling to catch up to Xiaomi鈥檚 Mi Mix, so this was (one of) Xiaomi鈥檚 opportunities to at least shrink the bezels on its Redmi Note series of phones. However, the physical dimensions of this phone are the exact same size as the older Redmi Note 4. It retains the same size, a similar shape, and the same amount of bezels as its older big brother. It鈥檚 a bit unwieldy for someone with small hands (like me), but the curved back and chamfered edges to help with that.The black bar around the screen is very apparent on the white version of this phone and I had wished this was eliminated as it is unsightly enough to be a dealbreaker for some. We have backlit capacitive buttons below the screen and the fingerprint sensor on the back. The hardware buttons are slightly mushy and lack the crisp feedback on other more expensive devices.Xiaomi most likely used the exact same physical design as the older Redmi Note 4 to reduce costs, but the phone could have been smaller. The last point of contention I have with the build is the use of the older MicroUSB port instead of the newer USB-C port, but I suspect that not everyone will have an issue with that.Well built, a little bigXiaomi Redmi Note 4X DisplayThe Note 4X sports a 5.5鈥 full HD IPS display and it is quite a pleasure to use. Colours are quite vivid and deep and the display is sharp. However, devices in the $200 range all feature similarly great screens so the excellent display used in here stands out a lot less. reading news on the screen is razor sharp and is generally a pleasure to use.Maximum brightness is good at around 450 nits, easily viewable in direct sunlight. However, the display is reflective so it might be tough to see it in strong sunlight. Viewing angles are great though.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X AudioSpeaker quality here is pretty much the exact same as the older Redmi Note 4, meaning decently loud sound with some slight distortion in certain tracks at max volume. However lower the volume a tad and its gone. Mids and highs are decently clear but bass is lacking in this phone.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X BatteryIf you go back to my Redmi 4 Prime review, you will remember that the Prime blew me, a battery fanatic, away completely. The Redmi Note 4X for all intents and purposes should get the same, if slightly less battery life than the Redmi 4 Prime due to the bigger screen. I was only able to perform one round of battery tests due to the incredible length of each test, and battery life is absolutely amazing.I got 11 hours of screen on time with 18% left at the end of the day. This was incredibly heavy use, with about 6 hours of intense gaming, an hour of snapping photos, 2 hours of Youtube, and the rest was web browsing, SMS, news. This actually edges out my Redmi 4 Prime battery tests which you can check out here. Becaue the battery life on the Redmi 4 Prime and Note 4X are so similar, I thought some further anecdotal evidence might be useful here.My sister who uses my Redmi 4 Prime regularly ends the day with about 80% battery life. This is mostly Snapchat, Snapchat, Snapchat, and a bit of Instagram. She has gone 4-5 days without charging before, but most of the time she still plugs it in at the end of the day by habit.Quick charge via the microUSB cable stands at about 2 hours to a full charge.Heavy users like me can get through two days of heavy use with no issue while light and medium users will be able to get at least 4 days of light use.Stupid long BatteryGizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramXiaomi Redmi Note 4X SoftwareBy this point I鈥檝e gotten used to custom versions of Android, with phones using EMUI, MIUI, and ZUI popping up just as frequently as stock Android. That being said, MIUI is one of the best, complete, and most optimized versions available out there in the market and it works well. System animations are fluid and polished, swiping between screens is silky smooth and its generally a pleasure to use.However, the Snapdragon 625 is the first point of contention I have with this phone. Because this is a Note device, its only fair we compare performance to other Note devices. The Snapdragon 625 does lag slightly behind the Helio X20 (and up) and the Snapdragon 650 series in opening and closing apps.There is a slight moment of hesitation in this 625 that is either drastically reduced or non existent in more powerful chips. That being said, its still plenty useable and perfect for normal use even for someone like me. Do note that MIUI tends to clear out your RAM quite frequently forcing you to relaunch apps, but you can turn that off in developer options.The Snapdragon 625 is powerful enough to run even the most intense games without hiccups. This is quite impressive especially at the 1080p resolution. There will be a game here and there that might require lowered graphical settings to run at a high framerate, but those are few and far between.I ran just one benchmark, Antutu, and it obtained a score of around 60,000, exactly what I expected from a Snapdragon 625 chip.Performance here is very good and the snapdragon 625 is a very good chip as well. however, my complaint stems from the fact that Redmi Note devices have traditionally been more powerful than Redmi devices, but here we have the exact same chipset in both Redmi and Note devices. This seems to be an anomaly that some will not want repeated.The fingerprint sensor is fast and accurate, I didn鈥檛 see any issues here. It is slightly slower than top end sensors on S7s and iPhones, but its still more than fast enough for the average user. It does have trouble trying to detect my fingers if the skin is wet though.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X ConnectivityConnectivity here is strong, but not as strong as my Zuk Z2. I still saw more frequent drops to HSPA+ compared to the latter device, but speeds were still good. My speedtest results yielded very decent speeds as well. Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS reception was all very good and I did not see any issues with those.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X CameraThe Redmi Note 4 has a 13MP camera with f/2.0 lens and PDAF. The camera does a great job taking photos in well lit conditions with detailed photos and saturated colours. Colours and detail improve when HDR is turned on, but it does take longer to take a photo. Other smartphones have improved the HDR snap time quite a bit, leaving the Redmi Note 4’s HDR snap time a little slower.The camera does have trouble with low light shots, but much less so The front facing camera takes passable shots in good lighting conditions, indoors its a hit or miss, and the camera struggles with low light.The phone is capable of up to 1080p video and quality is good enough. You can actually shoot in 4K if you use a third party camera app like Open Camera, and the quality is good.The camera app is quite feature rich, allowing you to tweak various camera related settings to get better shots.Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X Camera Gallery Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X VerdictI said it once and I鈥檒l say it again; the Redmi Note 4X is a great phone that doesn鈥檛 need to exist. You can either take a step down in size to the Redmi 4 Prime or a step up in processing power to the original Redmi Note 4. Still though, those who feel compelled to purchase this phone won鈥檛 be disappointed.While this phone鈥檚 processor is fairly weak for a Note device, it more than makes up for that in battery life, matching the Redmi 4 Prime鈥檚 battery life tit for tat. The Snapdragon 625 utilized in this device is no slouch either, pushing anything it throws your way.If you do purchase this device, I recommend getting at least the 3GB version of the Redmi Note 4X as MIUI does use more resources than stock Android does. I also highly recommend reading both Gizchina鈥檚 reviews for the Redmi Note 4 (review here) and the Redmi 4 Prime (review here) before making your decision as you might find one of the other two devices more appealing.You can buy the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X here.Good device, but look at the Note 4 and the PrimeXiaomi Redmi Note 4X Video ReviewThe Nubia Z11 has been by go to phone for a the past couple of months, and I’m happy to say that it will continue that role. Here’s my full review.The Nubia Z11 is the big brother of the Nubia Z11 Mini which I reviewed in the summer last year. The Z11 is not only a larger phone but it also comes with a more premium appearance, fancy flagship design features and, of course, high ends specifications.Nubia Z11 Review – DesignThe Nubia Z11 isn’t an all out new design. It doesn’t have a new and innovative shape or some special “Never before seen” features, but it still damn impressive in the flesh and a pleasure to get to grips with in the hand.It all starts with a 5.5-inch FHD 1920 x 1080 display. Nothing super fancy about that you might think, but Nubia has waved its magic over the phone to create a device with screen that reaches right up to the very edges of the metal frame.The bezel-less design is a pure joy to look at and it’s subtle yet attention grabbing trait to the Z11. You’ll find people looking at it, knowing that there is something quite different about this phone, but not quite getting what it is, well until you point it out to them.Nubia have been smart with the bezel-less design too and have been clever enough to realise that this feature needs some smart software behind it to make the use out of it. This is a very important detail, one which we hoped Vivo would have considered back when they releases the Vivo Xplay 6 with curved display but nothing to make use of it.Just as with any smartphone, we find a traditional ‘forehead’ and ‘chin’ arrangement. The former is where the front facing camera and receive are located while the latter houses the trademarked and patented (don’t copy it again Meizu) “Nubia Halo” with capacitive navigation buttons either side.The main halo acts as the ‘home’ button for the phone and will also pulse when charging or to notify you of a message. Capacitive buttons either side are use for navigating around the Android 6.0 based Nubia UI OS, and are only visible when you tap them.My review version of the phone is the white faced, gold alloy rear version. This colour combination is very attractive and also tells us savvy Nubia users that this version of the phone is has just 4GB RAM. The black and gold version of the Nubia Z11 comes with 6GB RAM.Flip the handset over and you will see that Nubia has used the rear panel as a home for the fingerprint scanner, and 16 megapixel OIS rear camera, and dual LED flash. You can also see that a Nubia logo is on there too.Final external details on the Nubia Z11 are a Type C USB in the base, 3.5mm headphone jack and IR remote at the top, physical buttons for the power and volume controls on the right and dual SIM card tray on the left.Nubia Z11 Review – HardwareI’ve already touched on the 5.5-inch FHD display but I’ll add that this bezel less beauty is a vivid panel that love to be starred at for hours on end. The colours are truly a joy to behold and really help the excellent photos from the rear camera pop of the panel.If we move to the top of the phone and that 3.5mm headphone jack the first thing I have to say is “Thanks”. Not only have Nubia wisely decided that they should keep the headphone jack, but they have also enabled the phone with some decent HIFI performance and DOLBY ATMOS. Not only that but the included Nubia earbuds are an amazing piece of kit too.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramWhile audio coming out of the Nubia Z11 is really very good, it is audio that goes in to the phone that is the problem. Originally I thought I had an issue with the stereo in my car but other phones had no issues and voice controls were clearly understood. The issues are that the Z11 doesn’t pickup audio from time to time meaning Google Now won’t hear commands. The audio issues also effects video, but oddly not calls..Continue on to the rear and we come across that fingerprint scanner. I’m totally happy with having the fingerprint scanner on the rear of the phone, or in fact on the chin in a home button. As long as the scanner is fast and accurate I don’t mind where it is located.Nubia has gotten this aspect of the phone correct too. Set up is blazing fast and the fingerprint scanners speed and accuracy is really second to none.Internally the Nubia Z11 can’t be faulted either. The Snapdragon 820 might not be the newest chipset on the planet but its fast enough for everything that I ask the handset to do, and that 4GB RAM and 64GB internal memory seemed to be more than up to every task I asked of the handset too. Compared to the OnePlus 3T, the Nubia Z11 doesn’t have the same instant response but it is no slouch either.Built in to the phone is 3000mAh battery which at the start of ownership is pretty good. This was a phone that needs nightly charging, but generally the battery life was fine for a good amount of use through the day. However, subsequent updates made to the OS on the phone seem to have really eaten in to the battery life and I now find that a top up through the day is needed to keep going.As I know the phone is capable of better, I hope that the Nubia development team get on it and fix the problem for the next OTA.Nubia Z11 Review – CameraNubia have always taken time and care with the camera performance of their phones, and not only do we get a decent hardware, but also a great camera application to take full advantage of the phone.EIS allows the phone to take clear photos even with zoom maxed out and helps to create nice, smooth video. But it isn’t smooth enough to use when taking long exposure photos, which is one of the Nubia’s party pieces.While the Z11 does take some amazing photos, I did find that low-light images weren’t quite as good as some rivals and the overall speed of taking a photo is much slower than say the OP3.Sample photos below. What I LovedPremium design really takes on similar top end phonesAmazing camera featuresEdge gesturesWhat Could Be ImprovedBattery LifeLow Light Photo PerformanceBuggy HardwareNubia Z11 Review – ConclusionNubia really has impressed me with what they can build. The Nubia Z11 is a premium flagship phone that would look impressive if seen at the local mobile phone stores along with the likes of the latest Huawei, Sony, Samsung and Apple devices.They’ve also managed to create a well made phone using premium quality materials while maintaining flagship standards in terms of hardware performance and specifications.Where the Nubia Z11 struggles though is with battery life and issues that causes bugs with the audio. The good news is that Nubia is rolling out updates for the Z11, but the bad news is these updates have yet to address these problems and aren’t being rolled out as OTA updates and to find them you need to search around the Italian Nubia Site and download them.

For over a year I have a pleasure to use Meizu smartphones as my daily devices. In January Meizu was so nice to send me their last year’s flagship model – Meizu Pro 6 Plus, which was presented in December. Before this phone I’ve been using Meizu Pro 6, but after one month of using Plus version I must say, that December’s device is true 2016’s flagship Meizu phone.BoxPhone is packed in box which is typical for Meizu Pro devices. Black, plastic, square box which looks very elegant. Shining model name which is placed on the top everything looks llike premium device box. At the bottom there is a sticker with basic information about the device – model, color, memory and supported frequencies. Mine version was ment to be sold in China, so description is written in Chinese. But if you buy phone from international distribution, everything will be in English. Inside of the box we have Meizu Pro 6 Plus device, charger (in my case it is charger with US connection), USB-C cable, SIM slot key, instruction and warranty card (Chinese / English, depending on where you order it). I miss some earphones there, as Meizu advertise this model as having great Hi-Fi chip inside. Meizu Pro 6 Plus build design and qualityAs I said at the begining, this model is true Meizu flagship for 2016. And as every flagship, producer took care to build quality and made Pro 6 Plus looking as real premium device.If we will look at the design, we won’t see much difference comparing to previous Pro series devices. In the front panel of the device we can find white notification LED, speaker, selfie camera and light and proximity sensors. Below them there is 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display with 2K resolution (2560 x 1440 px, 518PPI). I must say, that the displayed image quality is more than great. Additionally it supports 3D Touch (Force Touch) feature, but only for system and some Chinese apps. At the bottom of fron panel (as usual in Meizu products) there is physical Home button which is back button, fingerpring scanner and heart rate monitor in one. Unfortunately hear rate monitor is not working now (it isn’t implemented in firmware yet). On the sides, as usual, we will find SIM card slot (left), power and volume buttons (right). On the bottom there is 3.5mm audio input, USB-C 3.1 input, microphone and a speaker. On the top there is additional microphone, that reduces outside noises during calls. What about back side? It looks like every other Meizu device. We have here antenna lines on the top and bottom of back. There is also main camera and 10 LEDs below it (the same we could see in Pro 6 model). Camera is a very interesting element in this device because Meizu decided to add 4-axis OIS in it. More about it in Camera part.Specification of Meizu Pro 6 PlusDimensions: 155.6 x 77.3 x 7.3 mmWeight: 158 gDisplay: 5.7 cali (2560x1440px, 518 ppi), Super AMOLEDProcessor:64GB version: Samsung Exynos 8890 (4x Exynos M1 2.0GHz + 4x Cortex-A53 1.5GHz) + Mali-T880 MP10128GB version: Samsung Exynos 8890 (4x Exynos M1 2.3GHz + 4x Cortex-A53閳 1.6GHz) + Mali-T880 MP12RAM: 4GBInternal memory: 64GB / 128GBMain camera: 12MP, f/2.0, 10 LEDs, 4-axis optical image stabilization, Sony IMX386Front camera: 5MP, f/2.0Battery: 3400 mAhAdditional: Fingerprint scanner, heart rate monitor, fast charge mCharge, support for Wi-Fi 2.4/5GHz 802.11 a/b/g/n, LTE Cat.6, Bluetooth 4.1, BLE, audio chip ESS ES9018K2MSystem: Flyme OS 6 (Android 6)Available colors: gold, grey, silver鑱組eizu Pro 6 Plus in daily usageI received this device straight from Meizu, so unfortunately it came with chinese OS installed (English and many chinese apps). Using it wasn’t a problem, but some features were working terrible – GPS wasn’t able to catch satelites (google maps navigation didn’t work). There was also a problem with some apps notifications, but this is an old Flyme OS problem. Fortunately, few days ago Meizu released open Flyme OS 6 global beta, so I “moved” to it as fast as possible. Since that moment using Meizu Pro 6 Plus became much more better.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramPhone works perfectly. I didn’t notice any problems like freezes or lags. Calling, Internet browsing, messaging or listening to music is pure pleasure. Thanks to huge amount of free space I can download a few of my favourite Spotify playlists and listen to music, which sounds great in this device. I am not real audiophile, so I can’t tell you more about technical part of music playing. For me it’s great.Of course I tested also games. Clash Royale (I play it for some time, it doesn’t require great specification) works perfectly – loads fast, there aren’t any lags, phone doesn’t get hot. During the test of Need For Speed No Limits I also didn’t notice any problems. But during this game the phone get a bit warmer (with a silicon case on it).Connectivity? Works very good. LTE connection in most of the time. Unfortunately Meizu devices (at the moment) doesn’t support VoLTE calling, which is requested very much but a lot of users. GPS started working really fast and navigation works perfectly (very high accuracy), after I updated the device to the Global firmware.And what about benchmarks… In AnTuTu unfortunately (or not) it loses with most of last year’s flagship. When I write this review, the best result it has is about 112k points, which gives it 24th place (mine version was on 25th place). But I think it’s because there isn’t 128GB version available, where CPU and GPU has better clocks.BatteryMeizu Pro 6 Plus has a big battery. Comparing to basic Pro 6 model it is 1000 mAh bigger, so it has capacity of 3400 mAh. During a normal (not too intensive) usage of the phone, battery is more than enough for whole day. However if we use the device more intensive (playing games, video watching, mobile data enabled, localization services, etc…) then at the end of the day we can feel the lack of power. Fortunately Pro 6 Plus supports mCharge fast charging, which allows to charge it to full battery in about one hour.CameraAnd now there is time for (in my opinion) the best thing in this phone (next to normal SoC). This is the first Pro series device with 4-axis optical image stabilization (we have Pro 6s also, but it is for Chinese market only). The main camera is 12MP, f/2.0 with Sony IMX386 sensor. Below it we have 10-LED light circle, that will give us bright light to make better pictures when lighting is worse. Unfortunately, we can’t take pictures with RAW extension, but I hope that Meizu developers will add this feature in the future (many users demand it for some time already).For the lovers of selfie pictures there is 5MP, f/2.0 front camera. I must say, that image quality in it is also good.Below you can find some pictures done with Meizu Pro 6 Plus camera:The Doogee Shoot 1 is the company’s first attempt at creating a budget dual-camera phone with a primary 13MP Samsung shooter聽to get the image and a secondary 8.0MP one to add in depth information and thus create photos with a very shallow depth of field.We’re going to see how that works in the full review but for now let’s go ahead with the unboxing and first impressions!Doogee Shoot 1: UnboxingDoogee’s Shoot 1 unboxing is pretty straight forward, it simply comes in a black/greysh box and聽once you open it, you have the smartphone there with its silicone case. Removing the cardboard separator below it you find the USB charger rated for 5V/2000mA, a microUSB cable, SIM removal pin and an additional screen protector (it already comes with one).Doogee Shoot 1:聽Hands OnBeing entirely made of plastic, the聽Doogee Shoot 1 doesn’t have the most premium feeling in hands, that said, it doesn’t feel cheap neither. The build quality is solid and it doesn’t flex or make weird noises when put under stress.On the positive side, since the phone is not encased in an aluminum chassis, the overall weight of the device is very low at about 167 grams. Which makes it also easy to hold even if it doesn’t have a small footprint.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramIn addition to that, the plastic body removes the slippery of metal phones, so I feel confident holding this phone even without a case, something I can’t say about many other phones.The included silicone case is “OK”, it feels cheap but I’m still glad they added it in the package. It also features some flaps to cover the headphone jack and microUSB port at the bottom, I’m not sure why though as the phone isn’t advertised as waterproof and thus shouldn’t get near water anyway.Doogee Shoot 1:聽First ImpressionsOverall I’m finding the phone worth its price, it’s snappy and it’s full of neat features like douple-tap to wake up聽and many more that aren’t usually available on budget phones, heck even on more expensive ones 鈥 looking at you, Vernee Apollo聽鈥? I’m not having any weird software issues聽or getting limited by the 2GB of RAM.In the full review you’ll learn more about the dual-camera setup and how it actually works, for the moment being I’ll only say I’m not totally sold on it.

Yi has shaken up the camera industry again and again with their action cameras, and now Yi has released their most groundbreaking product yet (on paper at least): a $330 4K mirrorless camera.You never judge a book by its cover, but if the cover promised similar performance to more expensive books at half the price, it gets people鈥檚 attention. That was a horrible analogy, but you get my point, do you?You can buy the Xiaoyi M1 mirrorless camera here, both the kit lens and dual lens versions.Xiaoyi M1 ReviewPaper specs aside, let鈥檚 get real. First of all, you cannot get the Xiaoyi M1 for $330 outside of China. The lowest I鈥檝e seen it go is about $350, which is still an incredibly low price for a 4K capable mirrorless camera.The M1 boasts a 20MP Micro 4/3 sensor (the same one used in the Panasonic GX8), 81 point Auto Focus system, and up to 4K/30fps video recording. The specs seem to indicate that this camera is ready to take on DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, but the lack of physical controls indicates otherwise. As mentioned by Yi themselves, this is aimed at those looking to move away from smartphone cameras but not quite ready for DSLRs just yet, a bridge camera to be specific.Let鈥檚 see how it performs.Cheap shot?Xiaoyi M1 SpecificationsSensorSony IMX269 20MP SensorDisplay3鈥 2 million dot TFTKit Lens12 – 40mm F3.5 – 5.6 lensOptional Lens42.5mm F1.8 lensPlatformMirrorless Micro 4/3 MountConnectivityBluetooth, WiFiBattery900mAhPhysical Dimensions0.28kg, 11.35 x 3.36 x 6.43 cmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Xiaoyi M1 HardwareSo before I start this review, I want to get this out of the way, I鈥檓 not a photography expert, I don鈥檛 have a degree in art, I don鈥檛 have a photography portfolio, I don鈥檛 shoot weddings on the side, so I鈥檓 an average Joe, most probably like you… well, almost. I do know my way around mirrorless/DSLR cameras because I shoot video on a regular basis, so hopefully I can give you some insight into this camera if you are interested.A second item to get out of the way: this is not a potential replacement for mid-tier DSLRs. It鈥檚 not weather sealed, does not have manual mode when shooting 4K (I鈥檒l talk more about that later), and most importantly, does not have enough physical controls, (almost) everything is controlled via the touch screen.Now with that out of the way, let鈥檚 get on with the build quality.I did a double take when I saw this camera. It鈥檚 definitely a Leica lookalike, down to the red dot that graces every Leica body. The body is made of pretty high quality plastic and is also very lightweight, making it feel more like a point and shoot rather than a mirrorless camera.On the top, you find the hot shoe, on/off button, and a selector dial for different modes. The video record button is nested within the selector dial, and can be a bit troublesome if you hit it by mistake without actually wanting to shoot video. There is also an extra dial for controlling zoom as well. Everything else is controlled through the 3″ touchscreen integrated into the body.On the right, you find a removable flap that reveals the HDMI, SD card slot and MicroUSB. The standard screw in is found below the camera, and sadly, no microphone jack here.The camera includes the standard kit lens, but I opted for an additional prime lens for $100 more. Both the kit lens and prime lens are constructed mostly of plastic. The kit lens has a lock/unlock feature that allows you to shrink the size of the lens for easier portability. The prime lens looks normal, but perhaps the strangest part of the prime lens is the non-functional focus ring. You can鈥檛 focus the lens using that ring, it seems purely cosmetic. My Sigma and Panasonic kit lens were both compatible with the M1 which is very promising.Good PlasticXiaoyi M1 SoftwareThe first thing I did (after snapping a few test shots) was pair with the included smartphone app. This was an incredibly easy process that involved tapping 鈥渃onnect鈥 and the phone automatically disconnects from existing WiFI and connects to the camera WiFi. My M1 immediately downloaded an update which took about a minute to install.The lack of physical buttons means you interact with the touchscreen almost exclusively. As someone who lives in Canada, that instantly becomes a problem in the winter. I can use my Panasonic G7 outside with gloves on without issue, but not so with the Yi M1.Cold weather aside, the UI is quite simple. Anyone familiar with smartphone UI will be completely at home聽here. You can change f-stop, aperture and EV by tapping on the setting and rolling the physical dial, but anything else requires some swiping. Swipe right for scene modes and left for settings.ISO is, oddly enough, found in the settings menu instead of directly on the main screen. Changing ISO was a pain, so it was easier to play with the other settings to compensate. The UI speed and fluidity does not match Android or iOS, but it isn鈥檛 slow enough to frustrate users.However keep in the auto mode and you should be fine. The camera defaults to snapping photos in JPEG format, but you can change it to RAW if you want. There is no option to save in both though. If your camera is connected to your smartphone via the app, you can download JPEGs off the camera onto your phone for sharing, but the app does not recognize RAW files.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramXiaoyi M1 PerformanceThe time between turning on the camera to first shot was slightly below 3 seconds. It鈥檚 not a slow time, but lags about 1 second behind my Panasonic G7. However, I didn鈥檛 see any lag when snapping photos or shooting up to 4K video, so the chipset is definitely sufficient.The Yi M1 uses a contrast detect autofocus system with 81 autofocus points. Autofocus is accurate in good light, but I found that it sometimes didn鈥檛 focus properly on the desired object, especially if the object had low contrast. Continuous autofocus was unuseable most of the time, as it never focused on what I wanted it to focus on. Keep the camera in AF-S for the best autofocus performance (depress the shutter button halfway to focus).Low light focusing was difficult to achieve and I had a lot of trouble getting it to focus properly.Low light focusing issuesXiaoyi M1 Picture QualityLet鈥檚 start with the kit lens. In auto mode, I was able to take very decent pictures quite easily with a ton of detail and natural colours. JPEGs taken in good lighting conditions definitely exhibit a lot more detail than any smartphone camera and many point and shoots. In low light the performance starts dropping. I saw quite a bit of noise/grain at ISO12800 and higher. However, JPEGs from the M1 compared to the Panasonic G7 left me underwhelmed.I started shooting in RAW and immediately started seeing the difference. I could bring out so much detail in the photos and make them look better. Do note that some of the edits I did are purposely overexposed in order to show you the limits of each RAW file.Moving on to the prime lens, pictures definitely look sharper than the kit lens and the Bokeh (blurred background) effect is quite strong. There is a switch on the lens to activate macro mode which allows you to take very sharp closeup shots (very close) and the pictures turn out quite beautiful.Low light performance is better than the kit lens above meaning that low light shots turn out even better.I want to compare them to my Panasonic kit lens and Sigma f.28 40mm prime lens as well, I won鈥檛 go into too much detail, but suffice it to say that my Panasonic kit lens takes better photos than the Yi kit lens while the Sigma prime lens takes slightly sharper shots than the Yi prime lens but with way less Bokeh (background isn鈥檛 as blurred).The Yi M1 still edges out my old Rebel T3 and my friend鈥檚 Rebel T5i in picture quality though.Finally, I would like to reiterate that all the image quality testing was done with JPEGs straight out of the camera. Check out the image gallery below. More pictures coming soon!Xiaoyi M1 Image Gallery YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA Xiaoyi M1 Video QualityVideo is more my jam, and I was initially excited at the thought of a cheap, mirrorless, 4K capable camera, but this left me disappointed, the chief reason being that there is no manual mode when recording in 4K. The camera then compensates for every change of lighting that you come across.As such there is a flickering that occurs every time the camera changes the settings to compensate which is quite an obvious distraction. In situations where lighting is constant (e.g. outdoors), 4K quality is actually quite excellent. Hwoever I still see a slight but noticeable difference in quality between my more expensive Panasonic G7 and the Yi M1.Xiaoyi M1 Battery LifeThe 900mAh battery is capable of taking around 390 shots before dying, which definitely isn鈥檛 the best. Filming a 4K video for about 15 minutes ate about 54% of the battery capacity. You charge the battery by plugging in a MicroUSB port into the camera itself, so there鈥檚 no need for a separate battery cradle. It takes about 2 hours to charge completely, which is quite a long time for such a small battery.Xiaoyi M1 VerdictYou still see people with smartphones bringing out point and shoots at events like weddings or special get togethers, and in my mind, this is the perfect replacement. Not only is it comparable in size (DSLRs are much larger), but the camera and user interface are very simple and touch friendly. That being said, this is not a cheap camera, starting at $350, this would be in the upper ranges of point and shoots, edging into entry level DSLR territory. Probably the biggest problem this segment of users would encounter would be the autofocus. Autofocus here isn鈥檛 the greatest, so some users might find it difficult to get a good shot.The M1 has replaced my phone camera when I bring it out to special events. Get togethers, outings, dinners, weddings. Bringing my large mirrorless Panasonic is conspicuous at weddings and could be seen as trying to upstage the official photographer (depending on how big his ego is). However, the M1 is small, compact, and has a completely silent mode, so I can upstage the wedding photographer without him even finding out, getting crisp photos of the wedding rings. Thanks Xiaoyi.You can buy the Xiaoyi M1 mirrorless camera here, I recommend the cheaper kit lens version instead of the more expensive one with the prime lens simply because there are a lot of M43 options.Simple to useXiaoyi M1 Video ReviewYi has shaken up the camera industry again and again with their action cameras, and now Yi has released their most groundbreaking product yet (on paper at least): a $330 4K mirrorless camera.You never judge a book by its cover, but if the cover promised similar performance to more expensive books at half the price, it gets people鈥檚 attention. That was a horrible analogy, but you get my point, do you?You can buy the Xiaoyi M1 mirrorless camera here, both the kit lens and dual lens versions.Xiaoyi M1 ReviewPaper specs aside, let鈥檚 get real. First of all, you cannot get the Xiaoyi M1 for $330 outside of China. The lowest I鈥檝e seen it go is about $350, which is still an incredibly low price for a 4K capable mirrorless camera.The M1 boasts a 20MP Micro 4/3 sensor (the same one used in the Panasonic GX8), 81 point Auto Focus system, and up to 4K/30fps video recording. The specs seem to indicate that this camera is ready to take on DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, but the lack of physical controls indicates otherwise. As mentioned by Yi themselves, this is aimed at those looking to move away from smartphone cameras but not quite ready for DSLRs just yet, a bridge camera to be specific.Let鈥檚 see how it performs.Cheap shot?Xiaoyi M1 SpecificationsSensorSony IMX269 20MP SensorDisplay3鈥 2 million dot TFTKit Lens12 – 40mm F3.5 – 5.6 lensOptional Lens42.5mm F1.8 lensPlatformMirrorless Micro 4/3 MountConnectivityBluetooth, WiFiBattery900mAhPhysical Dimensions0.28kg, 11.35 x 3.36 x 6.43 cmBig thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.Xiaoyi M1 HardwareSo before I start this review, I want to get this out of the way, I鈥檓 not a photography expert, I don鈥檛 have a degree in art, I don鈥檛 have a photography portfolio, I don鈥檛 shoot weddings on the side, so I鈥檓 an average Joe, most probably like you… well, almost. I do know my way around mirrorless/DSLR cameras because I shoot video on a regular basis, so hopefully I can give you some insight into this camera if you are interested.A second item to get out of the way: this is not a potential replacement for mid-tier DSLRs. It鈥檚 not weather sealed, does not have manual mode when shooting 4K (I鈥檒l talk more about that later), and most importantly, does not have enough physical controls, (almost) everything is controlled via the touch screen.Now with that out of the way, let鈥檚 get on with the build quality.I did a double take when I saw this camera. It鈥檚 definitely a Leica lookalike, down to the red dot that graces every Leica body. The body is made of pretty high quality plastic and is also very lightweight, making it feel more like a point and shoot rather than a mirrorless camera.On the top, you find the hot shoe, on/off button, and a selector dial for different modes. The video record button is nested within the selector dial, and can be a bit troublesome if you hit it by mistake without actually wanting to shoot video. There is also an extra dial for controlling zoom as well. Everything else is controlled through the 3″ touchscreen integrated into the body.On the right, you find a removable flap that reveals the HDMI, SD card slot and MicroUSB. The standard screw in is found below the camera, and sadly, no microphone jack here.The camera includes the standard kit lens, but I opted for an additional prime lens for $100 more. Both the kit lens and prime lens are constructed mostly of plastic. The kit lens has a lock/unlock feature that allows you to shrink the size of the lens for easier portability. The prime lens looks normal, but perhaps the strangest part of the prime lens is the non-functional focus ring. You can鈥檛 focus the lens using that ring, it seems purely cosmetic. My Sigma and Panasonic kit lens were both compatible with the M1 which is very promising.Good PlasticXiaoyi M1 SoftwareThe first thing I did (after snapping a few test shots) was pair with the included smartphone app. This was an incredibly easy process that involved tapping 鈥渃onnect鈥 and the phone automatically disconnects from existing WiFI and connects to the camera WiFi. My M1 immediately downloaded an update which took about a minute to install.The lack of physical buttons means you interact with the touchscreen almost exclusively. As someone who lives in Canada, that instantly becomes a problem in the winter. I can use my Panasonic G7 outside with gloves on without issue, but not so with the Yi M1.Cold weather aside, the UI is quite simple. Anyone familiar with smartphone UI will be completely at home聽here. You can change f-stop, aperture and EV by tapping on the setting and rolling the physical dial, but anything else requires some swiping. Swipe right for scene modes and left for settings.ISO is, oddly enough, found in the settings menu instead of directly on the main screen. Changing ISO was a pain, so it was easier to play with the other settings to compensate. The UI speed and fluidity does not match Android or iOS, but it isn鈥檛 slow enough to frustrate users.However keep in the auto mode and you should be fine. The camera defaults to snapping photos in JPEG format, but you can change it to RAW if you want. There is no option to save in both though. If your camera is connected to your smartphone via the app, you can download JPEGs off the camera onto your phone for sharing, but the app does not recognize RAW files.Gizchina News of the week Join GizChina on TelegramXiaoyi M1 PerformanceThe time between turning on the camera to first shot was slightly below 3 seconds. It鈥檚 not a slow time, but lags about 1 second behind my Panasonic G7. However, I didn鈥檛 see any lag when snapping photos or shooting up to 4K video, so the chipset is definitely sufficient.The Yi M1 uses a contrast detect autofocus system with 81 autofocus points. Autofocus is accurate in good light, but I found that it sometimes didn鈥檛 focus properly on the desired object, especially if the object had low contrast. Continuous autofocus was unuseable most of the time, as it never focused on what I wanted it to focus on. Keep the camera in AF-S for the best autofocus performance (depress the shutter button halfway to focus).Low light focusing was difficult to achieve and I had a lot of trouble getting it to focus properly.Low light focusing issuesXiaoyi M1 Picture QualityLet鈥檚 start with the kit lens. In auto mode, I was able to take very decent pictures quite easily with a ton of detail and natural colours. JPEGs taken in good lighting conditions definitely exhibit a lot more detail than any smartphone camera and many point and shoots. In low light the performance starts dropping. I saw quite a bit of noise/grain at ISO12800 and higher. However, JPEGs from the M1 compared to the Panasonic G7 left me underwhelmed.I started shooting in RAW and immediately started seeing the difference. I could bring out so much detail in the photos and make them look better. Do note that some of the edits I did are purposely overexposed in order to show you the limits of each RAW file.Moving on to the prime lens, pictures definitely look sharper than the kit lens and the Bokeh (blurred background) effect is quite strong. There is a switch on the lens to activate macro mode which allows you to take very sharp closeup shots (very close) and the pictures turn out quite beautiful.Low light performance is better than the kit lens above meaning that low light shots turn out even better.I want to compare them to my Panasonic kit lens and Sigma f.28 40mm prime lens as well, I won鈥檛 go into too much detail, but suffice it to say that my Panasonic kit lens takes better photos than the Yi kit lens while the Sigma prime lens takes slightly sharper shots than the Yi prime lens but with way less Bokeh (background isn鈥檛 as blurred).The Yi M1 still edges out my old Rebel T3 and my friend鈥檚 Rebel T5i in picture quality though.Finally, I would like to reiterate that all the image quality testing was done with JPEGs straight out of the camera. Check out the image gallery below. More pictures coming soon!Xiaoyi M1 Image Gallery YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA YI DIGITAL CAMERA Xiaoyi M1 Video QualityVideo is more my jam, and I was initially excited at the thought of a cheap, mirrorless, 4K capable camera, but this left me disappointed, the chief reason being that there is no manual mode when recording in 4K. The camera then compensates for every change of lighting that you come across.As such there is a flickering that occurs every time the camera changes the settings to compensate which is quite an obvious distraction. In situations where lighting is constant (e.g. outdoors), 4K quality is actually quite excellent. Hwoever I still see a slight but noticeable difference in quality between my more expensive Panasonic G7 and the Yi M1.Xiaoyi M1 Battery LifeThe 900mAh battery is capable of taking around 390 shots before dying, which definitely isn鈥檛 the best. Filming a 4K video for about 15 minutes ate about 54% of the battery capacity. You charge the battery by plugging in a MicroUSB port into the camera itself, so there鈥檚 no need for a separate battery cradle. It takes about 2 hours to charge completely, which is quite a long time for such a small battery.Xiaoyi M1 VerdictYou still see people with smartphones bringing out point and shoots at events like weddings or special get togethers, and in my mind, this is the perfect replacement. Not only is it comparable in size (DSLRs are much larger), but the camera and user interface are very simple and touch friendly. That being said, this is not a cheap camera, starting at $350, this would be in the upper ranges of point and shoots, edging into entry level DSLR territory. Probably the biggest problem this segment of users would encounter would be the autofocus. Autofocus here isn鈥檛 the greatest, so some users might find it difficult to get a good shot.The M1 has replaced my phone camera when I bring it out to special events. Get togethers, outings, dinners, weddings. Bringing my large mirrorless Panasonic is conspicuous at weddings and could be seen as trying to upstage the official photographer (depending on how big his ego is). However, the M1 is small, compact, and has a completely silent mode, so I can upstage the wedding photographer without him even finding out, getting crisp photos of the wedding rings. Thanks Xiaoyi.You can buy the Xiaoyi M1 mirrorless camera here, I recommend the cheaper kit lens version instead of the more expensive one with the prime lens simply because there are a lot of M43 options.Simple to useXiaoyi M1 Video Review