Ulefone Power Armor 18T Review

Rear cameras, photo and video samples

Ulefone Power Armor 18T is fitted with four rear cameras. The FLIR thermal one and the auxiliary 5MP lens are described in a dedicated section below. The main camera uses a 108MP Samsung S5KHM2 sensor with a 0.7 μm pixel size and a 1/1.52" optical format. It uses 9-in-1 pixel binning for a 2.1 μm pixel size. The camera uses a 6-element lens with an f/1.89 aperture and an 82.3° field of view. By default, it shoots 12MP photos and you have to use the 108MP shooting mode to take advantage of the full resolution of the sensor. The main camera also records 4K videos at 20 fps. The second rear camera is the 5MP Samsung S5K5E9 macro camera that offers up to 60x digital zoom. The sensor is paired to an f/3.0 lens with a 77° field of view. This camera is used when you activate the Microscope mode from the Camera app. The rear cameras are supported by a 6-LED flash.

Other smartphones that we have reviewed and use the 108MP Samsung S5KHM2 sensor for their main cameras are the Ulefone Armor 17 Pro, Doogee V30, and the POCO X4 Pro 5G.

Primary camera

FLIR thermal camera

The thermal camera detects objects based on their temperature. It uses a FLIR Lepton 3.5 sensor with a resolution of 160 x 120 px and a 57-degree FoV. This camera is capable of detecting temperatures from -10°C to 400°C. It employs FLIR's MSX (Multi-Spectral Dynamic Imaging) technology made possible by the additional 5MP camera. It adds visible light details to thermal images in real-time for greater clarity, embedding edge and outline detail onto thermal readings. The result is a sharper image. How does it work? Every time you take a picture, the thermal image and the 5MP regular camera take a photo simultaneously. The built-in software extracts key visible image elements from the 5MP image and adds them to the thermal one. A thermal camera has plenty of application scenarios in outdoor adventures, public and private house maintenance, search and rescue situations, surveillance, pest control, etc. The thermal camera has its own app that is pre-installed on the Armor 18T. Below you can check out several screenshots from the app, a few samples of photos taken with the thermal camera, and a video shot with it.

Selfie camera

The front-facing camera of the Ulefone Power Armor 18T uses a 32MP Samsung S5KGD1 sensor with 1.2μm pixels. It is paired with a 5-element lens with an f/2.0 aperture and a 73.7° FoV. By default, the selfie camera snaps 21MP photos and you have to use the High-Res mode to make 32MP ones. Up to 1080p video recording at 30 fps is supported.

Camera App

The Camera app is already well-known among other Ulefone smartphones. It simply reflects the cameras' specifics. Again, the shortcut to the photos, the shutter button, and the camera switch are aligned at the bottom. The reel with shooting modes is above them. The default one is called Picture and supports AI, flash, and HDR. The camera settings appear as an overlay on the screen. The Video shooting mode supports HDR and LED flash. For both modes, the main camera is used. The Microscope mode automatically activates a 30x zoom and activates the macro lens. The Beauty mode again uses the main camera with options for manual adjustment of the general beautification feature and separate elements. The High-Res mode uses the main camera and shoots with the sensor's original 108MP resolution. The More tab opens a list of additional shooting modes - Pro, Portrait, Gif, Panorama, Mono, Bokeh, and QR code scanning. The Pro mode allows for manual adjustment of the white balance, ISO, exposure, focus style, and shutter speed. The Portrait mode lets you adjust the aperture. The interface for the front camera is largely the same. If a shooting mode is not supported by it, the software automatically switches to the rear cameras. For the front cameras, there's a High-Res mode as well shooting in a 32MP resolution, while the default one is 21MP. The camera settings are the same no matter where you access them from. They comprise the main options for the front and rear cameras listed as toggles. The Photos app is the default application to open and edit a photo. It arrives with Google Lens integrated.