Doogee S50 Review

Overview

Rugged smartphones rarely get features that are typical for more advanced smartphones. With Doogee S50 the Chinese OEM has tried to balance features and price in a device that's created to withstand harsh environments with ease. This is a quad-camera smartphone with an 18:9 display, a 5180 mAh battery and the very power-efficient Helio P23 chipset. All this is housed in an IP69 certified and an IP69K compliant tough body. The following review will check whether this model lives up to expectations and whether it deserves its price tag.

Specifications

Doogee S50 is built around a 5.7-inch IPS display with an HD+ resolution (720 x 1440 pixels). Its body is made of Thermoplastic Polyurethanes (TPU) elastomer from Bayer and tough, high-density polycarbonate. It is IP68 certified, i.e. dust-tight and waterproof and complies with the IP69K specification for resistance to extremely high pressure and high-temperature conditions. Under the metal hood, a MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763T) chipset ticks with four 2.36GHz Cortex-A53 cores and four 1.86GHz Cortex-A53 cores. A dual-core Mali-G71 MP2 clocked at 770MHz manages the graphics. The system-on-chip is combined with 6GB of dual-channel, LPDDR4X RAM clocked at 1600MHz and 64GB/128GB of eMMC 5.1 built-in memory that can be expanded with up to 256GB. The camera department includes two front and two rear cameras. The front is adorned with two independent shooters - an 8MP OmniVision OV8856 camera with a 130-degree wide-angle lens with an f/2.4 aperture and a 16MP OmniVision OV16880 snapper with an 88-degree wide-angle lens with an f/2.0 aperture. The main rear camera employs the same OV16880 sensor and an f/2.0 lens. The auxiliary camera uses a VGA GalaxyCore GC03010 sensor interpolated to 13MP. The rear snappers are aided by a dual-LED flash and PDAF. Doogee S50 supports 2G GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), 3G WCDMA (900, 2100 MHz), 4G LTE-FDD (800, 900, 1800, 2100, 2600 MHz), and 4G LTE-TDD (1900, 2300, 2500, 2600 MHz) bands. LTE speeds are Cat. 7. The wireless connectivity options of the device include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Display, Bluetooth 4.0. The model works with GPS and GLONASS. It is equipped with a Micro-USB 2.0 port with OTG support and a 3.5 mm jack. A 5180 mAh battery keeps the lights on coupled with a 5V/2A charger. The model runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat with Doogee's skin on it.

Complete Doogee S50 specifications.

What's in the box

Doogee S50 is packed in a nice rectangular box whose colour reminds of the one of recycled paper. The lid has the Doogee logo, model name and tagline imprinted on the top. The tagline reads "Impacted Rugged, Grand Resistance". The smartphone is placed in the top and below it, you will find the following accessories:

• 5V/2A charger (EU plug)
• Micro-USB data cable
• Screen protector with a cloth
• User manual
• Warranty card