UMIDIGI S2 Review

Overview

UMIDIGI S2 continues a series of quite successful smartphones for UMIDIGI. Announced after its S2 Pro sibling, this smartphone packs a huge display with an 18:9 aspect ratio following the current trend for an almost all-screen front design of smartphones. It is also temptingly priced and on paper, it sounds that it offers a lot more than it costs. So here we have a black sample of the model, which will undergo our usual routine of tests, benchmarks and measurements to see whether the UMIDIGI S2 lives up to expectations.

Specifications

UMIDIGI S2 sports a big 6-inch in-cell TDDI IPS display from Sharp with an HD+ resolution (720 x 1440). The screen has an 18:9 aspect ration and is protected by a 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass 4. The model is powered by a 5100 mAh battery that supports MediaTek Pump Express Plus 2.0 and is combined with a 12V/1.25A fast charger. Hardware-wise, the smartphone is based on a MediaTek Helio P20 (MT6757) chipset. It houses eight Cortex-A53 CPU cores, four of which are clocked at 2.3GHz and the other four tick at 1.6GHz. A dual-core 900MHz Mali-T880 MP2 GPU manages the graphics department. The model is equipped with 4GB of dual-channel LPDDR4X RAM clocked at 1600MHz. Its built-in storage (eMMC 5.1) measures 64GB and can be expanded with up to 256GB. UMIDIGI S2 has two rear cameras. The main one packs a 13MP Sony IMX258 sensor and a 5-element lens with an f/2.0 aperture. The auxiliary rear shooter has a VGA GalaxyCore GC0310 interpolated to 5MP. The cameras are aided by a dual-tone LED flash and phase detection AF. The front-facing snapper is equipped with a 5MP GalaxyCore GC5005 sensor and an f/2.0 lens. This model supports plenty of network bands, including 2G GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), 2.5G CDMA B0 for North America, 3G W-CDMA (850, 900, 1700, 1900, 2100 MHz), 4G LTE-FDD (B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B7, B8, B12, B17, B19, B20), 4G LTE-TDD (B38, B39, B40, B41). LTE speeds are Cat. 6 ones, VoLTE is supported as well. The wireless connectivity options of UMIDIGI S2 include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Display, Bluetooth 4.0. There's a USB Type-C 2.0 port on board and no 3.5 mm jack. The latter is compensated by a headphone adapter. The device works with GPS and GLONASS and runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, upgradable to Android 7.0 Nougat with UMi OS on top. A single, bottom-firing speaker and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor are on board as well.

Complete UMIDIGI S2 specifications.

What's in the box

The packaging of UMIDIGI S2 is definitely a luxurious and generous one. The box is covered with a sleeve and when the latter is removed, the box literally unfolds in front of you. The top layer has fingerprint-like texture. The UMIDIGI logo is on top of the lid. The charger and cable, each has a separate box inside the big one. The whole compartment has a sign "Link to the world" on the outside. The phone and the other accessories are placed in a third compartment. The device arrives with a pre-applied screen protector. The rest of the accessories include:

• 12V/1.25A fast charger (EU plug)
• USB Type-C data cable
• Headphone adapter (Type-C to 3.5 mm jack)
• Silicone case for the back in a marble black colour
• SIM tray pin
• Quick start guide