Ulefone Armor 21 Review

Overview

Ulefone Armor 21 is the latest model from the well-specced, big battery, rugged Armor series by the brand. It has a familiar impeccable design, bespoke ruggedized qualities, a balanced list of mid-range and upper mid-range specifications, and a special treat - a huge rear-facing 122 dB speaker with a halo ring of RGB lights around it. The model also arrives at a decently affordable price, so it should be on the consideration list of everyone listed in a rugged smartphone. Below we start our in-depth Ulefone Armor 21 review with the specifications and what's in the box and the following pages unveil our measurements and testing of all major aspects of the model.

Specifications

Ulefone Armor 21 features a 6.58-inch IPS display with an FHD+ resolution of 1080 x 2408 pixels, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. The screen has a V-shaped notch for the 16MP Sony IMX481 selfie camera with an f/2.2 aperture, a 5-element lens, a 76.6° FoV, and 1.0 µm pixel size. The rear camera department features two units. The main one uses a 64MP Sony IMX686 sensor with 0.8 µm pixel size and a 6-element lens with an f/1.9 aperture and an 85° FoV. The second camera is a Night Vision one and uses a 24MP OmniVision OV24A1B sensor and an f/1.8 lens with a 78.1° FoV. The Night Vision camera is aided by dual IR lights. Both the front and the main rear camera support 2K video recording at 30 fps. And to finish off the media department of specs - here are the speaker details. This is a big unit with a 36 mm diagonal, 11.55 cc-equivalent sound cavity volume, and a Smart PA. The peak power output of the speaker is 3.5W and its loudness is 122 dB. There's a LED RGB light ring around it called Infinite Hallo. It uses 18 LEDs and supports 10 lighting modes. The smartphone is P68, IP69K, and MIL-STD-810H certified for being resistant to water, dust, sand, drops, extreme temperatures, etc.

The 6nm MediaTek Helio G99 (MT6789) chipset sits at the helm of the Ulefone Armor 21. It houses a 2.2GHz octa-core CPU and a 1GHz dual-core Mali-G57 GPU. The available LPDDR4X RAM and UFS 2.1 storage include 8GB and 256GB, respectively. The RAM can be virtually expanded and the storage can be expanded with up to 2TB via a microSD card. Power is supplied by a 9600 mAh battery supporting 33W fast charging and 10W dock charging. The smartphone is equipped with a triple tray providing two slots for Nano SIM cards and a third slot for a microSD card. It supports the following network bands on both SIM cards: 2G GSM (2/3/5/8), 3G WCDMA (1/2/4/5/8), 4G FDD-LTE (B1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/17/19/20/28A/28B/66), and 4G TDD-LTE (34/38/39/40/41). The rest of the connectivity options include NFC, Bluetooth 5.2, Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Hotspot, and Cast Display. The device also has a built-in antenna that does not require headphones in order to listen to the radio. Furthermore, the Armor 21 has an IR blaster that turns it into a convenient remote control, a USB Type-C 2.0 port, a headphone jack, and a side-mounted fingerprint sensor. The smartphone runs on Android 13 and works with GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and Beidou.

Complete Ulefone Armor 21 specifications.

What's in the box

Ulefone Armor 21 arrives in a classic for the Armor series box - yellow with industrial accents. The model and brand names are imprinted on the lid with the respective ingress ratings. Several accessories are accompanying the Armor 21 and here's what's in the box:

• Ulefone Armor 21
• 11V/3A (33W) charger (EU plug)
• Thick, red USB Type-C cable
• Lanyard
• SIM tray pick
• Screen protector
• Pre-applied screen protector
• User manual and other documents