Ulefone Armor 2 Review

Overview

Ulefone Armor 2 has been announced in February 2017 and it took the manufacturer half a year to bring it to the shelves. Now that it is here, most of you who are interested in ruggedized smartphones will probably ask yourselves how it competes against models such as the AGM X1, Blackview BV7000 Pro, Oukitel K10000 Pro and other rugged smartphones that cost USD 250 or less. Our 10-page review of the Armor 2 that follows will aim to answer for you whether the device is fairly priced and you can compare our findings and test results with the other rugged smartphones that we have reviewed.

Specifications

Ulefone Armor 2 is a rugged smartphone with a waterproof and dust-tight body (IP68) made of metal and tough protective shell. It is adorned by a 5-inch IPS display from Sharp with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels. The screen is protected by a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and has an oleophobic (lipophobic) coating against smudges. The manufacturer specifies that the display panel covers 95% of the NTSC colour space. A 4700 mAh battery keeps the lights on and is coupled with a 9V/2A fast charger supporting MediaTek Pump Express plus 2.0. The battery is said to provide up to 20 hours of talk time and up to 640 hours of standby time. As long as it concerns performance, the device relies on a 64-bit MediaTek Helio P25 (MT6757CD) system-on-chip built after TSMC's 16nm FinFET process. It includes four 2.6GHz Cortex-A53 CPU cores and four 1.6GHz Cortex-A53 cores. The graphics are handled by a 900MHz dual-core Mali-T880 GPU. The model is equipped with 6GB of dual-channel, LPDDR4X RAM clocked at 1600MHz. The built-in memory measures 64GB and can be expanded with up to 256GB. The Armor 2 sports a 16MP Samsung S5K3P3 primary camera with a 5-element lens, f/2.0 aperture and dual-LED flash. The front-facing shooter packs an 8MP OmniVision OV8856 sensor and a 5-element lens with an f/2.0 aperture. There are plenty of sensors on board this model including an AR/VR compatible 6-axis gyroscope, compass, pedometer, and a fingerprint sensor embedded in the home button. The device does supports a plethora of network bands (27 to be precise), including 2.5G CDMA, 4G FDD-LTE and TDD-LTE ones. Its wireless connectivity options include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, Cast display, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 4.1. In addition, despite being based on a MediaTek chipset, this smartphone supports full-features NFC, including Android Beam and Tap & Pay services. It also works with GPS and GLONASS. The Armor 2 has a USB Type-C port with OTG support and a standard connector depth. No 3.5 mm jack. It arrives with stock Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box. Here's the full set of Ulefone Armor 2 specifications.

What's in the box

Ulefone Armor 2 arrives in a flat, rectangular box. On the lid, there's a photo with a yellow background depicting people trekking uphill. Some of the main rugged features of the model are also mentioned as icons in the bottom right corners. The brand and model names are imprinted on top as well. On the back of the box, there's a sticker with the main specifications of the model and other data. The internals is separated into two levels and the smartphone is placed on the top one. Below it, there are several compartments containing:

• USB Type-C cable
• Micro-USB to Type-C adapter
• headphone adapter
• 9V/2A fast charger (EU plug)
• screwdriver
• warranty card and a user manual