I bought a new phone last month, for the first time in about 4 years. After doing some research, I found the Ulefone Armor 3 had the closest to the features I wanted: ruggedness and a big battery.
I ordered mine from Deal Extreme on March 14, but it wasn’t delivered until April 16. I understand shipping from Asia can take time, but the product page said “7-10 days”. I wrote to the seller after 12 days, and they didn’t respond until I had sent several emails, finally explaining in broken English that they were waiting on restock. When I ordered their inventory said close to 40,000 units, which clearly wasn’t the case. It wasn’t until after the first week of April that I finally received notification that my order shipped.
Fortunately, it arrived undamaged. If you’re in a hurry and don’t mind paying a lot more, you can get them from Amazon sellers for $400 in less than a week, but I paid just $272 for mine, which is a great value for the price. The Armor 3 can be had for as little as $230, but I opted for 3T,which has a push-to-talk walkie talkie feature that the Armor 3 lacks.
Ulefone is not well known in the United States. From what I have read, they are a Chinese maker. The Armor series are rugged designs rated for IP67, IP68, and can withstand drops, water immersion, and don’t need a protective case to achieve it. Ulefone also has a line called Power, which has bigger batteries than most phones. The Armor 3 has both ruggedness and a big battery, which is what I was looking for.
I’ve had mine just 3 days, and I like it overall, but there are a few shortcomings. The biggest problem is that the screen is not very bright, and in direct sunlight is impossible to read.
No pedometer. Most phones these days have them, but not this model. Which, is a shame considering the “rugged outdoors” theme of this model.
No qi charging. USB charging only. Wireless charging would be a nice feature, as it would reduce wear and tear to the USB C port.
Access to SD/SIM slots requires a tool, which they provide, but carrying a tiny screwdriver around just in case isn’t the most convenient, and the tiny screws are tiny.
This thing has the loudest external speakers of any phone I’ve ever used, and speakers isn’t a mistake. It has stereo. But on speaker phone, the minimum volume is still too loud for quiet indoor use. But should be fine on an oil derrick or construction site.
The good outweighs the bad. The phone runs Android 8.1 out of the box, and it has an 8 core CPU backed by 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage, plus the optional SD card, which should be plenty of space. The performance specs are mid-tier, but I find them to be more than adequate. Battery life is excellent, and what you would expect from a 10300 mah battery. On low power mode, it is especially good, and I don’t notice any performance reasons to recommend not using low power mode.
I haven’t had too many calls with it yet, but call quality might be an issue. Whether this is a carrier/network problem or a VOWIFI problem, I’m not sure yet. But in the two calls I’ve had, there were stutters and drops, as well as some squawks and beeps. I haven’t yet found the setting to disable VOWIFI, but I suspect this could help.
I did do my research and confirmed that the global version of the phone supported the bands that T-mobile use in the USA. Most of the handsets that Ulefone offers sadly do not.
I was worried that the phone would be too big for easy one hand use, and too big to pocket. It is pretty close to the limit for what I can handle one-handed, and my hands are fairly large. But it fits my pocket ok, though it is a bit long. Over all, I can live with it.
Hopefully Ulefone will be able to establish itself in the North American market. It’s models are very attractive, and offer something different from most other makers. These big battery phones are great, and just what I want in a phone, and there’s not much out there currently that can match it.