Ulefone is one of the Chinese manufacturers, which wants to draw some attention by producing some similarly designed devices we have already seen before. I am talking about the Be Touch. Is this the best cheap iPhone 6 Plus alternative?
a plain packaging with a set of standard accessories
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The device comes in a plain box, which has some basic information like specifications printed on it.
The packaging contents include the stuff you would it expect to come with most of the smartphones.
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The contents include the charging brick along with USB cable, instruction manuals, screen protector and a pair of very cheap headphones, which sound quite terrible.
DESIGN
a great looking iphone 6 plus wannabe device with a decent build quality
The star of the show is the Ulefone Be Touch smartphone, which looks very similar to the iPhone 6 Plus from the front side.
On the bottom side there are non-backlit capacitive keys along with a home button, which also has a fingerprint scanner. I will get back to this interesting feature very soon.
The top side features a 5MP front facing camera with the LED flash, earpiece and proximity sensor. However, there is no notification LED on this device.
The back side is where the Ulefone Be Touch looks different than the iPhone 6 Plus. It has a plastic removable back cover, 13MP Sony IMX214 camera along with the single tone dual LED flash and the Ulefone logo.
Removing the back cover is quite easy, but you may need a credit card as it sits very tight. Under the hood there is a 2550 mAh removable battery, 2 SIM card slots and the microSD card slot up to 64GB.
The device spots a high quality metal frame, which gives that premium look and feel.
The volume rocker and the power key are also made out of metal, but they are on the left side of the device. I don’t care about the volume buttons, but the power on/off switch should be always on the right side. I will never understand why some manufacturers do that. It is just so uncomfortable for me.
On the top side you can find a headset jack and the micro USB charging port.
On the bottom there is a speaker grill along with the microphone.
All design pictures in a gallery:
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Overall design and build quality impressions
Allright, so for the price of just over $200, the overall built quality is great. A metal chassis and the quality plastic back cover seem to look good and feel great in the hand. However, you have to keep in mind that this is 5.5″ device, which basically falls into the phablet category. It may may be not that unusual for many users, but I found it a bit hard to reach all the corners of the screen with fingers. The thing is that the device is tall and has huge top and bottom bezels, which make it difficult to handle the device with one hand. Well, it may be the price if you want to mimic the iPhone 6 Plus, I guess.
DISPLAY
pretty good 5.5″ display
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The device carries a 5.5” 720p display, which is actually pretty good. It has some natural looking colours, great viewing angles, decent brightness and good outdoors visibility.
UI and PERFORMANCE
Android 5.0 lolipop is running smoothly and it is a pleasure to use the device overall. The fingerprint scanner is the highlight of the show.
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The Ulefone Be Touch runs almost stock looking Android 5.0 Lolipop OS. My experience is that everything is running smoothly and I have no complaints scrolling through menus or opening different apps. The UI has some basic settings you can adjust and it is worth mentioning that the device supports tons of languages out of the box.
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One of the key features Ulefone is very proud of is the fingerprint scanner, which is embedded in the home button. First, you have to set it up by tapping the finger of your choice several times until the scanner recognises all the prints of your finger. Worth mentioning is that you can register up to 5 fingers, which gives you some flexibility. Also, it works with humans only as it could not register my cat’s pads.
In addition, you have to set up the security password if something goes wrong with the scanner or you cut your finger off.
The fingerprint scanner works pretty good. It is not that accurate as the one on the iPhone, but gets the job done. For the $200 price category, you can’t expect more.
The device also features some gesture controls we have already seen on tens of devices. They work well, but, however, if you use the fingerprint scanner as an unlock method, these controls are pretty much useless as you need to unlock the device first.
PERFORMANCE
the device performs well both in synthetic benchmarks and in real-life demanding tasks
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The device carries a Mediatek 6752 64-bit chip inside along with 3GB of RAM. That’s a lot of sheer power and the smartphone manages to perform well in synthetic benchmarks. Antutu benchmark score is over 38.000, which is not bad at all.
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The demanding tasks like gaming are handled pretty good and I didn’t have any issues even with the most graphically intensive games. Well, the graphics don’t look that good as on the high-end smartphones, but there are no lags or skipped frames. In addition, the device gets a bit hot, but does not overheat too much to make it uncomfortable to hold.
MULTIMEDIA
multimedia experience is great, but it is disrupted by the lack of decent stock media players and below average speaker quality
The 1080p video playback is smooth and I had no issues with playing or scrolling the video back and forth. However, you may want to download the third-party video player as the installed one is just very basic.
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As far as the music playback goes, the device comes with a stock Android music app, which is running smoothly. The sound quality of the speaker is not that good. It is loud enough to hear it, but not really pleasant to your ears as it lacks in lows, mids and highs. Please watch the video review to hear the audio test.
CAMERA
The implementation of sony imx214 sensor is good only in daylight, but STRUGGLES badly in low light scenarios
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The Ulefone Be Touch comes with a basic camera app, which has a few settings to play with a couple of different shooting modes. The shutter speed is not the fastest I’ve seen, but it is okay for the price tag of this device.
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The gallery app is also very basic, but it is very fast, responsive and it is a pleasure to use it.
PICTURE QUALITY
Please note that the pictures have been resized to optimise the browsing experience.
The 13MP Sony IMX214 sensor on this device can capture some decent looking daylight images. They are far from ideal as it could be a bit sharper, but you cannot expect more from this relatively cheap device.
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Once you take the device indoors, you can still capture some okay looking images. In addition, if you hold the device steady, the macro shots can come out pretty good looking.
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When the sun goes down, the struggles start. The shutter speed becomes significantly slower and the pictures look grainy, washed out and do not have much details in it. Well, it did not surprise me as I have never seen a budget device with a good low-light camera performance.
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The night shots are actually completely useless in auto-mode I’ve tested. Literally, it’s better to remember what you saw that taking a picture at night.
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The dual LED flash helps illuminating the scene a little. The pictures don’t look excellent, but are usable for social media needs. However, the LED is weak and helps only with close-up shots.
Selfie Camera
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The 5MP selfie camera is just average, but should be enough for your Facebook status update.
The cool thing is that the front facing snapper has an LED to make night selfies possible. However, it is weak and and the pictures turn out to be terrible in comparison to the vivo Xshot, which also has the front facing LED.
VIDEO QUALITY
Check out the video review to see the video sample.
The video quality is below average. First of all, the footage is very shaky as there is no image stabilisation whatsoever. Also, the movements look choppy and the video looks washed out overall. It can suffice for the social media, but not for the movie making.
CONNECTIVITY
Overall good connectivity is ruined by slow gps lock speed
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The call quality is good and I have no complaints about it. Other connectivity options like bluetooth and wifi are good. However, the GPS signal is not that good as it can take around a minute to lock the position. That’s way below standard and it may be really inconvenient.
BATTERY
low capacity 2550mah battery life could be much better
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The removable 2550mAh battery does not look good on paper and it performs poorly in real life scenarios. It can get you though the day only if you are a light user as the maximum screen on time is just around 3 hours if you are only doing easy tasks.
CONCLUSIONS
ulefone be touch is a great cheap iphone 6 plus alternative despite a few shortcomings
Ulefone Be Touch is a device, which is built to mimic the looks of the iPhone 6 Plus. It is definitely not on par with the top-notch Apple device, but it does carry a significantly lower price tag.
The built quality is great as the metal and plastic construction looks great and it does not feel cheap. Also, the screen is good and the finger print scanner is actually a nice feature to have for a device that costs just over $200.
Good raw specs are performing great in real life and even the most demanding tasks are being handled well.
However, the camera, battery performance and slow GPS lock speeds are the biggest woes of this smartphone. All these departments are not terrible, but could be a lot better.
All in all, it is not a bad device for the price, but you have to consider some shortcomings according to your personal preferences before you make a purchase.
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As far as the music playback goes, the device comes with a stock Android music app, which is running smoothly. The sound quality of the speaker is not that good. It is loud enough to hear it, but not really pleasant to your ears as it lacks in lows, mids and highs. Please watch the video review to hear the audio test.
The Ulefone Be Touch comes with a basic camera app, which has a few settings to play with a couple of different shooting modes. The shutter speed is not the fastest I’ve seen, but it is okay for the price tag of this device.
The gallery app is also very basic, but it is very fast, responsive and it is a pleasure to use it.
When the sun goes down, the struggles start. The shutter speed becomes significantly slower and the pictures look grainy, washed out and do not have much details in it. Well, it did not surprise me as I have never seen a budget device with a good low-light camera performance.
The night shots are actually completely useless in auto-mode I’ve tested. Literally, it’s better to remember what you saw that taking a picture at night.
The dual LED flash helps illuminating the scene a little. The pictures don’t look excellent, but are usable for social media needs. However, the LED is weak and helps only with close-up shots.Selfie Camera
The 5MP selfie camera is just average, but should be enough for your Facebook status update.The cool thing is that the front facing snapper has an LED to make night selfies possible. However, it is weak and and the pictures turn out to be terrible in comparison to the vivo Xshot, which also has the front facing LED.
The call quality is good and I have no complaints about it. Other connectivity options like bluetooth and wifi are good. However, the GPS signal is not that good as it can take around a minute to lock the position. That’s way below standard and it may be really inconvenient.
The removable 2550mAh battery does not look good on paper and it performs poorly in real life scenarios. It can get you though the day only if you are a light user as the maximum screen on time is just around 3 hours if you are only doing easy tasks.
