Oukitel may not be the most popular Chinese phone maker but they manage to produce devices that have decent specs and design for the price. The Oukitel U16 Max is one of those phones. It costs about $140 and it has a 6” display, all-metal build and more. Learn more in the full Oukitel U16 Max review.

VIDEO REVIEW

UNBOXING

The phone ships with all the usual stuff and some extras include a soft TPU case.

DESIGN and DISPLAY

In terms of the design, the phone is made almost entirely of metal (except for the top and bottom parts for antennas) but it is not so easy to manage in one hand due to the sheer size.

The U16 Max sports 6” 720p display which may have the highest resolution but it plenty sharp for everyday use.

We don’t have backlit capacitive keys but there is a multicolor notification LED light, which sits next to the 5MP selfie shooter.

As for the main camera, we have a 13MP sensor that is coupled with a LED flash.

The fingerprint scanner may not be the fastest out there but it get the job done to unclok the phone straight from the standby mode.

I found the buttons to be nice and tactile and the overall build quality is good.

The loudspekaer quality is above average.

HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

The Oukitel U16 Max has decent specs for the price. it sprots an octa-core MTK6753 chip, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandlable storage.

As usual to these MediaTek chips, you will be able to run most of the 3D games on medium graphics without any issues but you should expect quite a few skipped frames and a bit of stutter if you switch graphics to the maximum in games like Asphalt 8.

BENCHMARKS

USER INTERFACE

The phone ships with Android 7 out of the box but we have a customized Oukitel’s skin on top of it that changes the looks and adds some extra features.

My favorites include some gesture controls that work fine most of the time and fingerprint scanner gestures that are actually really useful since the phone is huge.

Most importantly, I found the phone to be pretty fast on the daily basis even though I installed quite a few apps on it and used 3 different Google accounts.

IMAGE QUALITY

The image quality on this phone could be better. Sure, you can take some decent looking pictures for social media needs but usually the photos lack detail, sharpness, they are overexposed and there is a weird green tint in some of the shots.

The low-light camera performance is kind of poor, like on most of the cheapo phones.

The selfies are usable for social media but there could definitely be more detail and sharpness.

The 1080p video quality is mediocre like on most of the budget phones. Also, there is no continuous auto-focus feature.

The selfie videos are shot at only 480p resolution and the quality is poor. Also, the sound recording quality could be a lot better.

Download full resolution camera samples

CONNECTIVITY

When it comes to connectivity, I have no major complaints. Everything has been working fine, including the GPS that I found to be surprisingly accurate.

The phone has a hybrid dual SIM card that has a storage expansion option via the microSD card slot.

Unfortunately, the phone lacks a lot of sensors including the gyroscope.

BATTERY LIFE

A 4000mAh battery on this phone has to power a huge 6” display and I was able to get about 6 hours of screen on time, which is a decent result.

Finally, it takes about 2.5h to fully charge the phone with the supplied charger.

CONCLUSIONS

Oukitel U16 Max is yet another cheap phone from China that aims to deliver a lot of value for the price and it succeeds in quite a few ways. I would say this is a decent option for the price but the camera could be a dealbreaker for some.

If you don’t plan to take lots of pictures, the U16 Max is a decent offering for the price if you are in the market for a cheap huge phone.

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