Umidigi A3X - $70 for a brand new smartphone

[Aniallation]

Backstory:

It's about time that the misses younger brother got his first phone, but I didn't want to spend too much to get him one to start him off, and performance didn't need to be any more than usable, so I was keeping an eye on the local classifieds looking for a good deal to come up on something like a used Galaxy S6 or original Pixel, preferably around the 120 Canadian dollars mark. However, with a used device of a decent age, there's always the threat of something hidden being wrong with it, or a worn out non-replaceable battery holding a poor charge. Browsing through Amazon later on though, I saw the Umidigi A3S and A3X listed for $120 CAD and was immediately intrigued and thought I'd give it a try to see just how bad a brand new smartphone could be for the same price as what people want for old weights sitting in their drawers.

 

Initial Impressions:

In the box along with the charger and manual, Umidigi also includes a pre-applied basic plastic screen protector and a black TPU case. Nothing fancy, but when you don't even get these with $1200 phones, it was a very pleasant surprise on a $120 phone. The phone feels very solid, the build is glass front and back with a metal frame around the edges. It has a good heft to it without feeling too heavy, although it is a bit on the thicker side. The buttons have a nice click to them and overall it feels nice in the hand.

 

 

 

The good:

Performance: The phone has a Helio A22 chipset with eight A53 cores at 2.0GHz and 3GBs of RAM. While not fast by any means, it definitely has no problem with the typical daily tasks one would do on a smartphone. Browse the web, watch YouTube, stream Spotify, scroll through social media, etc. Casual games run just fine as well, though obviously more demanding stuff like PUBG and COD mobile are out of the question.

Expansion & Connectivity: Dual SIM with LTE connection available on both. 16GB of storage is built in but can be expanded via the MicroSD slot up to 128GB, and it is a triple-slot tray so you can use two SIMs AND a MicroSD card at the same time. And most importantly of all, there is a headphone jack.

Battery Life: I tried it out as my daily driver for a few days and during normal use battery life was great, I never finished a day with less than 30% remaining. 

OS: The phone runs Android 10 which is currently the latest version, and completely stock with no unnecessary skin and very little bloatware (all of which can be uninstalled).

 

 

 

 

The alright:

Display: With a 720p resolution the pixel density isn't too bad, but the colors are somewhat washed out, and viewing angles aren't amazing. 

WiFi performance: The 5GHz reception is very weak, even though my room is only one floor up and directly above where the router (Archer C20) is, and all other devices in my room work on the 5GHz network just fine, the A3X shows a very weak signal and 90% of the time fails to connect. The 2.4GHz WiFi works perfectly though and no complaints there.

 

 

 

 

The complaints:

Camera: Images with either the front or rear camera look alright under bright daylight, but anything less and they become quite washed out, the colors go funny, and there's quite a loss of detail as noise becomes more prevalent especially once you get to low light where images really become grainy. The viewfinder in the camera app has a very low framerate even with good lighting making it kind of frustrating to use. It's still perfectly usable for the quick Snapchat message or Instagram story and therefore not a huge deal for my use case, but don't expect anything great. 

Charging speed: The phone comes with only a 5V/1A charger, not because they're cheap, but because that's all it supports. Charging with a 2.1A unit doesn't make it any faster, so it can take a while for the 3300mAh battery to fill up from empty. It also uses a MicroUSB port which is a bit behind the times for a "2020 design device" when just about everyone has switched to USB-C.

 

Umidigi A3X

 

Samsung Galaxy S8

 

Overall:

For the price it is simply an awesome value even compared to what you could find for the price as far as used devices go, with a fresh battery and a lot more assurance that everything will work properly. It's far from what I'd call an amazing phone in the greater picture, but when taking into account such a low cost it makes an awesome choice for me as teenager's first phone that they just want to be able to text and go on social media with and that I won't be too chafed at the financial loss if they end up losing or breaking it. It is also available in an alternate form which is the A3S. The difference between the two is that the A3S has a smaller display but in a standard aspect ratio without the "notch" that seems to bother some people. It also has a slightly larger battery. The rest of the specs and build are the same.

 

I am in Canada and got my A3X on Amazon. It does not appear to be listed on the US Amazon site, although it is available on AliExpress as well for $70 USD. 

 

 

[iBabySlapper]

These phones honestly aren't bad for the money. A few years ago I bought a Umi Iron for the luls because I thought it looked cool for the money. It wasn't bad.

They have a phone called the S5 Pro coming soon, and I concidered switching to it since it has pretty good features, but I know they won't update their software so I probably won't.