Ulefone Armor X5 5.5″

Ulefone Armor X5 Design

The Ulefone Armor X5 looks like an iPhone inside a close-fitting case, especially with that notch housing the camera and speaker at the top of the screen. But the metal bezel holding the Gorilla glass front and acrylic plastic back in place is actually the frame of the phone itself. You can see the six tiny engineering screws that hold it together. That’s a sure sign of a rugged phone, as are the rubber bumpers at the four corners and rubber seals covering the three openings.

The protective bezel hardly protrudes further than the screen. This is the same Corning Gorilla 4 glass found in every other half-decent smartphone. So wondered how drop-proof this handset really is. Figures aren’t given by Armor and we were reluctant to test our only sample to destruction. Suffice to say, it survived some steep falls on its bezel and it certainly feels very well made.

Specifications and features

In terms of specifications, this isn’t the most sophisticated rugged phone out there. But that’s reflected in the price and the balance feels about right for a device that runs a higher risk than most, of getting trashed.

The screen feels large enough at 5.85-inches, even with a notch taken out of it, and the aspect ratio of 18.9:9 lends itself very well to split-screen viewing or scrolling down long lists. The resolution is only 1,512 x 720 pixels which are actually lower than that of the old Armor 2 and not Full HD. This is odd because it claims to record video at 1080p quality. Inside, the Helio P23 chip with 4GB of RAM seems adequate at running Android 8.1 Oreo without a hitch.

There’s 64GB of memory, which could be expanded by adding a 256GB microSD card. However, the memory card shares a space in the dual SIM card tray. So if you add memory, you can only fit one SIM. It is a slight compromise to keep the size of this handset down.

There are two cameras of reasonable resolution and the rear 13MP camera has dual-lens that help it achieve some decent depth of field shots. As you would hope from a phone that is designed to work outdoors. The battery is larger than average and rated at 5Ah. Which should give you up to 18 hours of talk time. This isn’t the longest battery life for the phone in this category. But the good news is that you can recharge it in three hours. Thanks to a USB-C port that allows fast charging, or you can power up wirelessly. This means you don’t have to fiddle with the rubber port seal.

8.2Expert Score

Gizcoupon Review

This is a mid-range rugged smartphone that looks like an iPhone.

Design

7.5

Performance

9

Price

7.7

Features

8.1

Quality

8.8

PROS

• Slim and light (for a tough phone)
• Fast-charging USB-C port
• Qi wireless charging option
• Fingerprint and face unlock
• Certifications

CONS

• No function button
• Not Full HD
• Inconsistent fingerprint reader