Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro review

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Two-minute review

When you’ve precocious reviewed the 16 Pro and past are sent the 17 Pro, it’s not an unreasonable decision that the caller telephone volition physique connected the erstwhile design.

But, the Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro takes precise little, if anything, from its predecessor.

Where that was a super-cheap and heavy, rugged telephone with a monolithic talker connected its back, the 17 Pro is treble the cost, importantly lighter and mostly has a overmuch amended specification.

Where the 16 Pro uses the lacklustre MediaTek Helio G25 SoC, the 17 Pro sports the precise pinnacle of the Helio series, the G99. A spot that, successful examination to different SoCs, the G99 is simply a precise almighty ARM processor and offers fantabulous performance.

The underlying level allows this telephone tin grip astir tasks with easiness portion besides offering large artillery life. Additionally, it supports a wide scope of features, specified arsenic dual-SIM support, NFC, and Wi-Fi 6. In presumption of gaming performance, the Helio G99 is capable powerfulness for astir games, though it whitethorn conflict with much aggravated titles.

The strengths of this plan implicit different rugged options are that astatine conscionable 290g it is overmuch lighter than most, and the lawsuit isn’t oddly shaped and thickened. That makes it a much applicable telephone to carry, adjacent if you don’t usage the optional protective lawsuit and its loop clip.

It besides has an awesome 108MP rear camera, on with an 8MP PDFA wide-angle sensor and an 8MP nighttime imaginativeness camera, Though adjacent with that monolithic rear sensor, it inactive can’t seizure 4K solution video, lone 2K.

There are 2 important weaknesses successful the 17 Pro, and the archetypal of those is simply a artillery capableness of conscionable 5380 mAh, an magnitude that you would find successful immoderate emblematic mid-priced phone.

The artillery tin beryllium accelerated charged, and the telephone supports wireless charging, but this isn’t a telephone that you would privation to instrumentality connected a agelong hike distant from civilisation.

The 2nd large weakness is that it doesn’t enactment 5G, making this a 4G telephone with LTE enactment astatine best. Phones costing this overmuch are starting to travel with 5G, but this 1 doesn’t.

Overall, a telephone that is much applicable than astir rugged designs and an absorbing divergence from the erstwhile 16 Pro.

This isn’t an costly instrumentality and has plentifulness of utile features for the asking price..

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro terms and availability

• How overmuch does it cost? $340 / £290
• When is it out? It is disposable now
• Where tin you get it? You tin get it successful astir regions nonstop from AliExpress oregon connected Amazon.com

Typically, connected Amazon oregon different mainstream online retailers, the 17 Pro costs astir $340, but for those consenting to hold for AliExpress to deliver, it tin beryllium purchased for $60 less.

That inactive makes it astir doubly the outgo of the 16 Pro, but the powerfulness and show successful this plan justifies the further cost.

Alongside conscionable the phone, the 17 Pro tin beryllium bought with an further protective case, a wireless charging base, a portable Bluetooth speaker, oregon assorted combinations of those items. With them each included by AliExpress, it costs astir the aforesaid arsenic conscionable the telephone from Amazon.

Even with the summation implicit the 16 Pro, this is inactive 1 of the cheapest phones built astir the MediaTek Helio G99 SoC and much blase than the emblematic rugged designs.

• Value score: 4/5

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro design

• Solid construction
• By-the-numbers buttons
• Dedicated flashlight

Rugged phones thin to autumn into 2 subcategories; chunky oregon slim. And, the 17 Pro is distinctly successful the ‘slim’ category, lone 12.5mm thick.

It would beryllium adjacent thinner if the camera clump connected the rear didn’t task outwards.

At conscionable 290 g, this is 1 of the lightest phones from Ulefone we’ve seen, and unless specifically primed, astir radical picking up this instrumentality would presume it was a regular Chinese smartphone.

That said, determination are a fewer rugged hints, successful that the backmost has a faux c fibre finish, and the sides and each the buttons are metal.

The fastener layout is the de facto modular comprising of the audio rocker and powerfulness fastener (doubling arsenic thumbprint reader) connected the close and the customized fastener and SIM tray connected the left.

On the bottommost borderline is the USB-C charging larboard and a 3.5mm audio headphone jack, and neither of these is protected by a rubber plug.

Despite the deficiency of a plug, the telephone is rated for IP68 (maximum extent of 1.5 metres up to 30 minutes) nether IEC, and it adjacent has underwater camera modes.

Also, successful the bottommost near country is simply a lanyard spread for those wanting to unafraid the Pro 17 to a strap oregon belt.

As with astir modern phones, the standout diagnostic is the display. It’s a 20:9, 1080 x 2408 FHD+ screen, offering 6.58‑inches of interaction sheet that adjacent those with large fingers should beryllium capable to operate. It’s agleam and colourful and has a decent solution for viewing captured images and video. The refresh complaint is 120Hz, capable to debar surface tearing erstwhile rapidly scrolling images.

In the centre of the backmost are the cameras, successful a mostly bully presumption for those that often accidentally enactment their fingers connected the borderline of their photos. This is simply a triple-sensor clump with the apical sensor offering an astonishing 108MP resolution. The 2 different sensors are 1 for wide-angle enactment (8MP) and a nighttime imaginativeness camera (also 8MP).

To supply flash illumination, 3 accepted LEDs and 2 IR LEDs are besides portion of the rear camera cluster.

The 16MP selfie camera connected the beforehand is centrally mounted successful a cutout astatine the apical of the display. Normally the nonaccomplishment of a portion of the sheet to this diagnostic would annoy us, but the surface present has other pixels to debar this being a origin successful presenting video oregon images.

Overall, the Pro 17 is simply a bully illustration of a caller procreation of ruggedized designs wherever its quality to withstand the situation and a fewer hard knocks hasn’t compromised it arsenic a telephone successful immoderate important way.

Design score: 4/5

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro hardware

• Low spec platform
• Decent artillery size
• Endoscope option

The Mediatek Helio G99 is simply a mid-range mobile strategy connected a spot (SoC) released successful 2021. It is based connected the 12nm fabrication process and is the successor to the Helio G90T. The Helio G99 is an 8-core CPU with 4 ARM Cortex A-76 and 4 ARM Cortex A-55 cores. This bundle includes a Mali-G57 MC2 GPU for graphics and enactment for up to 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM and UFS 2.1 storage.

In this design, 8GB of representation is combined with 256GB of main storage, providing capable abstraction for astir usage profiles. But this is besides 1 of the caller designs wherever immoderate of the main retention tin beryllium reallocated to RAM, boosting the magnitude disposable by up to 5GB. But, the shaper warns that not each Android bundle is compatible with this Virtual Memory Expansion feature.

While this spot doesn’t vie with immoderate of the latest Snapdragon designs, it’s an fantabulous all-around performer and allows the 17 Pro to present awesome benchmark scores.

An SoC of this show level is captious erstwhile you person a camera susceptible of 108MP images successful the strategy for the post-processing of that data.

One contradiction of this plan is that the surface has a solution of 2408 x 1080, providing much abstraction than a 1080p video requires to beryllium afloat represented without scaling.

However, the Pro 17 doesn’t enactment the Widevine L1 video decryption standard, resulting successful streaming services similar Netflix and Disney+ reducing the champion solution disposable to conscionable 480p. It is imaginable to get 1080p playback connected YouTube and with seizure videos, but not implicit astir streaming services.

This regulation appears to beryllium the norm among Chinese phones, and it whitethorn beryllium to bash with the further outgo of getting L1, implicit the L3 decryption galore travel with.

While inactive representation seizure tin beryllium made astatine brainsick resolutions, adjacent with a 108MP sensor, the Pro 17 tin lone connection 2K signaling astatine 30fps, with nary 4K options.

While determination whitethorn beryllium bully reasons for avoiding 4K, wherefore they didn’t see faster framework complaint versions of 1080p, 720p and 480p is simply a mystery. They’re each locked astatine 30fps.

For occidental buyers, the deficiency of 5G comms mightiness beryllium an issue, depending connected the locale, but it does connection a pervasive enactment of 4G LTE frequencies (FDD and TDD) alongside enactment for 3G and 2G bequest services.

One curiosity is that this plan supports simultaneous dual SIM support, allowing some connections to beryllium active. However, the enactment of 2 4G connections to a azygous instrumentality depends connected the section telecom relation and if they let this connected their service.

• Hardware score: 4/5

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro cameras

• 108MP sensor connected the rear
• Wide-angle, macro and nighttime vision
• Four cameras successful total

The Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro has 4 cameras:

• Rear cameras: 108MP Samsung HM2, 8 MP GC08A3 Sensor (Wide), 8MP Samsung S5K4H7 Sensor (Night Vision)
  Front camera: 8MP SONY IMX481 Sensor (Wide)

When you spot the Samsung HM2 108MP sensor connected this phone, 1 is instantly drawn to reason that this mightiness beryllium a bully telephone for pictures, and it is.

However, the 108MP mode that captures whopping 12000 x 8992 solution images isn’t the 1 that astir radical volition use. Because nary of the ‘Pro Mode’ features exists astatine this level of detail, and with the objection of 4X integer zoom, determination are nary options.

The modular solution for pictures is lone 12MP, oregon 4000 x 2992, oregon astir 12% of the sensor area.

Admittedly not arsenic awesome arsenic 108MP, but the little prime mounting gives afloat power implicit ISO, aperture and speed, resulting successful overmuch amended prime results.

It’s besides worthy considering that the emblematic size of a 108MP representation is betwixt 20MB and 25MB, whereas a 12MP is usually beneath 10MB. It takes longer to instrumentality 108MP images, you person little control, and they instrumentality up excessive space.

Usually, we mightiness kick that RAW isn’t supported, but 108MP RAW images would beryllium exceptionally ample and astir apt not applicable connected this platform.

It’s tempting to deliberation that the 108MP is conscionable a hook to get customers who privation the champion pictures, but it’s much analyzable than that owed to the results of utilizing a 108MP sensor to instrumentality 12MP images.

These pictures are predictably good, show comparatively fewer artefacts and chromatic aberrations, and are good colour balanced adjacent with everything acceptable to auto.

It would person been bully to person a 24MP oregon 56MP mode which had each the controls of 12MP, but it is imaginable to get immoderate fantabulous results retired of the Pro 17, conscionable not by utilizing 108MP.

Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro performance

• Performance powerhouse
• GPU isn’t the precise quickest

These results are close up with the precise champion we’ve had from rugged phones, bettered lone by those powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 900 SoC oregon Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 5G.

And, adjacent those devices lone marque a fistful of people points more, and not crossed each benchmarks.

To underline this, the Passmark people of 9359 is 1 the highest we’ve tested from a rugged phone, and lone Dimensity 900-powered devices did better.

The lone weakness we noticed is that the Mali-G57 MC2 isn’t arsenic speedy arsenic the Mali-G68 MP4 that the Dimensity 900 SoC uses, delivering 1359 connected the Wild Life trial connected this phone, but much than 2000 connected the Doogee V30 and Ulefone Power Armor 18T.

That makes the G99 a small little suitable for gaming, but not by an magnitude astir players would instantly notice.

What is much apt to beryllium noticeable is the magnitude of artillery capacity.

• Performance score: 4/5

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro battery

• Small capableness for rugged design
• 66W ace accelerated charging
• Qi charging and MagSafe

The elephant successful this powerhouse is the battery, oregon much specifically, the 5380 mAh artillery Ulefone blessed the 17 Pro with.

By rugged telephone standards, that’s not huge, and portion it is bigger than the 4,323mAh that Apple gives the iPhone 14 Pro Max, we typically spot phones with 10,000 oregon much mAh successful this sector.

The disposable capableness has a quoted standby of 294 hours and a talk-time of 29 hours, but realistically astir phones don’t tally retired of powerfulness connected standby oregon portion being utilized arsenic a phone.

With a smaller battery, Ulefone did marque immoderate effort to alteration the telephone to complaint quickly, and with a suitable charger similar the 1 included with the phone, it tin grip a 66W accelerated charge. Due to the flattened back, this plan tin besides wireless complaint up to 15W utilizing Qi charging pad (not included). It volition besides wireless reverse complaint to different telephone with Qi.

Its last instrumentality is that it tin besides magnetically wireless complaint successful overmuch the aforesaid mode arsenic a caller iPhone, allowing it to beryllium utilized with a magnetic wallet. Included successful the container is simply a brushed magnetic wallet that doubles arsenic a telephone stand, conveniently.

While the 17 Pro mightiness not person the artillery capableness of the 16 Pro oregon 18T, it does person a fewer different neat charging features that spell immoderate mode to equilibrium this equation. The smaller artillery positively impacts the phone's wide weight, importantly.

• Battery score: 3/5

There are galore things to similar astir the 17 Pro that code immoderate of the issues with the 16 Pro and besides connection a hint astatine wherever Ulefone is apt to spell with aboriginal rugged designs.

Instead of emulating spare parts from a transformer, the Pro 17 offers a ample but not excessively sized telephone that is robust and protected from the situation without resorting to shipping instrumentality aesthetics.

The MediaTek Helio G99 SoC gives plentifulness of processing performance, and the 108MP camera sensor delivers fantabulous photograph capture. The lone existent caveat is the constricted artillery capacity, making it little than perfect for agelong escapade holidays distant from mains power.

It mightiness outgo astir treble the outgo of the 16 Pro, but the 17 Pro is simply a batch much telephone for the currency and astir apt amended worth connected the investment.

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro people card

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