Just how sturdy is the Ulefone Power Armor 13

Defining it "tank" might seem exaggerated to the eye of those who, like you who are reading, have not taken this Ulefone Power Armor 13 in hand: I could not find other adjectives to define how mammoth it is, so maybe I will have to stop to the "tank" only.

Recensione Ulefone Power Armor 13

If I told you that Ulefone Power Armor 13 weighs 492 grams and is 2cm thick, would you believe me? You should do it, because it is so. The structure is made of metal with upper and lower rubber protections to better cushion the blows up to a certified height of 1.20mt, even if in reality I mistreated it a little more and it did not bat an eyelid.

On this beast there is no shortage of IP68 certifications for dust and water, IP69K for resistance to dust and pressurized water and compliance with MIL-STD-810G standards. In short, on the resistance front there is very little to say, Ulefone has given an answer to everything and that it is resistant to rather hardcore scenarios, honestly, I understood it as soon as I took it out of the box.

All this to tell you that the smartphone is designed for a very specific target: it is not a smartphone that, to be clear, I would recommend to a friend who works in the office or to my mother who is a housewife, let me explain? In addition to the design, there are some aspects that make us think how it is designed for customers with special needs: I am referring to the possibility of connecting an external endoscope via a magnetic connector that, among other things, found in the package and the presence of an infrared laser which allows you to measure length, area and volume of a room and, incidentally, I also found it accurate in this respect, always considering a ± 5% tolerance.

The smartphone has the entrance for the SIM and MicroSD on the left side well protected by a door insulated from the water, as well as the lower part relating to the connector for Type-C charging and the 3.5mm jack for headphones, also 'they well protected. Also on the left side there is a customizable button in the functions while on the right side there is the volume rocker, the power button and a biometric sensor, a bit uncomfortable in my opinion but precise and responsive.

The smartphone has an assembly superior to other rugged ones that I have had the opportunity to try over the years; I repeat, it is not a phone suitable for everyone so talking about how uncomfortable it is to use with one hand seems to me definitely useless.

Is it really indestructible?

I know, surely at least once you will have wondered if these smartphones are really indestructible; obviously if you try to break it at all costs you will succeed, this is obvious, but simulating real scenarios, then I can tell you that this Ulefone Power Armor 13 is really a tank.

It can withstand falls up to 120cm from the technical data sheet (I tested it up to 185cm and came out unscathed), stay underwater for up to 30 minutes at a maximum depth of 150cm, and even fall onto the asphalt from 150cm about doesn't scare him that much. After a few flips and falls to the right and missing what is evident is some superficial mark on the body which, frankly, goes 100% unnoticed.

Display

This type of smartphone does not follow market trends at the hardware level. The display of the Ulefone Power Armor 13, in fact, is a 6.81 ″ inch IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels, a pixel density of 386PPI and a screen refresh rate not exceeding 60Hz.

In practice, this translates into a mediocre display quality, with slightly cold and not very saturated colors and viewing angles that do not exceed sufficiency. The maximum brightness is acceptable with around 400nits of maximum peak. On the other hand, what I noticed is the compatibility with HDR10, at least according to what the YouTube app says and reports, even if the quality is really very low and probably it's just a "software error".

Hardware and Performance
To animate this beast we find a Mediatek processor, the Helio G95 at 12nm Octa-Core, a Mali-G76 GPU and 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM memory that flank the 256GB of internal storage expandable also via MicroSD.

The hardware isn't top-of-the-line for sure, but I wouldn't have expected more; this technical data sheet allows, even in the absence of good software optimization, to have good performances in practically all scenarios of use.

In the benchmarks the values ​​are average and on the same level as devices with similar hardware; in gaming the behavior is good, I tried a couple of games with Call Of Duty Mobile which runs at high details with a constant and good framerate. I didn't really appreciate the speaker, unfortunately only mono, and with a not very high quality. Pity.

Furthermore, NFC fully compatible with Google Pay is also available on this Power Armor 13; FM radio and the ability to record calls in the stock telephone dialer are also typical of this type of smartphone. Furthermore, the hardware is not Widevine L1 certified but only L3, so no FullHD streaming on Netflix and the like.

Camera

Well, if there was one thing I didn't expect to see it was a camera like this: stop everyone, take these words with a grain of salt though. Usually this type of product makes photographs that are decidedly insufficient and not suited to our days, but with this Ulefone Power Armor 13 I had to change my mind.

First of all, the equipment is made up of a 48MP f / 1.8 main camera, followed by an 8MP f / 2.2 ultra wide-angle camera, a 2MP f / 2.6 Macro and a 2MP f / 2.4 depth camera.

In good light conditions the photos taken by this Ulefone are acceptable, above the usual rugged ones on the market; I took some pictures under artificial lighting of my softboxes while recording videos for a review and there, for example, it gave its best.

The shots at night lose quality as well as in the colors also in definition; patience, but it is still a result above my expectations.

Nothing relevant, however, the Macro and depth cameras; 16MP selfie camera acceptable for self-portraits in good light conditions. Video recordings can be made up to 4K 30fps or 1080p 30fps; the quality is good, the noise is low even if the colors are slightly washed out. A strange case, however, is the impossibility of recording videos with the ultrawide camera.

Software

operating system of this Ulefone is Android version 11 with security patches updated to June 2021; on this point of view Ulefone is certainly not among the most reliable brands that I know, so I would not expect big security updates.

Leaving aside this aspect, the software has a semi-stock interface with many of the Google apps as default (see photos, telephone dialer, messages etc) and a few customized icons from the manufacturer, in the settings menu for example.

The few personal touches of Ulefone are found in the so-called "Toolbox" inside which there are all the apps for which this rugged smartphone is designed: there is a compass, a rather powerful flashlight, a barometer but above all a rangefinder, that is a real meter that works via infrared. As already mentioned, the measurements are quite precise, even if about 5% of the measured values ​​need to be flexible.

Autonomy

Ulefone Power Armor 13 is a real tank also on the autonomy front: thanks to the 13200 mAh battery, which contributes among other things to making the weight of the device rise not a little, it is possible to have an autonomy of about 3- 4 days depending on the use made of it.

I have been doing reviews and testing mobile phones for several years, but I think it has been at least 5-6 since the last time I was pleased to announce such a long autonomy. Really monstrous. Charging times with the 33W power supply are quite long, about 3 hours, but given the autonomy this will not be a problem.

2 Minute Review - Ulefone Power Armor 13

Ulefone Power Armor 13 is a solid, robust and well-built smartphone. It is a smartphone designed for professionals working on construction sites or similar contexts for which resistance is a value that should not be underestimated.

The camera is also good for shots in the daytime, a little less when it gets dark. Absolute and indisputable strength is the battery that guarantees up to 4 full days of autonomy.