Umi eMax mini smartphone

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good budget smartphone

The distributor sent me this phone for an objective review. I really like it. This is now the third Umi phone I have tried and I am impressed with their quality and the very good specifications (listed at the end of this review) for the price. The other phones are in very regular use and have performed excellently.

When reading this review, do bear in mind that I am in late middle age and that my use may not be typical. I don't game or use any social media, for example; I use the phone for calls and texts, music, checking email, some catch-up TV and YouTube, occasional photos and occasional web browsing. I don't use data. All this means that I cannot advise on comparisons, lots of technical specification and so on, but my non-techie take in the eMax Mini is this:

The packaging is very stylish and you get a charger and a micro-USB lead for charging and data transfer. I think the phone itself is very attractive: it's compact, very slim and stylish. It's light and sits very comfortably in the hand. The surround is smoothly curved grey metal and the back is grey plastic, although it looks metallic. You need to remove the back for access to SIM and SD cards, which even this rather numptyish user found very simple. (The manual, by the way, is very poor and I had to figure this out myself. Don't look to the manual for any real help with anything; if you're familiar with Android the lack of a manual may not bother you, but for the more timid user like me it might be a drawback.)

Set-up was very easy, which is just as well given the poor manual. This is a dual-SIM phone, which can be a very handy feature, and unlike with some phones, you can have two SIM cards and a memory card installed at the same time. The 4G band is FDD-LTE 1800/2100/2600 MHz which is not supported on all networks so you need to check whether this will work with your network.

The screen is excellent to my eyes; it's a 5" screen and a pleasure to use: bright, true colours and very tolerant of viewing angle. Video, TV catch-up and so on look great and everything works very nicely for me. The phone runs Android version 5.0.2, with 2GB of RAM which isn't the biggest, but everything seems very quick, smooth and pretty intuitive. The internal memory is 16GB and you can expand with a micro-SD card of up to 64GB capacity.

Plenty of apps are pre-installed, including Google Play and new apps install very quickly and simply. In use, everything I want works very well. Wi-fi connection was very straightforward as was syncing with my account. The battery lasts for several days with my use; I charged it fully on arrival and after 24 hours of intermittent use setting up, making calls and so on with the rest on standby it was still at 83%. The speaker is actually pretty good for a phone speaker (which isn't saying much, I know) and through headphones or an external speaker - both wired and via Bluetooth 4.0 - the sound is excellent. There's no NFC, but normal Bluetooth pairing is very quick and simple, and stable up to a decent range. The rear camera has a very good 13mp resolution and the front camera has a pretty impressive 8mp. I have found both to be fine, and other functions also seem very good.

I think this is a very neat stylish phone which does everything I want very well. It is small, slim and light, it is simple to use, seems robust and works well. It seems to have very good specs for this price and I am very happy with mine. I can recommend it warmly, certainly to fellow non-techies who want a very decent smartphone which does the job.

Specifications:

Operating System:Android Lollipop 5.0
CPU:MSM8939 Octacore 1.5GHz
GPU:Adreno 405
RAM:2GB
ROM:16GB
Extended Storage:64GB

Screen type:IPS OGS Full lamination technology
Screen size:5.0 inch
Screen resolution:1920*1080 Pixels

Wireless connectiveity:GSM, 3G, 4G, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth
Frequency: GSM, 3G, 4G, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth
2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
3G: WCDMA 900/1900/2100MHz
4G: FDD-LTE 1800/2100/2600 MHz
Bluetooth:Yes, 4.0
WiFi:Yes, IEEE 802.11b/g/n, Support Wi-Fi hotspot
GPS:Support GPS and AGPS

Camera type:Dual cameras Back camera:13.0MP, with flash light and auto focus Front camera:8.0 MP
Video recording:Yes
SIM card slot:Two Standard micro sim card, Dual standby
TF card slot:Yes
Micro USB slot:Yes
Audio output:Yes Microphone:Supported
Speaker:Supported
Video format:3GP, MP4, RMVB
Audio format:WAV, AMR, MP3
Image format:GIF, JPEG, BMP, PNG
FM radio:Yes, earphone needed.
Sensor:Gravity sensor, Light sensor, Proximity sensor

Additional features:4G,3G,WIFI,GPS,Bluetooth,etc
Battery:3050mAh lithium
Standby time:About 8~10 days
Charger:USB, travel charger
Dimension: 139.8x69.6x8.9mm
Weight:130g