Some smartphone makers focus on the high-end market, some focus on the whole market, and some prefer making mid-range devices at an affordable price assuming the most consumers belong to a category that want to own a smartphone with acceptable features and at similar price tag. I can’t say whether this is a right business model, but there are a few Chinese manufacturers keeping in mind only mid-range handsets under $150. Today I want you to get acquainted with a similar device dubbed as the Ulefone Metal. This smartphone is already available for purchase, so take a quick look at its key features and decide whether it deserves the price retailers have set for it.
Generally, Ulefone is a quite interesting company as it calls its smartphones in an attractive way. If you are familiar with this manufacturer and its products, you’ll get what I am talking about. But if you didn’t have chance to get your hands on Ulefone smartphones, here are some of them – the Ulefone Power, the Ulefone Paris/Paris X, or the Ulefone Be Touch 2/3. As you see all these handsets have catchy names, and the same can be said for our hero, the Ulefone Metal. However, let’s dig deeper to find out how the names are related with the phones.
Ulefone Metal Design
This handset absolutely corresponds to its naming as the Ulefone Metal is completely made of an aluminum alloy with perfectly crafted round edges. Thanks to CNC technology the body of this smartphone looks quite attractive and handy. The overall body comes in grit blasting that provides a premium feel. There are three colors to choose from: black, grey and silver. Thus the manufacturer decided not to take risk and launched the handset in standard colors.
The notification backlight led is located above the screen close to microphone and front camera. There are no capacitive buttons under the screen, which means the three standard buttons will activate when turn the device on. The speaker is placed on the back and fortunately it works perfectly and provides loud sound, though the quality is disputable. The right side comes with a power button and volume rocker and both of them are solid and responsive. This means we have no complaints referring to them. The SIM card slot is located on the left edge. It’s a bit longer, but thanks to its size you can place a nano, micro or a TF card into it. The bottom of the phone carriers the microphone and a micro USB port. The back side carries the camera, flash and a fingerprint scanner. The last is used for many purposes, but often people use it to unlock the phone. It’s great, as the process takes only 0.2s. So we can state this is one of the safest and fastest touch IDs that provides an extra protection to privacy. It supports 5 different fingerprints each of which will load a certain app. And finally, the top of the phone carries a 3.5mm audio jack.
In terms of size, the Ulefone Metal has nothing to stand out, as it comes at a dimension of 143x71x9.35mm. As you see we can’t say it’s bulky, but we can’t say it has a slim body as well. So like the most of other features, the Ulefone Metal shows mid class features in terms of design as well. It also weighs 155 gram due to a metal housing.
Ulefone Metal Display
The phone is packed with a 2.5D Arc screen that is colorful and sharp, though some users think the screen’s touch should be more optimized and more sensitive. This top rank 5-inch display comes at a resolution of 1280×720 pixels and has a 290 pixel density, which is not that much, but it’s enough to provide vivid colors. It’s covered with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 technology meaning no scratches are dangerous for the phone.
The display has a special feature called Live Display that allows users to choose which color should be more on your display – yellow or blue.
Ulefone Metal Camera
The manufacturer has announced when designing this handset it paid a special attention to a new camera. Here we are dealing with an accurately optimized Sony IMX149 3-rd gen CMOS 8MP camera with 5 piece lens but it can be interpolated to 13MP.
The back camera supports slow motion video recording. Commonly, this camera can provide a great shooting in low light conditions thanks to the flash, but it would be incorrect to say the camera is the best we have ever seen, because the quality of the photos are average proving we are dealing with a mid-range handset. On the other hand, this camera is capable of taking 1080p videos, which is a good news.
Like the back camera the rare one comes at 2MP, which can also be interpolated to 5MP for better quality selfies and video chat. It is capable of taking 1080p videos too, so I guess your Instagram videos will come at a higher resolution and quality.
Ulefone Metal Processor
The handset is powered with a MTK6753 octa-core 64 bit chipset running at 1.3GHz. This is completely enough to provide a respectable performance to whatever you do. It is also paired with ARM Mali – T720 GPU and 3GB of RAM. However, the internal memory is only 16GB, which can be expanded via card slot up to 128GB. Unlike Apple products, Android handsets have such a capability to expand the existing memory, so I recommend never to look at ROM.
Ulefone Metal Battery
The smartphone is packed with a Sony 3050mAh lithium-ion polymer large capacity battery that is enough for 1.5 day normal use. It’s non-removable, so you have no chance to change it yourself.
Ulefone Metal Software
First, the Ulenfone Metal comes with Android 6.0 pre-installed, which means you can access to millions of apps and games on Google Play. The custom UI seats quite nice on the OS, so every action you make on your phone will be smooth.
Thanks to a good hardware pack and HD screen gaming is perfect on the Ulefone Metal. Holding in hands this handset you can get a great gaming performance even when playing such games as Asphalt 8: Airborne, Fifa 16, Mortal Kombat X, Modern Combat 5 or Real Racing 3.
One of the best features I liked in this handset is the Float Multitask Windows, which looks like a gun drum, but instead of bullets you can find different apps and widgets in holes.
There is also a very useful feature for taking screenshots that also allows users to crop the image for further usage directly from the app.
If you prefer to customize lock screen message, the Ulefone Metal will help you even with this deal – you only have to type the text you want and it will be appear on your phone’s screen.
When you call at an inconvenient time, you can turn the device face down, the ring will go silent. So no need to push volume buttons for it. Another great feature, when you take it to the ear it answers automatically.
If you need to power the phone off or on at a certain moment, you can use a special schedule for it.
Ususally we can set sounds at a certain level for ring, media and alarm, but the Ulefone Metal allows to set it for the notifications as well. I like this feature very much.
As for GPS, the Ulefone Metal provides a stable signal in different situations and precise positioning even in biggest plotting scale.
Ulefone Metal Packaging
The phone comes in a standard black box that carries only the name of the handset and the web site of the manufacturer. Both of them are printed with a metal alloy. Looking inside we can find the Ulefone Metal smartphone itself, a USB cable, a wall charger, and a metal pin to eject the SIM card slot. There is also a very beautiful high-durability and diamond textured flip case for the smartphone a 9H hardness, anti-blue- light tempered glass protector. At the end, there is a quick start guide in English.
Ulefone Metal Availability
As I said at the beginning of the review, Ulefone launches smartphones under $150, the Metal is no exception. It is available for only $120. Agree this is a great price for a smartphone with such features.
Cons
- Display
- Processor
- Battery
- Useful features
- Attractive UI and widgets
- Fast Touch ID
- Free flip case and cover
- Price
Pros
- Back Camera
- Design
The Bottom Line
You can find many mid-range handsets at an affordable price tag, but how many of them sports so many useful and innovative features. This is a question you should ask yourself when looking for smartphones under $150. Obviously, the Ulefone Metal has no eye-catching design, and the photos taken by its camera may be are not as good as we wish, but on the other hand, it’s clear the manufacturer has done its best to design a quite respectable device with tons of useful features. In this term, the Ulefone Metal seems to be one of the best options available in the market.
