ULEFONE FUTURE REVIEW | Technology/Phones | The Affordable Reviews

ULEFONE FUTURE review

The ‘Future’ is Ulefone’s first attempt at creating a smartphone with a truly bezel-less display. I’ll be the first to admit that I won’t be shedding any tears when saying goodbye to the recent bulky-screen-border-trend of Chinese smartphones .

The Future is available in the UK through grey-market sites Right now you can buy the Ulefone Future for £188.57 ($244.46 in the US) with free shipping. Do note that you may have to pay import duty when it arrives at UK customs

First impression:

Once I get the Ulefone Future in for review I’ll be able to see if what sounds fantastic on paper equates to fantastic in real world usage.

As first impressions go, the Future is looking hot with its decent hardware and good looks to match. No awards for original design but kudos for pushing the Chinese smartphone market in the right direction.

Have you been kept awake at night by endless Bezel nightmares? me too, well luckily we can now pre-order the Ulefone Future! The Futures Ulefone, the Futures Orange space grey & gold only.

DESIGN AND BUILD:

From the rear the gold aluminium-titanium alloy casing, white lines and corner-sited camera make the Ulefone Future look very much like an iPhone wannabee. Turn it over and things get a lot more interesting. 

We have to start with the screen, since this is the first time we’ve seen a Chinese phone sold with an edge-to-edge or bezel-less display. It looks fantastic, and 2.5D curved glass atop the display gives the feeling that the screen might extend further, wrapping around the sides. Alas, this seamless design is spoiled by the gold case visible from the sides. Had our review sample been black we imagine it would look a lot nicer. 

But even as it stands the screen is a nice feature. It’s a 5.5in full-HD (1920x1080) panel that’s crystal clear and sufficiently bright. Colours look realistic, and viewing angles are good. It’s protected by tough Gorilla Glass 3, plus a very thin black plastic coating around the otherwise vulnerable edges of the glass

PERFORMANCE:

The Ulefone Future is very fast for a mid-range Android phone. It has some capable hardware inside, which includes an octa-core Helio P10 chip (the MediaTek MTK6755), the Mali-T860 MP2 GPU, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (25GB is available). Should you need more storage space you can also insert a microSD csrd up to 128GB in capacity, though you do so at the expense of the second SIM since they share a slot. 

CAMERAS

he Ulefone Future has a 16Mp primary camera with a dual-tone flash. It’s also capable of recording full-HD video at 30fps, but this can be rather jerky with no OIS

When testing the camera in Auto mode from our 7th floor roof terrace overlooking the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel we found the camera tried to focus on the sky and the hotel itself appeared very dark. Turning on HDR fixed this, but with both shots we saw a very strange effect where only the very centre of the photo was sharp. The blurring is particularly evident in the right half of the photo, but when you zoom in it’s evident everywhere except the middle section.

SOFTWARE:

The Ulefone Future runs a vanilla version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow which, until Nougat is released within the next few months, is the latest version of the OSThe only addition is a Turbo Download feature, which allows you to combine cellular data and Wi-Fi to speed downloads over 20MB in file size.

Full Specifications:

Phone Model	Ulefone Future
Screen Technology	5.5 inches, 1920×1080 resolution, 401PPI, Gorilla Glass 3
Android Version	Android 6 Marshmallow
CPU (The brains)	Helio P10 – 8 Cores, 1950MHz, 64bit
GPU (Gaming & UI)	Arm Mali-T860 – 2 cores, 700MHz
RAM	4GB
Storage Options	32GB + Expandable up to 128GB  (Dual 2nd SIM/SD slot)
Dual SIM	YES
Rear Camera	16MP Samsung S5K3P3, f/2.0, Dual LED Flash
Selfie Camera	5MP
Colours Available	Space Grey / Golden
Thickness	8.6mm
Weight	185 grams
Material	Metal Unibody
Sensors	Gyro Sensor, Hall Effect Sensor, Gravity Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor
Quick Charge	YES – 2 pin quick charger included
OTG	YES
Finger Print Sensor	YES – side mounted
USB Type	Type-C
Full UK Support	YES
2G	850 / 900 / 1800
3G	900 / 2100
4G	800 / 1800 / 2100 / 2600 + 2300 (Band 40)
SIM	Dual Micro / Nano
Wifi	802.11b,g,n + 5GHz
GPS	GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
Bluetooth	4.0
Battery	Sony 3000 mAh

o   

The Good

o    It’s Bezel-less

o    Dual-band WiFi

o    Full GPS

o    Full UK Network Support

o    Android 6Helio P10 CPU

o    4GB RAM

o    32GB Storage + expandable

o    Quick Charge

The could be better

o    A little heavy at 185 grams

o    Slow camera

o    No dedicated SD slot

o    Camera raised from body

Share on Google Plus

About Unknown

This is a short description in the author block about the author. You edit it by entering text in the "Biographical Info" field in the user admin panel.