I have had this phone for about three days. As implied by the title if this review, it's a pretty solid piece of equipment. Coming in at just over half a pound, you might think it chunky but is easily handled and comfortably fits in my hand. The phone is responsive and I experience no lag with everyday usage activities. A lot of the chunk comes from the huge battery inside and I have to say that with fairly heavy usage, I have been impressed with the stamina of the phones power source, easily handling a day of fairly heavy usage on a single power charge with about 20% to spare at days end.
Although I haven't put the camera to a full test, it is responsive and produces pics with good clarity and color. I haven't tried the underwater camera and quite frankly, despite the waterproof claim and the inclusion of an "underwater camera function", I don't think I will be able to bring myself to put the bison under water on purpose. One thing I don't like is that the cameras extend out of the back of the phone just enough so that when you set your phone down on its back, it doesn't sit flat but sits up on the corner where the cameras are mounted. I like to use leveling apps and I can see this being an issue. The g1 I am also reviewing, comes with a transparent case which fixes this issue but the rugged gt2 doesn't come with a case. Not sure if there is cases available.
I haven't put an external memory card in yet but I suspect there will be no issues. I had zero issues setting up the device with my sim card and it connected readily using 4G to my Bell service. It has voice over data functionality which is useful when you can't get a service provider signal but are able to obtain a stable wifi connection.
My phone (the gray option) came with stock Android 12 which I have found to be very user friendly. The only thing I haven't been able to figure out so far is how to remove duplicate icons on the screen.
Performance wise, the bison gt2 has done everything I have needed it to as fast as I want save for one slight shortcoming. I use Deplike guitar processor app. The latency checker in the app clocks the gt2 at between 48 ms latency with all other apps closed and 53 ms with a half dozen other apps open. The app suggests that between 24 and 40 is good. There is a noticeable delay between the time I pluck the string and when the sound comes out of the amp but way better than my previous higher end umidigi phones. My work iphone (10 max) has no noticeable delay although I can't check actual latency because the iphone app version dies not have a latency checker. The clock speed of the dual core A76 processor in the gt2 is listed 2.05 GHz. Perhaps the gt2 5g version which uses an A78 processor with 2.4 GHz speed would solve the latency issue (hoping to try one of those if I get a chance).
The fingerprint sensor and face recognition work fast and flawlessly which is very handy and NFC is a must for tap and go payment and included on the device. The two red, side mounted programmable speed buttons are definitely handy. Wireless charging would be nice but isn't available with this or any of the umidigi phones I've tried. I have had the s3 pro, the f2, the g1 and now the bison gt2.
With regards to the phone function itself, holding the phone up to the ear is fine for conversation. With hands free using the speaker option, you have to be in a quiet environment to be able to hear. I was iin a quiet environment and the person I was talking too had a hard time hearing me. When I plugged in my apple headphones/earbuds into the 3.5mm port, the other person could not hear me at all. I don't know if this was because of a setting I needed to change, faulty hardware or a shortcoming of the phone design. I did call my own number and changed my greeting using the same earbuds and while the resulting message did sound a bit muffled, it was loud enough so not sure what happened on the actual phone call.
For media consumption, I find the single, back mounted speaker is a bit thin but loud enough. I usually use a BT speaker so no issues here.
This is a phone I plan on keeping. Does most of what I need well at an awesome price point. Eco-umidigi store have been very good and one day I hope to try the gt2 5g pro phone if it becomes available on the store.
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