My family switched over to Umidigi phones (from ASUS) about four or five years ago now. For the most part, it's been a happy pairing. I've found their phones to be pretty durable and dependable. While my wife has moved through a few phone models over that period (most recently an A15C which she's very happy with), my daughters and I have been using the same devices for quite a while (A9 Pro and a 6GB Bison for them, a Power 3 for me). I've posted in the past that somebody would have to pry the Power 3 from my cold, dead hands, as it did everything I needed out of a phone and had amazing battery life.
Well, here we are in 2024 and due to what is likely very intentional poisoning of the well by Google of the Android 11 ecosystem (bad software updates making everything hang up/run slower--Apple was caught red handed doing this years ago to old iOS versions and both Apple and Google are very likely doing it today as the fines levied do not exceed the amount of profit they think they'll get by doing so) I am looking to switch my Power 3 over to an AOSP operating system.
In the meantime, while I tinker with that project, I need a regular old android phone to use. Enter the G3.
I was pretty amazed to see that the budget mobile phone market hasn't fallen prey to the predatory price gouging almost every sector has been victim to over these past few years. Having a phone with these specs at a $79 price point (at the May '24 time of purchase) blew my mind. It's not an incredible power house of a mobile phone, but in the past I generally had to go $150+ to get a model with specs that I felt would be able to give me an end user experience that wasn't full of annoyances and frustrations. I haven't had prior experience with Android 13 but I figured a quad core 2ghz processor with 4gb of RAM should be just a hair above what is needed for that desired experience.
Some of the other specs are pretty much what I've come to expect from Umidigi devices. Such as the 5150mah battery and the big 6.52" screen. I expected it to have a very near stock Android installation, as per the usual for them.
I've now been using my G3 for just a tad over a month, so I will share my impressions with you below.
The good.
I bought the army green model and it's a nice looking phone in my opinion. Sometimes Umidigi puts weird little phrases on the back of their phones. They skipped that for this model and just have Umidigi on it. I believe the shell is a plastic composite but it feels good. It also is light for its size but gives the impression of sturdiness.
As far as I can tell this has shipped with a bone stock Android 13 OS. The less bloat is always for the best, in my opinion, so this is a very good thing.
As opposed to my old Power 3 which had a fingerprint sensor on the back which meant I never used it for anything, this has the sensor built into the power button as most modern cells do. More on this in the 'meh' section :)
I've tested this on t-mobile and verizon networks and it gets great signal and solid (4g) speeds on both in my region. Like pretty much every Umidigi (and likely every unlocked Chinese phone sold for use in the US) it has dual sim card slots, if you need that feature.
As far as I'm concerned Umidigi has long been the champ in screen quality for budget devices. Their screens are crisp and bright. I have had life-long vision problems and now that I'm getting older I'm losing some near vision as well and to me the Umidigi screens are as good as any mobile device out there. I saw one of the top reviews say the brightness was 'ok', but I beg to differ. I can use this phone in full noon midwest sunlight with no problems at all. I have a much more expensive tablet with a 4k screen that I'd have to carry inside in the same situation.
The battery life, which is probably the single most important feature of a smart phone to me, is adequate on this phone. I very consistently am going two days between charges. It's a little less than my venerable old Power 3, even today, which can sometimes still go 3, but as long as it doesn't drop off quickly (and in my experience Umidigi batteries don't), it's fine.
This phone has ZRAM available as an option. This feature has gotten Umidigi some bad reviews in the past year or two, but it's due to how they chose to advertise it vs. how well it actually works. ZRAM is a feature of the linux kernel (Android sits on top of linux) that allows you to designate a chunk of your physical RAM as a compressed swap drive. It is an order of magnitude slower than physical RAM but an order of magnitude faster than swapping onto drive storage, which is usually what happens when physical RAM is exhausted. This phone comes with 4GB of RAM. In my use it's typically using around 3GB with a couple of apps running in the background, like Audible and AntennaPod. I chose to devote 1GB of RAM to ZRAM, which gives me somewhere between 2GB-6GB of 'fake' RAM that the device can use before having to resort to the much slower on-disk paging. It has been working well.
Charging time. Using the included charger (which are always very good from Umidigi) will get you back up to a full charge in 2-3 hours. Something lacking in most other modern phones is that this phone will even charge pretty well on an ancient 0.5A charger or computer USB port if not in use otherwise.
The 'meh'.
The camera. This has never been a strong point for any Umidigi phone and it definitely isn't one here. Like every other phone from them I've used, the camera is serviceable. I've attached two photos taken with the phone for your perusal. The flower pic looks pretty good in my opinion but if you start zooming in it doesn't take long to become pixelated. The other one was taken at night at work of the very cool looking night sky at that point in time. The camera did not do well with low lighting/light diffusion etc. I would include a selfie but I don't want to scare anyone. The selfie camera is bog standard and neither amazing nor bad. You'd have no problems with video calls or conferences.
The fingerprint sensor. As I've seen pointed out in other reviews, the fingerprint sensor is a bit . . . sensitive. I'd say it works about 60% of the time on the first attempt. Still, I do appreciate having the fingerprint sensor on the power button. Whoever came up with that idea was a genius.
Phone responsiveness. It's not bad, but it's not great. I'd say average touch response is in the 250-500ms range. The good thing is that it's very consistent. I haven't really experience the phone slowing to a crawl or taking seconds to respond to something like what's happening on Android 11 now. I find it acceptable for web browsing on the go and all the other phoney stuff I use a phone for.
Bluetooth connection strength. This chipset probably doesn't allocate as much juice to it's bluetooth transceiver as the one in my Power 3. I work overnights and wear a BT headset and listen to podcasts and audiobooks for most of my shift. With my power 3 and cheaper headsets, I'd experience some drop-outs if I had a hunk of concrete, a lot of clothing, or sometimes my arm in between the pocket my phone is in and the headset. With my every-day headset for the past couple of years this hasn't been an issue. When I switched over to this phone, it became an issue again. It's not a huge deal as usually just being mindful of how I'm posturing myself alleviates the problem. On the bright side, maybe it's microwaving my brain less slowly.
The bad.
The only thing that strikes me as a big fall-off in quality vs. my Power 3 is the volume of the device. I struggle with speaker phone calls and will usually switch it to my bluetooth headset if I've got it nearby or handset mode. Even in those two modes, the volume is less than other phones I've used. It's generally not an issue for bluetooth, though sometimes I have to crank the volume up to max when on my power 3 maybe it would be at 60%. The silver lining is that the audio quality from the built in speakers is generally clear, just quiet. When I have time I'll look to see if there are apps that can help boost the volume.
My overall impression is that this is an incredible value at $79. It would make a great phone for people who just want a phone for phone stuff with some light smartphone stuff on top. It's fine to run streaming apps on. If it were at my old price point for a usable phone, $150, I'd probably give it 3.5 stars, but this thing is an absolute budget champion as it sits. If you need a 'cheap' phone that doesn't suck and will probably last at least a couple of years, this is the one.
| Brand | UMIDIGI |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | UMIDIGI |
| Model year | 2022 |
| Part Number | UMIDIGI |
| Memory storage capacity | 64 GB |
| Flash memory installed size | 64 GB |
| Digital Storage Capacity | 64 GB |
| Processor Speed | 2 GHz |
| Scanner Resolution | 720 x 1600 |
| Standing screen display size | 6.52 Inches |
| Batteries Required | No |
| Human Interface Input | Touchscreen |
| Manufacturer | UMIDIGI |
| Manufacturer reference | UMIDIGI |
| Parcel Dimensions | 17.9 x 8.9 x 4.7 cm; 420 g |
| ASIN | B0CN8RLV3R |
