UMI MAX Android Phone Review
For the past month I have been testing the UMI MAX smartphone, a budget Android phone under $200. Admittedly, when I first received the phone, I was skeptical about its capabilities, but it happily surprised me.
The design of this phone makes it look like a high-end smartphone with a metallic finish on the back. The phone itself looks fabulous. I chose the gold color and was not disappointed.
While the phone feels as premium as any other budget smartphone on the market, at 8.5mm, it is substantially thicker than your average phone. The thickness doesn’t affect the performance of the phone, and like many characteristics of the UMI MAX, it’s hard to complain considering the sub-$200 price point. It also includes a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and a half decent pair of speakers.
By far one of the best features of this phone is the fingerprint scanner. Its speed combined with its practicality and great positioning allows it to go against big names like Samsung and OnePlus. It may even be slightly faster. Bold claim, I know, but the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is my daily driver, and in my own unscientific head-to-head fingerprint speed tests the UMI MAX won. It somewhat reminds me of the scanner on the Huawei P9.
Something I was also pleased with was the option to swap between hardware and software buttons, which is one of the reasons I particularly like Android: customizability. This option is similar to the OnePlus 3.
Now onto specs: the UMI MAX runs Android 6.0, the minimum you would expect when buying a new Android phone. The skin running on top is light and quick. It has a Media-Tek Helio P10 Octa Core Processor, 3GB of RAM, a 5.5 inch screen, a 4000mah battery and 16GB of built-in storage. You can add an additional 128GB microSD card, totaling 144GB of total possible storage. It also supports dual-SIM.
UPDATE: the UMI MAX will get Android 7.0 on December 24th (Merry XMAS)!
Resolution isn’t the UMI MAX’s best feature, coming in at 1080×1920, but it is still a pretty good HD screen with decent colors. I would have liked a brighter screen and when using in daylight, visibility is quite average.
The camera on the device is a very solid 13MP on the rear and 5MP on the front-facing camera (which is choppy at times). I was able to snag some pretty decent photos, but you’ll need to keep your hand very stable to get good quality shots. You can see some camera samples in the video above.
In terms of general use the phone is great, and it can handle any application or game you want. Even after a month of use, it runs extremely smooth with very few hiccups. Overall this phone is excellent considering the price point and I would definitely recommend this phone to anyone who is on a budget.