Budget smartphones are developing faster than the ruble falls, so in 2016, we are seeing more and more cool models at reasonable prices. Just nameplates on them other cool brands “fall off” from the budget class with frightening speed, and come out on top as “Chinese”. Worker-Communists often give models a mind-blowing toughness for ridiculous money.
One of these today came to us for test. In December, the news blared headlines about metal available mobile phone with a large Super AMOLED display, a thoroughbred camera, powerful processor for $89. As usual, to retail the smartphone got at less attractive prices, and still — on paper, nothing more not cool not seen that within 10 and even 20 thousand rubles! Is it worth to rush for the fancy “Chinese” in spite of fat brands, or somewhere there is a catch?
UMI Rome is one of the most beautiful budget phones
Features
UMI Rome
Operating system
Android 5.1 Lollipop
Screen
5.5”, 1280×720, Super AMOLED display 267 ppi
Processor
Mediatek MT6753 1.3 GHz (8 cores, Cortex-A53)
Graphics
The Mali-T720 MP3
RAM
3 GB
Permanent memory
16 GB
Link
4G (LTE Cat.4), 3G, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS
Camera
primary: 8 MP, autofocus, video recording 1920×1080, front: 2 MP
Battery
2500 mAh, non-removable
Sizes
153,8x77x7,9 mm
Weight
177 g
The price at the time of publication
8 700 rubles
Where to buy
Design and management
To looking at UMI Rome all right — the metal body is now at the height of fashion, and when you first look at the smartphone I can’t believe it costs less than $100. Yes, budget UMI obscenely reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, which, in turn, has been creatively repainted with iPhone 6 in the house that Jack built. And who cares — for a showdown at brands has trained lawyers and other observers of the patent, and its great for that kind of money found only a plastic-obmerochnye, like all J-series.
These different iPhones (top to bottom): UMI Rome, 5 Pro Meizu, Huawei Mate S
Metal building Rome in a spectacular, massive, cool — love the packaging. However, the smart phone is noticeably heavier and thicker than the Samsung phablet, but all the “previsible” and there is no tragedy here. However, if the owner of UMI Rome will look respectable, then in the hands of such a mobile phone betrays its budget origins at once in some detail.
The right side and UMI Rome
First, put the materials from which made the rear cover. At the press photos of her disguised as metal or glass, although in reality it is made of plastic. The plastic itself is similar to the one that made the bottle with the gel — smooth, soft and a little stick to your fingers. In fairness, we note that fingerprints are barely visible and can leave noticeable scratches on the surface will be problematic.
The Assembly can not be called perfect, but looks UMI Rome several times more expensive than the cost
The left side UMI Rome
The front panel UMI Rome
If you decline the smartphone back and look at the place where it ends the display, one can see the luminescence near the front camera. Poorly glued matrix? It seems like it.
The volume control keys and power metal too, and barely noticeable “breathing”. But similar backlash even more expensive Meizu MX5, and a budget model it will not disturb the buyer at all. At least, the smartphone is normally mounted input Micro-USB, unlike Wileyfox Swift, and creaks of the case, both in Honor 4C. And Yes separate slots for Micro-SIM and microSD in the era of combined trays pleasing.
The top face of the UMI Rome
UMI Rome with the cover removed
Rear panel UMI Rome
To Rome you can buy a pretty good accessories: cover made of imitation leather in appearance and to the touch feels more expensive than the complete case from premium Huawei Mate S, and the bumper like the plastic deflectors on the car Windows.
UMI in Rome, branded bumper
UMI in Rome, branded bumper
UMI Rome in a branded case
UMI Rome in a branded case
The screen and sound
Around the display UMI Rome first rose is a real sensation. All because instead of the promised Super AMOLED enthusiasts have calculated in the pre-ordered smartphones IPS-matrix. Jaunty guys on that discrepancy has organized a “business”, and to this day beat out monetary compensation from sellers for the mismatch characteristics.
We didn’t really have the technical capabilities to verify the location of pixels in the matrix, but the eye and judging by the specifications, the smartphone really do without organic light-emitting diodes in the design. This, of course, less to the economy, but plus to the image quality — OLED displays without Pentile (“truncated” structure of pixels) is now almost never occur, which means that 1280×720 IPS will be noticeably crisper with the same resolution on AMOLED-matrix. All of the default settings of perturb only the white balance — in this regard, the display Rome “splashed blue”, though not as visible to the naked eye.
Display characteristics UMI Rome
The maximum brightness level
365 CD/m2
Contrast
1000:1
Color gamut (sRGB)
94%
DeltaE
2,18
Gamma
2,3
Color temperature
8600K
Screen with outdated HD surprisingly well calibrated from the factory
The clarity of the screen average — not good, not bad. About the same as the Sony Xperia C3 or Samsung Galaxy A3. With brightness all is in order, with the angles too well. If you decline the smartphone to the side — the image is a little dark, but not inverted and painted the outside color.
High-quality safety glass and doesn’t collect scratches for nothing, but grease repellent coating might be more effective to wipe from time to time display for greater definition will have.
If you need a specific comparison — in Honor 4X display slightly less accurately displays the colors in the image Wileyfox Storm better in all respects, and ASUS ZenFone Go with my matrix not standing next to, with all due respect to the Taiwanese brand.
Despite the fact that the standard audio player in the smartphone old and ugly (so ugly software found in Chinese smartphones for four years already like), Rome in the headphones sounds good. Typical MT6753 the audio section, without embellishment, but enough to arm any decent audio player with equalizer and sound will satisfy all but audiophiles with cool headphones.
But the Handsfree speaker in your smartphone, excuse for a tautology, not loud. And not clear — so, in principle, that sounds in almost any ultra low-cost smartphone cost 4-7 thousand rubles. The ringtone should be a ringing melody.
Iron
The processor MediaTek MT6753 — Taiwan response of a medium size Snapdragon 615/616/617. Cost-effective eight cores well pull the routine workload, and his swagger is not to be missed only former owners of the flagship phones of 2014/2015 year. By the way, the sale is a UMI Rome X with Quad-core MediaTek MT6580 — it is cheaper and less rapid.
In his original version MT6753 able to outdo the Qualcomm model and generally looks like a good alternative to California’s costly chip. However, in our UMI Rome processor are not always given consistent with its eight core power. There is a reason — a chronic overheating. The smartphone is quickly becoming very hot in games and, although not starts to slow down (1280×720 pixels help), in fact dramatically losing speed.
Processor speed test (Geekbench)
Fast OCTA core CPU almost never runs at full capacity smartphone and then overheats
Gaming performance (the test 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited)
The performance of the entire system (test Antutu Benchmark 5.7)
During the test a couple of times we managed to heat it to such a state that Android has rebelled, demanded urgently to cool the smartphone and turned off our UMI. As the diplomats say the international level de~ “this is unacceptable”. But for everyday applications, with plenty enough RAM — it in your smartphone as much as 3 GB, so a lot of programs to communicate the browser and remain in memory as long as possible.
And Rome, with great difficulty, connects to GPS satellites and GLONASS. This is due to incorrect data EPO. In a nutshell — UMI sure is in their homeland and searches for the satellites orbiting in those places where they’re supposed to be about China. It’s fixable, but you need root access. But in the meantime — to help out can only support data SIM cards (A-GPS).
The processor in UMI Rome often works not at full strength and is prone to overheating in games
But the level of reception of 4G and Wi-Fi in your smartphone is great. You will laugh, but Samsung Galaxy Note 5 reception worse. With the phone duties UMI Rome cope flawlessly.
Software
UMI Rome works on the basis of the almost untouched Android 5.1, and it is good — from the Chinese “reinterpretation” of Google, sometimes just sick. Change to note is the logo of UMI, which leads to the list of applications, and support for gestures on the display is off.
There is nothing superfluous in the system, so the interface flies. However, in the original system exhibited ppi — on the big screen, in theory, you can fit more icons and other information, but after the same Honor 4X or, worse still, Galaxy Note 4, the interface UMI seems Oh-Oh WHAT BIG. Some people are setting the system on the contrary, seems more intimate, but in order not to shock the former owners of Full HD smartphones, zoom in Android it would not hurt to adjusted to 5.5-inch diagonal.
Unencumbered Android Lollipop is convenient and works very quickly
Android 5.1 with built-in root access — a great “factory”
By the way, firmware version 3.01 is already in the original variation received root-law and Manager installed SuperSU. Sberbank, with its mobile application angry, others happy.
Camera
UMI claim that the rear camera in Rome used sensor Sony IMX179, which means that the smartphone will be able to produce high-quality images. Evil tongues grateful users, who took down Rome its of interest to note that the sensor is marked IMX164 and has no relation to Japanese companies. Photos on your smartphone you can do in resolution to 13 megapixels, but in fact the camera is 8-megapixel.
Example photos taken with rear camera UMI Rome
Example photos taken with rear camera UMI Rome
Example photos taken with rear camera UMI Rome
Example photos taken with the front camera UMI Rome
But we do require eminent badges for $110 the cost of the smartphone? In fact, rear Luggage Rome gives is not very detailed and are of average quality pictures. From the Russian budget on the counter otherwise we would have never waited, although the Chinese “imported” mobile phone could surprise us with more explanatory images.
The sharpness of the pictures are certainly not enough, and at night the camera is not as light-sensitive as we would like. White balance most often exposed correctly, the autofocus works lazily and constantly have to “kick”, the pictures are saved slowly, and have to do them in batches, because the first time a good photos are not always.
Normal for budget cameras, nothing outstanding
The video quality is also not optimistic at all on the budget level, without a hint of “supernatural” for the ruble, as often in Chinese smartphones. At night the fps falls from 30 to 16. Front camera equipped with a flash, but selfie fit with difficulty, but for video chat.
Autonomy
It’s hard to be tabletom — in order to feed a 5.5-inch display requires considerable battery capacity. In Rome the battery is modest and has only 2500 mAh. With these baseline data did not Shine even a relatively compact Sony Xperia M5, and the larger UMI especially failed to impress us longevity.
Use (brightness 200 CD/m2)
The duration of the work
Video from a memory card
5 hours and 15 minutes
Game
2 hours
Reading
5 hours 45 minutes
The duration of the games Rome set record among all tested smartphones — brightness 200 CD/m2 (about 50% of the maximum) in games smartphone is completely dead for 2 hours! Watching a video with the same conditions given budgetary UMI is much easier, but here the results are far from a typical 5.5-inch models.
UMI Rome discharged obscenely fast even for one day it is enough hardly
In this case, our hero is charged not to say that fast — its a full charge will take at least 2.5 hours. Manufacturer fit to open his own business selling Powerbank — the target audience for the purchase of such devices have already formed the sale of our hero.
Competitors
UMI Rome
Lenovo S856
Huawei Honor 4X
Operating system
Android 5.1 Lollipop
Android 4.4 KitKat
Android 6.0 Marshmallow
Screen
5.5”, 1280×720, Super AMOLED display 267 ppi
5.5”, 1280×720, Super AMOLED display 267 ppi
5,5”, 1280×720, IPS 267 ppi
Processor
Mediatek MT6753 1.3 GHz (8 cores, Cortex-A53)
Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 MSM8226 1.2 GHz (4 core, Cortex-A7)
Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 620 1.2 GHz (8 cores, Cortex-A53)
Graphics
The Mali-T720 MP3
Adreno 305
Mali-450 MP4
Operational memory
3 GB
1 GB
2 GB
Permanent memory
16 GB, slot microSD
8 GB, microSD slot
8 GB, microSD slot
Link
4G (LTE Cat.4), 3G, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS
4G (LTE Cat.4), 3G, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS
4G (LTE), 3G, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS
Camera
primary: 8 MP, autofocus, video recording 1920×1080, front: 2 MP
primary: 8 MP, with autofocus, video recording 1920×1080, front: 1.6 MP
primary: 13 MP, autofocus, video 1920×1080, front: 5 MP
Battery
2500 mAh, removable
2500 mAh, removable
non-removable, 3000 mAh
Sizes
153,8x77x7,9 mm
151×77,8×8,9 mm
153x77x8,6 mm
Weight
177 g
170 g
170 g
The price at the time of publication
8 700 rubles
12 000 rubles
13 000 rubles
Where to buy
Call vertelki:Lenovo S8562inline
Call vertelki:Honor 4X2inline
Lenovo S856
Sad to see in comparison table is totally outdated model? This state of things is not too happy, but better quality PC on the Russian market with a budget of about 12 thousand rubles will not buy. Even hyped Wileyfox Storm as bad autonomy, but more powerful and with better display, is 16 thousand. And comparable to UMI by price metal smartphone in the official retail just yet.
Lenovo S856
Old Lenovo is quite slow and is doomed to work on older versions of Android, but he has no problems with autonomy, and speakerphone is much better than the UMI. Assembly is about as sloppy, but to overheat in the work are not an issue.
Call vertelki:Lenovo S8563inline
Honor 4X
In comparison with his younger brother, Honor 4C, phablet Huawei child brand does not become a revelation — it was not a record available, power was comparable to the competitors MediaTek-based mass consumption, and design and luxury in the building and does not Shine.
Huawei Honor 4X
But since then much time has passed, competitors have become more expensive, while Honor 4X has moved from the lower middle class in the “senior employees”, and now it looks a very interesting candidate for purchase by prescription “all worked fine”.
PC Honor is not very nimble in games and under load runs out quickly (though slower than UMI), and at the suggested price it will have to look in the company store Huawei. But the camera is quite decent quality, capacity for everyday use enough to fully, and the workmanship overall is worth the money.
Call vertelki:Honor 4X3inline
Conclusions
According to the results of our review, we came to the obvious conclusion: there are no freebies. Even in the case of surprisingly generous Chinese brands, newcomers. Ruble prices by themselves leave a bad impression, but if you think clearly, UMI Rome has its own “chips”, which you will not find in the more expensive competitors. The metal case is really pretty (by the standards of budget smartphones especially), the display is good in all ways, the cellular and “the Internets” caught confidently, and the sound in the headphones is decent.
But then begins the avalanche of problems: the smartphone is quickly discharged, is heated for any reason, that heat is not able to operate at full capacity, not so good photographs. While speaker he is quiet, and the build quality is far from premium. UMI went out of fashion and affordable smartphone, but in Rome there were too many flaws so we can recommend it for purchase to a wider audience.
UMI Rome
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
- good screen
- Android no frills
- looks expensive, high-quality metal housing
- good (by budget standards) the sound in the headphones
- poor autonomy
- high heating of the case and the drop in CPU power under load
- poor reception of GPS/GLONASS
- bad Assembly