Poptel P8 Rugged Smartphone Review

Poptel isn’t a model title that many within the West would acknowledge, however inside Asia it’s a preferred line of telephones made by Chinese producer FortuneShip Group, with factories in Zunyi, India and Huizhou.Where to purchase?Online Chinese retailer, Gearbest, supplied the pattern and sells the Poptel P8 for £124 or $155 on the time of writing. Note that, whereas this value contains supply, it’s unique of any taxes which may be levied by HMRC or the courier firms on behalf of the seller. Want to purchase tech from on-line Chinese retailers? Read this primary. These services produce some 9 million telephones every month, a formidable determine for a corporation that solely got here into existence in 2006. The present line-up is simply 4 designs that embody the P9000 Max, P60, P10 and the P8 reviewed right here.All these gadgets are designed for these with lively life and might deal with immersion in water and dusty environments. The value of the P8 is comparatively low, however does it nonetheless signify good worth for cash?DesignIt’s tough to exactly establish the design influences that Poptel blended into the P8, because it doesn’t instantly seem like another telephone particularly.To make it much less like a slab of metallic, plastic and glass, the designers bevelled the sides so that ought to it fall on a nook the influence is distributed. The corners, again and ends are constructed from glass-reinforced plastic, contrasting with metallic sides, reinforcing the notion that the P8 can deal with some abuse with out instantly failing.Usually, this degree of safety comes with a weight penalty, however the P8 ideas the scales at simply 230g making it a fairly comfy carry.The dominant colour scheme is black, although you may get the handset with coloured highlights. The assessment mannequin had yellow flashes on it, and Poptel additionally gives inexperienced highlights, and one which’s completely black. This might be useful when you intend to make use of multiple of those gadgets in a staff state of affairs, assuming the staff doesn’t include greater than three individuals.As it is a rugged design, it might need worth to these on an journey vacation who need to go away their expensive-to-replace iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S9 at residence. In that context, you need a gadget that fulfils all fundamental features, and might deal with assembly water and dirt – and the P8 does meet that standards.The display screen is 5-inches, making this a phablet to some, though the decision of the show is simply 960 x 480, which is low for such a big telephone.From a characteristic perspective, the P8 has a formidable number of sensors and their related applied sciences. It sports activities a GPS, geomagnetic sensor, gravity sensor, gyroscope, proximity sensor and lightweight degree sensing.It additionally comes with 802.11ac compliant Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and can be utilized with Google Pay by way of NFC expertise.The precise telephone assist is usually targeted on territories exterior the US, though it ought to work there on GSM and probably WCDMA in some places. The LTE channels it helps aren’t those usually utilized in North America, sadly.The finest facet of this design is that for a rugged telephone it isn’t overly giant or heavy, however as we get into the specs, you would possibly conclude that these constructive notes are outweighed by different much less fascinating options.Spec SheetHere are the complete specs of the Poptel P8:CPU: MediaTek MT6739 quad-core 1.28GHzGPU: PowerVR GE8100RAM: 2GBStorage: 16GBScreen measurement: 5-inchResolution: 960 x 480Weight: 230gDimensions: 152.2 x 73.3 x 16.1mmRear digital camera: 8MPFront digital camera: 5MPOS: Android 8.1Battery: 3750mAhSpecificationsCheaper telephones are likely to have much less spectacular specs, and the P8 doesn’t diverge a lot from that assertion.Therefore, you get a quad-core CPU with a most clock velocity of 1.28GHz, simply 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. Of that 16GB solely about 10GB is on the market for the person. If you want more room for music, video, photos or apps, you possibly can add a microSD card by way of the SIM tray, though which means you possibly can solely mount one cellular SIM, not two.That’s a compromise that the majority Chinese telephones include lately, and for these with each enterprise and private numbers, it may be a really helpful choice.Along with the reminiscence and processor, the cost-cutting axe additionally fell on the cameras, with solely a 5MP front-facer and an 8MP snapper on the rear. Neither of those cameras is particularly spectacular and so they have points that we’ll cowl later on this assessment.The button structure is customary with the facility and audio rocker each on the fitting aspect, and the cardboard slot on the left. Poptel supplied a person customizable button, and on the fitting is one other button that we assumed is also personalized. However, the latter isn’t that versatile, it seems, as it’s there purely to fireplace up the digital camera to take a fast photograph.For all of the price-sensitive components right here, there are a number of options that we didn’t look forward to finding included. These embody a fingerprint reader just under the rear digital camera, and the entrance digital camera can do face recognition when you favor that sort of safety.The different massive promoting level of the Poptel P8 is that it has IP68 certification, that means that it may deal with some water and dirt immersion with out instantly failing. Poptel doesn’t transcend the minimal IP68 spec, saying that the telephone will survive immersion in water to a depth of 1.2m for 30 minutes.Our recommendation can be that you just shouldn’t panic if the telephone will get moist or dusty. But conversely, it in all probability isn’t prudent to discover the sensible limits of its environmental safety.To obtain IP68 each the SIM card slot and the charging port have rubber gaskets, and the one for the USB port must be pulled out every time you cost it.Oddly, Poptel went with the old-style microUSB connector and never Type-C on the P8. And, due to the waterproofing, the socket is deeply embedded within the telephone, requiring an extended microUSB charging cable that Poptel fortunately offers within the field.Don’t ever misplace this cable, as a result of you possibly can’t cost the telephone with an ordinary lead. The different draw back of this selection is that charging happens solely at 5V/1A, and subsequently it may take a while to cost the telephone from a flat battery.BenchmarksHere’s how the Poptel P8 carried out in our suite of benchmark assessments:Geekbench: 612 (single-core); 1,683 (multi-core); 1,263 (compute); 2,867 (battery)Antutu: 41,800PCMark (Work 2.0): 3,051Passmark: 1,252Passmark CPU: 41,774Androbench (sequential): 263.38MB/s (sequential learn); 67.2MB/s (sequential write)Androbench (random): 38.91MB/s (random learn); 12.58MB/s (random write)3DMark Slingshot: 1333DMark Slingshot Extreme: 883DMark IceStorm: 3,405HWBot Prime: 2,500Utilization and performanceMaybe we’ve been utilizing too many high-powered telephones just lately, however the P8 did really feel usually unresponsive in our fingers, and somewhat just like the CPU was engaged on some heavy background activity, completely.As the benchmarks revealed, the processor on this telephone simply doesn’t have the efficiency wanted to drive it successfully. Some of the blame for this should be directed in the direction of the PowerVR GE8100 GPU, which lacks punch in comparison with the Mali G71 GPU that’s paired with eight-core MediaTek processors.The upshot is that when you prefer to recreation in your telephone, then the P8 in all probability isn’t for you.As if to underline that time, the opposite main weak point of this design is the display screen. It isn’t a excessive decision, doesn’t have a powerful colour palette, and is tough to learn in vivid mild.And on high of that we’ve two extremely mediocre cameras. Using them isn’t a superb expertise, as for some curious motive the refresh loop for exhibiting a nonetheless picture isn’t easy and presents a slideshow-like replace. Very off-putting.What’s really odd about this habits is that when you put the digital camera into video mode, it’s completely easy. This strongly suggests that also photograph mode has a technical challenge that would in all probability be rapidly resolved by a superb software program engineer.This lag makes taking photos a somewhat haphazard train, because the framing of the captured picture not often matches the picture which was on-screen when a snap was initiated.There are two different features to the P8 that we have to point out for anybody contemplating a purchase order. The first is that whereas this telephone got here with a comparatively unadulterated model of Android Oreo 8.1 put in, once we acquired the telephone, the most recent safety replace was dated June 2018.However, simply earlier than we completed our assessment, a brand new replace dated October arrived, assuaging a priority we had about Android updates.Another unconnected downside was the inclusion of a font supervisor app within the OS that Google instantly deactivated based mostly on safety considerations.This in all probability isn’t a vital challenge, however within the wake of the issues that Huawei is having in respect of compromised , Chinese firms have to be squeaky clear for Western prospects, and bundling a instrument that Google rejects instantly as a safety menace isn’t advisable.Admittedly, Google has consigned many apps that received’t play by its guidelines to the bin just lately. But Poptel must push out a brand new OS launch and take away the offending app as a part of that improve earlier than some prospects begin to suppose the worst.Our benchmarks didn’t present something that we weren’t anticipating – as a result of whereas the MediaTek MT6739 is a comparatively new ARM design, it isn’t one that’s going to interrupt any velocity data. The CPU isn’t fantastic itself, however the actual weak point, as we’ve already talked about, is the GPU, which scores very low, particularly when 3D is required.Final verdictEven at this value, it’s a battle to suggest this telephone as a result of it appears underpowered, and several other occasions throughout our testing it ran out of reminiscence.In quick, simply too many cost-cutting selections have been made with the Poptel P8, and for lower than £20 ($25) extra you should buy one other Chinese-made waterproof design with 4 occasions the storage, twice the reminiscence, a greater display screen, quick charging and an eight-core processor (particularly the Cubot King Kong 3).On that foundation, we simply can’t see why you’d purchase this as a substitute.