Before there was Elephone, there was Ulefone. They have been in the game for longer than many of the current brands you know and love (or hate). Mostly known for making good clones, Ulefone has now ventured beyond their roots to design their own phones.
update: According to Ulefone’s Facebook, the camera in the Ulefone Be Pro is not Sony. This was a mistake from the marketing department. I have spoken to a Ulefone rep who has stated “the camera uses Sony technology, but is not Sony branded”. I’m not quite sure how to interpret that, but there it is. Nevertheless, the camera is quite good and for the flash sale price of $135 or coupon price of $146 the Ulefone Be Pro is still an outstanding deal.
This motivation comes from wanting to legitimately branch into Western markets. It would be impossible with clones to do this officially, so they have taken the bold step of stepping at least partially out of the clone game.
Regardless of where the motivation comes from, I can only see this development as a great thing.
Notably the Ulefone Be Pro carries with it the new 64-bit MT6732 SoC with the Mali-T760 GPU, 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM, OTG, Hotknot technology, worldwide 3G/H+ and 4-Band LTE. All at a considerably low price point given the specs.
Ulefone Be Pro review style and build
The styling of the Be Pro reminds me a bit of the Doogee DG580, though thankfully they’ve opted not to include the strange rim that was on the DG580.
The back of the phone arches slightly at the top and the bottom. The back curves outward and is made of matte plastic. There is a simple, indented logo and I’m happy to see there’s no silly motto. Thank you Ulefone.
The silver plastic edging the phone has been very tastefully done in a brushed matte style. Even after looking at it closely, it’s difficult to tell whether it’s plastic or aluminum until locating the corner seems. Anybody who’s not intensely examining it will not know the difference.
Notably, under the back piece, the antennas are covered with screwed on plastic plates as opposed to taped over as it is with most phones.
The volume buttons and power button give a tactile click when pressed. The back piece snaps on strong and sure. There are no creaks or loose spots. Removing the back piece on this phone is by far the most difficult back piece I’ve taken off and requires me to slide a fingernail along one side. This isn’t a bad thing and should mean the back piece will stay tight for a long while to come.
Ulefone Be Pro review display LCD
The display on the Be Pro is an LG 5.5″@720p. This makes for a very pleasurable experience, and while 1080p would add a bit more retina, the 267PPI is more than dense enough for my eyes and helps with both battery and gaming performance. Tiny text is crisp and easily legible.
Viewing angles are excellent and color reproduction is deep without any sort of washed out look. There is no light bleed from any of the corners. This is a true OGS/IPS display and it looks very good.
Ulefone Be Pro review WiFi
The WiFi on the Ulefone Be Pro can be rated as decent, but only made it about half as far as I require to be deemed excellent. That is, it maintained a steady and fast connection up to 83 feet / 25 meters, but beyond this became unstable.
Ulefone Be Pro review OS
The OS on the Be Pro is stated as 4.4.4 and since Ulefone isn’t the only phone to be displaying this, it may be that MediaTek has finally updated their source code to the most recent KitKat.
Auto-brightness is not currently working, but the sensor is sensing different levels of light, so it’s possible to install a 3rd party app to fix this minor issue.
The compass and OTG are both working flawlessly on the Be Pro and the scrolling is butter smooth.
The OS is extremely smooth and very stable. Swapping between apps already loaded into memory is instantaneous and due to the large amount of RAM, quite a few apps can stay in memory at any given time.
There were no force closes from the test apps I’ve run. Play Store is running, installing and updating apps without issue. Google Play Services updated as well without any problems.
Some of you may remember that a previous MT6732 phone I reviewed, the Elephone P6000, had issues with compass, OTG and with jumpy finger sliding. I’m very pleased to announce that all three of these issues aren’t issues at all with the Ulefone Be Pro. The compass and OTG are both working flawlessly on the Be Pro and the scrolling is butter smooth.
This means that the issues experienced with the Elephone P6000 aren’t problems with the MT6732 SoC, but are most likely issues with the P6000’s hardware, ROM or drivers.
Touch sensitivity is perfect and rapid touch typing goes off without a hitch. The Be Pro goes into deep sleep without issue.
Ulefone Be Pro preview camera
I will be posting the full camera review in the next portion of this article, but for now here’s a sample. This shot is unedited other than resizing. The squared image is a 100% crop from the original shot.
Ulefone Be Pro review RAM / ROM storage
Ulefone Be Pro relegates all storage to one big partition which allows for installing literally hundreds of apps.
The RAM on the Be Pro is 2GB strong. The extra RAM allows for many apps to be open at once and enables rapid switching between apps when multitasking.
The storage on the phone is 16GB. Like several recently reviewed phones, Ulefone Be Pro relegates all storage to one big partition which allows for installing literally hundreds of apps. The phone is SD card expandable as well.
In a beautiful move, Ulefone has given the Be Pro worldwide WCDMA 3G/H+ support
Ulefone Be Pro review frequency support
In a beautiful move, Ulefone has given the Be Pro worldwide WCDMA 3G/H+ support with 850/900/1900/2100 all covered. 4G/LTE frequencies of 800/1800/2100/2600 are included as well.
You can get the Ulefone Be Pro at our trusted sponsor’s shop — www.gearbest.com — for only $146.99 during the limited time promotion with coupon code UFBPROLM
NOTE: First 100 Ulefone Be Pro, now $135 shipped. Click this link and use code GBUBEPRO
Including quad-band 3G support can’t be applauded enough. As the market becomes more competitive with inexpensive alternatives, implementing components such as radios tuned for worldwide 3G, 2GB RAM, LG displays are huge and really make a phone stand out.
Discuss the Ulefone Be Pro at www.chinaphonearena.com
Ulefone Be Pro review GPS
On a cloudy night and indoors, the Be Pro achieved a strong lock within seconds. I took the phone outside and within several seconds more it latched onto 15 total. SNR was very good with 4-5 satellites hitting mid-30’s at any given time and occasionally reaching into the mid-40’s.
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