Ulefone Future review unbox
Included with the Ulefone Future:
- heavy duty clear skin with corner bumpers and bump texture for extra protection
- USB micro to USB type-C adapter (so can still use existing USB cables you might have lying around)
- heavy duty USB Type-C cable
- screen protector on the phone already
Ulefone Future Marshmallow
The OS on Ulefone Future is Android 6.0 Marshmallow. As with all MT6755 Helio P10 mobiles we’ve tested, we found the OS to be very smooth. We came across no obvious bugs or force closes during our time testing the phone.
Quick OS notes:
- System transitions and animations are quick and fluid without any jitters or frame-rate slow downs.
- App switching between apps in memory is immediate.
- Smallish apps not in memory open immediately, and opening large apps such as Skype / Chrome / Facebook is quick and frustration free.
- Typing is quick and fluid without any pauses or hangups waiting for the next letters to appear as you type.
- During our time with the Ulefone Future we had an OTA update notification come through. The OTA downloaded, installed, and compiled without any issues.
- Security patch on Ulefone Future as of 20-JUL-2016 is 01-APR-2016.
- Fast-scrolling accelerates and slows with appropriate friction.
- Slow-scrolling is butter and without jitter.
- Skinwise the OS on Ulefone Future is AOSP/Vanilla Android.
- Two-finger pulldown of quick settings works without issue.
- Brightness adjusting appropriately to light sensor
Ulefone OS
Ulefone Future navigation bar
The Ulefone Future has no capacitive buttons. Instead, it uses virtual buttons same as official Google Android devices.
Virtual button config
Notably, there’s a menu setting available on the Future that allows us to:
- swap the back button with the recent apps button
- add a button which allows the navigation bar to be hidden at our whim
- add a button which immediately pulls down quick settings
Very cool, and it would be great to see these options available on all China phones.
Ulefone Future Antutu and gaming
Antutu on the Ulefone future hits a very respectable 51k, with 3D at 7.6k, UX at 22.3k, CPU at 16.5k and RAM at 4.5k.
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- Antutu
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- 30fps NOVA 3
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- 25fps Asphalt 8
We tested NOVA 3 on the Ulefone Future. NOVA 3 is a demanding 3D game and the Ulefone Future handled it without issue, playing quick, smooth, and without any hiccups at 30fps.
NOVA 3
Ulefone Future review SoC CPU GPU
SoC: The SoC on the Ulefone Future is the MT6755 MTK6755 Helio P10. Used on many recently released mobiles, we’ve found it to a great combination of economical battery consumption and power.
CPU: The very good battery use is partially due to the big.LITTLE CPU setup, which uses a 4-core set of 64-bit Cortex-A53 at 1.0GHz for light load processes and a 4-core set of 64-bit Cortex-A53 at 1.95GHz.
GPU: The GPU on the Ulefone Future is the very capable ARM Mali-T860MP2
Ulefone Future build quality
The Ulefone Future is built very well, with no creaks or loose spots in the back/side piece. Buttons are firm. The Future is physically built as well as any major brand mobile.
Ulefone Future review style
The back and sides of the Future are matte CNC-machined metal and look very good. Scratching with moderate pressure with a thumbnail produces no visible scratches.
The Ulefone Future is thin at 9.0mm and overall, the Future looks good and feels solid. Good job Ulefone.
Ulefone Future other components
- WiFi: mediocre, remaining stable up to 85ft/26m with a cinder block wall between the router and the phone. While this is about 60% of what we consider excellent, it should be adequate for nearly all cafe/home/business situations
- Compass: working without issue
- Gyroscope: working without issue
- OTG: working without issue (tested keyboard, mouse, generic gamepad)
- Light sensor: working without issue
- Fingerprint sensor: working without issue
- Notification LED: working without issue (soft pulse)
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- Compass
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- Gyroscope
Ulefone Future GPS
GPS on the Ulefone Future is quite good, locking within seconds and generally maintaining several satellites at high-20’s to mid-30’s at all times.
Ulefone Future fingerprint sensor
The Future’s fingerprint sensor is on the side as opposed to the front or back. It works well when deliberately laying a thumb, though with the stock clear case on it became more difficult to unlock and we found ourselves resorting to pin lock.
Adding fingerprint
Ulefone Future bezel-less display
One of the big draws of the Future is its bezel-less display, with only the metal sides between your finger and the side of the display.
Visually it looks very good, with only minor distortion and minor vignetting at the extreme edges due to the curve of the glass.
Colors are bright and vibrant without being over the top. Sharp diagonal angles flow white-balance towards cool or warm, depending on the diagonal angle, but from any typical angle color and contrast are great.
Display quick notes:
- corners are free of pixel light bleed
- brightness is remarkably evenly lit across the display with no graying at the top or bottom
- brightness max hits 295lux
- at its dimmest goes down to 9lux in standard mode and 2lux in adaptive brightness mode
Ulefone Future SOT screenon time battery life
The Ulefone Future battery is rated at 3000mAh. We ran our 720p WiFi YouTube 140lux test 3x and came up with scores of 6h 6m, 6h 15m, and 6h 45m. This should equate to about 5 hours onscreen time for most users through a 12-24 hour day.
We should note here that on our copy of the Ulefone Future, the percentage dropped rapidly from 20% to 1%. Normally this indicates the battery has been drained too far, but in the case of the Ulefone Future, the battery still was at 3.63V, which means plenty of juice left. In our battery test mentioned above, the Ulefone Future lasted a full hour at 1% before giving up the ghost (see pics).
1h 720p video at 1% battery
While this issue is a bit odd, we don’t find it to be a problem as long as the user is aware. This is also an issue we’ve alerted Ulefone too and hopefully will be corrected in an OTA.
Ulefone Future battery charging
The Ulefone Future claims quick charging and we found this to be true, with the Future charging fully in about 2 hours.
Quick charging
Ulefone Future review camera image samples
Big crop, resize, and saved at 75%
The Future carries the very good 16MP Samsung S5K3P3 sensor camera. Images are sharp, with good color and decent dynamic range. The Ulefone Future easily puts out images good enough for social sharing and medium sized prints. Making big crops up to about 66% leaves us with very usable images.
Intervalometer
The Ulefone Future camera software gives us some great options, including an intervalometer which allows us to do time-laps photography. There are also some manual options, such as ISO, white balance, and option to set Exposure Value (EV). The simple EV setting comes in very handy on the Ulefone Future, as we found the some scenes overexposed in daylight.
Take a look at the 1st and 2nd picture in the set below. We see the 1st image is okay looking but there are some areas with blown out highlights. The 2nd image was shot at -1EV and came out looking beautiful with rich saturated colors and great depth. In both shots we didn’t manually tap an exposure point, we just point and shot.
As usual, the images are saved at 75% jpg quality with no edits other than crop and/or resize.
Ulefone Future dual-SIM / TF SD expandable
Par for the course in this class of mobile, the Ulefone Future is dual-SIM *or* single-SIM+TF SD.
Ulefone Future RAM
RAM on the Future is a huge 4GB, which is well beyond what’s required to run Android smoothly, and is beyond what even power users will require. Always better to have more than less, so it’s good to see Ulefone step up and include giant RAM here.
Running both NOVA 3 and Asphalt 8 in the background were no problem, even 1 hour later with many apps opened since, both big games were still sitting exactly where we’d left them.
RAM
Ulefone Future review ROM storage
Ulefone Future ROM is a big 32gb, of which 25gb are free for app installs and media. This is well beyond enough for users of all types, from basic use to power users to gamers. In addition, the Ulefone Future has TF SD expandable storage up to 128GB.
25gb free
Ulefone Future review summary and conclusion
We like the Ulefone Future. The WiFi signal strength is mediocre, but this shouldn’t be an issue for the majority of situations. Battery life is good, the bezel-less display is unique and great looking, it quick charges in 2 hours, gives a very smooth Marshmallow experience and carries modern styling.
The Ulefone Future is a phone we could easily use as our main mobile or recommend to a friend. We also suggest considering the very powerful Vernee Apollo.
