﻿Hello, my dear Aliholics. Umidigi is a budget smartphone
manufacturer, and G1 is their latest model. This model will set you back $98, and here is
what you can expect if you decide to buy this phone - this will be a pretty detailed video,
and if there is a certain part of the phone that you are interested in, I’ve added timestamps.
But before we start though, here are some cool lights that I wanted to show off to you. This
little projector costs $3, which I think is a steal because they look really cool.
The quality of the image that it projects is pretty impressive, considering the price and
the “mickey mouse” technology. I got a few of the image cards, my favourite is with Mount Fuji. The
size of the projection is quite big, it depends on how dark the room is, with pitch black brightness,
or the lack of thereof, I was able to get it to approximately 2x2 meters. I also like the moon,
Saturn one is kinda cool, this bridge….i’m not sure what it is but there is something about it,
this one is kinda meh, but whatever it was a freebie,
I also got this galaxy and I’m not even sure what this is but I like it.
So I have 2 different projectors, one is slightly bigger than the other,
and the cards look like this. Just like in real life, the small ones fit into the bigger one,
but the bigger ones don’t fit the small one. I’ll put the product link in the video description,
and I’ll make a separate video on all the cool lighting that I recently received.
Anyway, back to the Umidigi G1. I got mine from Amazon as a part of the
tester program (under which they refunded $50 to me upon leaving review). I will leave links to
both Amazon and AliExpress listings in the video description. It probably won’t be a surprise,
but the Amazon listing is more expensive, but will likely arrive sooner.
The phone came in this bright yellow box. The duckie and the gnome will show you the specs
from the box, pause the video on the next frame if you want to see the full thing,
but the highlights are: Quad-core A53 processor
Android 12 pre-installed 5150 mAh battery
6.5” display 13 megapixel rear facing camera
and a 5 megapixel front. 2 GB of RAM
32 GB internal memory (which is not expandable)
6 GB of the internal memory are taken by the system and CPP’s spyware
apps. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Inside the box we have the USB type-C cable with
the SIM card tool, a charging block, the shortest manual I’ve ever seen and … well, the phone.
Let’s take a closer look at the phone. The front facing camera is embedded into
the display, and we do not have any physical buttons on the front.
The most striking part about this phone, in my opinion, is the “legally safe knock off of the
popular phone” look of the camera, and the “beyond dreams” lettering on the case.
Then here is the side view and the top and bottom view.
The phone comes with a USB-C charging/data port, and an AUX input on top.
What I found kinda cool is the fact that the phone came with the screen protector pre-applied,
which was surprising given the low price of the device.
The display is nothing to write home about, the body to display ratio is pretty good,
and the brightness is acceptable, though it does feel like a budget device. The colors aren’t,
please excuse the redundancy, as colourful, compared to the higher-end phones.
The speaker is facing the bottom. Size and dimension-wise it’s very close
to my Galaxy S20 FE, though the frame sticks out a bit more.
Now when it comes to performance, this is where my problem with this device is. It
feels sluggish. I’m not the most impatient person and I take the price into account,
but the apps take a considerable amount of time to open, and it really doesn’t like
when you run a few of them at the same time. When I checked the device info app, it looked like
nearly half or all RAM was being used by that app and the Android running in the background.
Surprisingly, the games weren’t lagging, and I was able to play some dune buggy racing game,
and of course Candy Crush because I am secretly a 45 year old housewife. The phone has a gyro
sensor, so you can play games where you turn the phone to control cars, for example,
and you can also use it for VR videos. I was able to watch videos on TikTok without
any lag either, though I have to note that the first second of the video felt a bit freezy.
And now let’s take some time exploring the camera functionality that I’ve
spent too much time on filming. The first thing that becomes very apparent,
is that the phone does not have image stabilization, so the footage, just like
an average american police officer fresh out of the academy, comes out pretty unstable.
But as long as I didn’t walk, stood still and only moved my torso side to side, the shakiness was not
a problem, and the footage came out pretty decent. The transition between low-light and medium/high
light was pretty decent as well. I added these clips side by side to
show that the display does an ok job keeping the colors true to real life
“what you see is what you get” kind of deal. Surprisingly, the selfie camera isn’t as bad as
I thought it would be either. The sharpness is quite phenomenal, but because of the fact
that it doesn’t have any stabilization whatsoever, the footage comes out a bit
shaky if you film it while walking. It’s pretty decent when you film things
while not walking. Auto focus during the high light environments works pretty good too.
Just because I could, I added comparisons of both the rear and the front camera on this camera with
my Galaxy S20. Unsurprisingly, the quality of the Samsung is superior, but this Samsung
also costs like 5x the Umidigi’s price. The camera has a bit of a lag when I move from
the high to low light environments, but again it’s not a dealbreaker in my opinion.
Here are some pictures that I took during our last trip to Botanical Beach on Vancouver Island. The
tide pools were really fun to explore, we also made it to a secret waterfall on Sombrio Beach,
the directions to which were sketchy at best. Overall, do I think this phone is worth the
money? I really do. You’d see the same specs on phones over $500 in 2017. The camera is alright,
and even though the processor can’t handle too many processes at once and the phone feels laggy,
it’s definitely usable. Would I use it as my main device? No, not really. At this point in
my life I’d rather spend a little more and get a second-hand phone with better specs. I still think
it’s a very decent option for a backup phone. I have also received these Bluetooth earphones
from Umidigi, and, boy, am I impressed with them. The quality of the build, the quality of the
sound, the noise-cancellation…everything, I really truly think that these are fantastic and possibly
the best earphones I’ve ever tried. But that’s for another video. Toodles!