RugOne Xlink 7: 30-second review

The RugOne Xlink 7 wants to solve an old problem in a new way. Traditional walkie-talkies are brilliant until you walk out of range. Hills block them. Buildings block them. Distance blocks them. The Xlink 7 sidesteps all of that by using 4G instead of short-range radio, so two or three people can stay in touch across a city, a country, or, in theory, the whole planet, as long as there's signal.

That idea alone makes it worth a look. Add a genuinely tough build, IP68 and IP69K rated, plus MIL STD 810H certification, and you have a device that will survive rain, dust, a drop, or a dunking, all while weighing just 84g. It comes loaded with sensible extras too. A wireless PTT (push-to-talk) remote means you never have to fumble for the unit itself while riding or climbing. An emergency SOS mode, backed by GPS, GLONASS and Beidou positioning, can sound an alarm and share your live location with five quick presses. There's even a basic AI assistant for weather checks and settings, and a noise cancellation system tuned for wind and speed.

None of that comes without trade-offs, though. The biggest one is that this is a cellular device, not a true radio, so it lives and dies by 4G coverage. Head somewhere genuinely remote, deep countryside, mountains, open water, and it becomes a very expensive paperweight. A proper VHF or UHF handset, or a satellite communicator, will keep working exactly where the Xlink 7 cannot. There's no screen either, so every bit of feedback comes through LED colours and beeps, which takes some getting used to. Group calls are capped at three people and thirty minutes, which will frustrate anyone hoping to coordinate a larger crew.

So who is this for? Cyclists, hikers, skiers and runners who mostly stay within reach of a network but want a proper safety net and a simple way to stay in touch with a partner or small group. It might also work for parents keeping tabs on older kids, but surely they’d have phones. It could be an easy panic button for lone workers, as long as they’re not underground.

It's less convincing for anyone heading truly off-grid, where a satellite device or traditional radio still makes more sense, as some of the best rugged phones I've tested already have. Think of the Xlink 7 as a rugged companion for populated wilderness rather than true remoteness, and it starts to make more sense.

RugOne Xlink 7: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $159
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Direct from RugOne or via an online retailer

The RugOne Xlink 7 is available direct from RugOne's global store, on Amazon.com for $159.99, and on Amazon.co.uk for $139.99.

Unless I’m mistaken, the RugOne Xlink 7 launched its Kickstarter campaign in June 2026, with a Super Early Bird duo pack priced from $159.99 against a stated standard retail of $299.98 for the same pack, a 47 per cent discount.

Coverage on a popular news site said it has cleared the Engineering Verification and Design Verification stages and was, at the time of writing, running final Production Validation Test builds ahead of mass shipping from August 2026. But that plan evidently wasn’t correct or got changed, because it's already available to buy now.

To be crystal clear, I’m not a fan of companies that don’t need the money running Kickstarter campaigns as marketing exercises, and the way that this one was able to move from announcement to product and retail in a matter of weeks gives the true picture away. That reality being the Xlink 7 was probably finished and in production even before the Kickstarter ever began.

In the bundle that most purchasers will choose, they get a SIM card that works in 41 countries, and that will work for a year. No price has yet been revealed for extending the SIM contract at this time, but you can just buy a data-only SIM for your country and use that instead.

In most countries, this would be a no-brainer based on cost, but if you live in a region where mobile providers must approve each device that connects, it might be an issue.

Depending on how you intend to use this hardware, the price might be seen as competitive or excessive.

Compared to a proper satellite-based communicator, like the Garmin inReach Mini 2 ($509.99), it might seem a bargain. But the Garmin will work in practically any geographic location, and doesn’t need cell service.

Not needing a cell service or a SIM card, Motorola makes an extensive range of walkie-talkies, like the Motorola Solutions Talkabout T475 Extreme. A two-pack of those is only $94.99, and they use FRS radio frequencies, can receive NOAA weather alerts and will work for up to 12 hours on a charge.

There are dozens of brands selling walkie-talkie designs, some using Mesh technology that generally undercut the RugOne Xlink 7, typically offering two handsets for less than the price of one Xlink 7.

But there is an even cheaper choice, and that’s to use Zello on your existing smartphone, which costs precisely nothing. As they say, competing with zero isn’t easy.

Overall, there are some cute features on the RugOne Xlink 7 that might attract some customers, but since they don’t have a fallback technology when there is no 4G service, they seem overpriced.

• Value score: 3/5

RugOne Xlink 7: Specs

RugOne Xlink 7: Design

• Tough and tiny
• Lots of buttons
• A box full of accessories

The Xlink 7 is a small, octagonal puck that RugOne compares to a chunky earbud case. At 84g and just under 64mm tall, it disappears onto a backpack strap or handlebar far more easily than a traditional VHF or UHF radio ever could. The body mixes plastic with rubber seals and metal buttons, and the whole thing carries an IP68 rating for a 1.5 metre dunking and an IP69K rating against pressure washing, on top of MIL STD 810H certification. That is a serious durability claim for a device this size, and on paper, that puts the Xlink 7 ahead of most consumer electronics in this price bracket.

There is no screen. Every status update, battery level, signal state, Bluetooth pairing, comes through a bank of seven LEDs and a set of audio tones. That keeps the design simple and the waterproofing easier to guarantee, but it also means a genuine learning curve before all those beeps and colours become second nature.

The one that most owners might easily recall is the built-in AI, as even at the lowest volume settings, it shouts information at you like a drill sergeant. Maybe on a windswept hillside or next to a roaring rapids, this might be good, but in less noisy spaces, it seems excessive and bludgeoning.

Since there is no screen, all the modes and features of the RugOne Xlink 7 are activated using a series of buttons, and there are some simple back-lit icons to provide basic feedback. These tell you if a voice call is active, Bluetooth is being used, battery status, the device is on, volume and mute, and mobile signal strength. But most of these are superfluous, since if you change the volume, for example, the unit will shout at you the current volume setting.

Buttons are provided for powering on, AI, Group functionality and initiating or answering calls.

A single button activates an on-device AI assistant for simple Q&A, weather checks, and device settings, and RugOne pairs a dedicated audio chip with an AI noise-reduction algorithm rated at a peak of 55dB, tuned for conditions up to 40km/h on skis or 30km/h on a bike, according to RugOne. But this technology appears to be deactivated when you’re not on skis or a bike, when you get put on full audio blast anyway.

Rubber plugs cover both the SIM card slot and the USB port, which made me wonder why they weren’t together under a single plug. And, the other feature worth mentioning is that there is a TorchX flashlight, which might become useful if you’ve not reached your basecamp before nightfall.

For those wondering how you configure some of the more complicated aspects, that’s all done through a smartphone app. So, if you want to change those, you’ll need to bring a smartphone, which somewhat undermines the function of the RugOne Xlink 7.

One impressive detail about this device is all the supporting hardware that comes in the box, which includes long and short Velcro straps, a sports armband, a magnetic belt clip, a lanyard and a Bluetooth-connected talk button.

Design score: 3.5/5

RugOne Xlink 7: Hardware

• Multi-person communication
• ASR1609S SoC
• 1,050mAh cell battery

Available in ‘Sports Black’ or ‘Sand Dune’, the RugOne Xlink 7 has some interesting twists on the normal 4G communication model.

These include the ability to have group conversations between three Xlink 7, with each call limited to 10 minutes, or with three connected up to 30 minutes.

Where I’m slightly confused is that in some literature, three users are mentioned, and in others, up to five people can talk. But since I only received two of these to test, I can ascertain which number is correct.

That said, the idea of five people on the same line just sounds like a recipe to step on other people's speaking, so if it only supports three people, it might be more practical.

The platform that this was built on is the ASR1609S, a cost-effective, high-performance 4G LTE IoT baseband processor manufactured by ASR Microelectronics.

This SoC is a single ARM Cortex-R5 core running at 614 MHz, integrating a modem, Bluetooth 5.2, GNSS, power management, 8GB PSRAM, and 8GB Flash in a single assembly.

Positioning comes from a combination of GPS, GLONASS and Beidou, and an emergency SOS mode is triggered by five rapid presses of the action button. That sounds like a loud siren to alert others nearby, automatically calls pre-set emergency contacts and shares a live location through the companion app.

For hikers, cyclists and lone workers, this is arguably a bigger selling point than the group calling itself. But this again assumes that everyone wearing one of these devices is also conveniently carrying their phone.

RugOne quotes up to 87 hours of standby, 24 hours of typical use, or 10 hours of continuous talk time from the 1,050mAh cell. Those are manufacturer figures rather than independently measured ones, and if you are on the edge of cell service, you might find the battery wears out faster than expected.

I can’t be overly critical of the hardware, since it was made to both fit inside the limited confines of the RugOne Xlink 7 but also to do a specific job that isn’t as general as you might expect from a Smartphone SoC.

But, this SoC didn’t include the technology for PTT-type communications without 4G, which is unfortunate, since most mobile phones can do that trick, and would last longer on battery than the Xlink 7 can.

• Hardware score: 3/5

RugOne Xlink 7: Final verdict

The RugOne Xlink 7 is a difficult call, since I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with the hardware or the design, except possibly how shouty the AI is.

That said, I strongly suspect that this design was originally intended to support conventional or mesh wireless technology alongside 4G functionality, until someone realised that might affect future income from SIM sales.

What we ended up with is a walkie-talkie that’s useless when you’re away from cell service, which is problematic. Given that lots of cheaper devices will work anywhere without 4G, it brings into question whether the RugOne Xlink 7 is the right product for you.

While I accept that most walkie-talkies can’t link two people on different continents, most can connect those people 100M apart on a mountain or in a jungle, and that’s not a guarantee with this hardware.

RugOne need to put Zello-compatible wireless in the Xlink 8, and make the price significantly more competitive.

Should I buy a RugOne Xlink 7?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

For more ruggedized devices, we've reviewed the best rugged tablets, the best rugged laptops, and the best rugged hard drives

Oukitel WP68 Air: 30-second review

The Oukitel WP68 Air lands as the accessible end of the WP68 family. At 11.9mm thin with a 6.8-inch HD+ display and 8000mAh battery, the overall design feels slimmer, more elegant, and more practical compared to some of the brick-like rugged phones. This, then, is a durable daily driver without the price-tag of a heavyweight flagship.

On paper, its specifications undercut most of the rugged pack. The 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage look generous for the money, and the 64MP main camera promises more than a token effort in daylight. Android 16 also puts it ahead of several rivals still shipping on older builds.

This is a classic rugged phone able to withstand what the environment can throw at it, and the owner being clumsy, but it tries to have a foot also in the practical camp for those who need a daily driver.

The screen is 6.88 inches, making it easy to read, but the resolution isn't great, and the 450-nit brightness isn’t ideal for working in sunlight. Another limitation is that video capture is only 1440p, not 4K.

If you don’t do much photography, these aspects might not be an issue for you, but it's useful to be aware of these things before purchasing.

However, the biggest issue with the WP68 Air is that, compared to some previous Oukitel phones with better SoCs and cameras, its asking price doesn’t make it a bargain. And a few other annoyances stop this from joining our hallowed collection of best rugged phones.

Oukitel WP68 Air: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $420/£270/€360
• When is it out? Available from July 27
• Where can you get it? Direct from the maker

The asking price direct from Oukitel is $319.99, which doesn’t sound excessive for a phone with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. For UK customers, that translates into £268.99, and for Europeans it's €359.99. But, at the time of writing, it's out of stock for the UK.

Also, this phone isn’t available on Amazon or AliExpress, as far as I can see.

But an even greater problem for the WP68 Air is that it's priced in some regions higher than the WP210, a phone from the same stable with better specifications.

On the German Oukitel outlet, the WP210 is priced at €319,99, a full forty euros less than the WP68 Air, a phone it crushes in every respect. On the UK site, the WP68 Air is £16 cheaper, but the more powerful SoC, better screen and cameras are easily worth the difference. And even with US pricing, the WP210 is only $30 more, and that’s still a better deal than the WP68 Air.

I’m sure there are equally competitive phones from other brands, but when a phone from the same brand undermines its own value, the WP68 Air is obviously in trouble.

There is a better phone for this money, or close, and it's also from Oukitel.

• Value score: 3.5/5

Oukitel WP68 Air: Specs

Oukitel WP68 Air: Design

• Conservative design
• Standard button layout
• No wireless charging

From the official images, the WP68 Air follows the familiar rugged phone formula. A reinforced frame surrounds the display, with a textured rear panel and a camera module set into a raised block on the back. It is offered in three colourways: orange, black and green.

I’m really pleased that rugged phone makers aren’t making devices that look like props from a cancelled-after-one-season sci-fi show, and for the most part, the WP68 Air looks like a large ordinary phone.

What dictates the size of this design is the headline 6.88-inch panel at HD+ resolution. That’s plenty of glass for the price, though HD+ on a screen this size will look softer than the FHD+ panels found on some competitors' phones.

The layout is strictly by-the-numbers, with the power button and volume controls on the right, the custom button and SIM tray on the left. That’s what most people expect from an Android phone these days, and unless makers have a good reason to do something different, it seems the sensible choice

While I’m not 100% certain of this, without dismantling the phone, I’m confident that the primary camera sensor is on the centerline of the phone, with the nightvision sensor to the left and the IR lights and flash to the right.

With the camera cluster all in a horizontal line, it would have been easy to see damage to the sensor projections if Oukitel had not foreseen the issue. Counterbalancing the projections along the top, the WP68 Air has a ‘heel’ at the bottom that lets the phone lie almost flat on a table.

I assumed, then I saw this arrangement, that it was done to leave the majority of the back flat for wireless charging, but this phone doesn’t have this feature, so it’s purely aesthetic.

Not sure why so many rugged phone makers don’t like wireless charging, but apparently, they don’t.

Another feature Oukitel added to this phone was a hard plastic bumper, and this is the second phone I’ve seen with one recently. Not only are these difficult to remove, but by their nature, any impact on them will be transmitted to the phone, not dissipated like they are by soft TPU-made bumpers.

For those thinking, why would you remove it? The answer is the SIM tray, which can’t be accessed with the bumper in place.

Getting it off is a challenge, due to the lack of flexibility, and I would expect some people will invariably break theirs in their attempt. I’m not a fan of this trend.

In many ways, this phone feels like a toned-down version of the WP66. While the WP66 was a heavier, thicker design, the WP68 Air is slimmer, has a larger display, a smaller battery, and a more modest primary camera sensor.

That makes the Air more ergonomic, but it reduces runtime and lowers screen resolution, even though it’s physically larger.

From a potential customer's viewpoint, the WP68 Air is aimed at someone who wants a rugged phone as a daily driver, not a special piece of hardware for working outdoors.

Design score: 4/5

Oukitel WP68 Air: Hardware

• MediaTek Dimensity 7025
• 512GB of storage
• 8000 mAh battery

I’ve given my assessment of the Dimensity 7025 too many times, since it’s a remarkably popular choice for phone makers.

Looking back at my records, I saw this SoC in the Oukitel WP300, WP66, WP61 Plus, WP60 and WP55 Pro, and also the RugOne Xever 7 Pro.

The problem with the Dimensity 7025 is that it’s not a current-generation chip, as it's based on 6nm technology first deployed in 2022 in the Dimensity 930.

Currently, MediaTek has 4nm and 3nm SoCs, and shortly, it will be moving to 2nm, which puts the Dimensity 7025 in perspective.

Where this is most evident in this design is the integrated PowerVR IMG BXM-8-256 GPU, a component that can’t handle all the functions of OpenGL or Vulkan, making this phone unsuitable for hardcore gamers and VR users.

What makes that GPU look slightly better to the user is the curiously low resolution of the display, being just 720 x 1640. That’s a much smaller display in pixel terms than most phones with 6.6-inch or larger displays will need to drive.

However, even with this slight advantage, the IMG BXM-8-256 is the Achilles heel of this SoC.

Where Oukitel spent the money it saved on the SoC was in the RAM and storage, which seems to contradict the current trend to reduce those to save money.

12GB of RAM is a useful amount, easily enough to ignore Oukitel trying to oversell it as 36GB using storage-mapped memory. And 512GB is also a decent amount of storage, making this phone good for 4K video capture, where file sizes can grow.

The storage capacity is also useful, because the SIM tray is dual SIM only if you don’t use a MicroSD card, which might negate that extra storage for those who need a work and home phone number.

The final jigsaw piece in the hardware of the WP68 Air is the battery, which, at 8000 mAh, is modest by rugged-phone standards. It’s more than an ordinary phone, but less than many rugged phones that often start at 10000 mAh and go up to 20000 mAh in some models.

Is it enough? That depends entirely on how you intend to use the WP68 Air, because it doesn’t sound ideal for a camping adventure away from civilisation for a week.

Due to the smaller battery capacity, this phone's marketing materials don’t mention reverse charging, as it doesn’t support that technology.

The flip side of the smaller battery is that the phone's overall weight is much closer to that of a standard smartphone, and it charges reasonably quickly with the provided 45W charger.

What gives me pause for thought is how this phone compares with the WP210 that Oukitel still sells. It weighs about the same, has 10% more battery, the same memory and storage, but a much more powerful SoC, an AMOLED screen, 108MP camera and reverse charging.

In the performance stakes, there's no question the WP210 is the better buy. Where the phones differ is design. And that's really where you'll be deciding between the two. The WP68 Air is a slimmer device with a larger screen (6.8in vs the WP210's 6.7in display). It's built for everyday use as a durable phone that slips more easily into your pocket.

• Hardware score: 3.5/5

Oukitel WP68 Air: Cameras

• 64MP, 8MP and 2MP on the rear
• 32MP on the front
• Four cameras in total

The Oukitel WP68 Air Ultra has four cameras:

Rear camera: 64MP OmniVision OV64B, 8MP Hynix Hi-846 nightvision , 2MP GalaxyCore GC02M1 macro
Front camera: 32MP Sony IMX616

Oukitel WP68 Air Camera samples

The best bit of the photo capture part of this phone is undoubtedly the 64MP OmniVision OV64B, since its pixel-binning solution for still images works remarkably well.

However, its limitation is that there are only two digital zoom levels selectable on the phone app, 1.0x and 2.0x, but 0.5x increments are possible, going all the way up to 10.0x. At least the camera doesn’t expect you to move around to create framing, if you are aware of what pinching the screen does in picture mode. It also has autofocus, which works well.

The 8MP Hynix Hi-846 Night-Vision sensor is one that’s new to this reviewer, and the results seem decent. And, it can zoom in 1.0x increments from 1.0x to 4.0x. The only limitation of this device is how far the IR illumination goes from the phone in darkness, which isn’t much more than four or five metres.

Easily the worst option is the 2MP Macro, partly because the resolution is poor, but also because it has a fixed focus lens that’s set at about 4cm. Getting that to convert into a focus-accurate image is extremely difficult, and I’d suggest using the standard lens in 64MP mode and cropping the image for better results.

As I’ve commented before, the 32MP Sony IMX616 is overkill for a selfie camera role, but it does what you expect, and the quality of the capture is good.

The big disappointment of this camera arrangement is that the highest resolution video it will capture is 1440p, or 2560 x 1400 at 30 fps. The OmniVision OV64B is rated for 4K at up to 60 fps or 4K at 30 fps with Electronic Image Stabilisation (EIS). So this limitation is entirely down to the Dimensity 7025, which does not support 4K video processing, only 1440p at 30fps. On this basis, it makes little sense that Oukitel use the OmniVision OV64B over a 32MP or even 16MP sensor.

And, if you hadn’t already guessed, this phone doesn’t support Widevine L1 encryption, so most big-name streaming services will only offer you 480p video. But since the screen is only 720 pixels high in landscape, it would only support 720p if it did have L1.

In short, the sensors are decent other than the Macro, but the SoC doesn’t allow them to be fully exploited.

• Camera score: 3.5/5

Oukitel WP68 Air: Performance

• 6nm SoC
• Mid-tier performance

Having another brand create a similar device that's better is one thing, but having the same brand steal the limelight seems unfortunate.

Due to their similarities in the market that they were both designed to succeed, I’ve matched the WP68 Air against its WP210 brother, and this picture isn’t pretty.

Performance-wise, the Dimensity 8200 eats the 7024 for breakfast. But then, since it’s a 4nm chip, and not a 6nm one, that’s to be expected.

But where the WP68 Air truly gets kicked to the kerb is when the tests involve graphics, since the Mali-G610 MC6 is superior in every respect to the IMG BXM-8-256.

The IMG chip can’t run some of the tests properly due to support issues with both OpenGL and Vulkan, which is why the GeekBench graphics scores are so abysmal.

Of all the tests, the only ones where the WP68 Air holds its own are in the PCMark Score and battery tests. Not sure why PCMark thinks it's nearly as good, but based on the battery capacity, it performs almost exactly the same as the WP210 when adjusted.

Though I have to wonder if the Dimensity 8200 did much more work in its 22 hours and 44 minutes than the 7025 managed over 19 hours and 58 minutes.

But the bottom line is that the WP210 is lighter, has more battery capacity, and lasts longer. The WP68 Air does charge a little faster, but with less battery to fill, that’s to be expected.

Overall, the WP68 is a shadow of the WP210, a phone that costs only a little more.

• Performance score: 3/5

Oukitel WP68 Air: Final verdict

With the price of everything that uses memory and flash storage increasing, for a casual observer, the $420 asking price for the WP68 Air seems reasonable. It’s a lightweight, rugged design that would be fine as a daily driver for many. The cameras are fine, and the amount of RAM and storage keeps it moving along quite smoothly.

However, there are a number of alternatives on the market, at least one of which is made by Oukitel itself, that seem to offer better performance and greater potential for around the same price.

I’ve concluded that Oukitel launches too many phones, and that makes the chance of them missing the obvious overlaps in their own range significantly more likely.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much about the WP68 Air that the WP210 didn’t do significantly better. If performance is the focus, the latter is the better choice. But if a significantly more portable rugged phone for daily use is what you're looking for, that's where the WP68 Air slots in nicely.

Should I buy a Oukitel WP68 Air?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

For more ruggedized devices, we've reviewed the best rugged tablets, the best rugged laptops, and the best rugged hard drives

8849 Tank 5: 30-second review

The Tank 5 represents the most complete version of a concept that 8849 has been refining for several generations. Where earlier models asked buyers to accept trade-offs between size, battery and projector quality, the Tank 5 attempts to resolve all three at once. The result is something that genuinely has no mainstream equivalent.

There is a very specific kind of person the 8849 Tank 5 is made for. They work far from mains power. They need a phone that survives punishment. And occasionally, they want to project something onto a wall, a tent, or the side of a cliff face. For that person, no mainstream smartphone comes close.

Where previous models asked buyers to accept mid-range processors and modest projection quality, the Tank 5 brings flagship silicon to the category for the first time. The MediaTek Dimensity 9400e is a genuine top-tier chip in 2026 terms, and finding it in a device this rugged at this price is a pleasant surprise.

The headline numbers are hard to ignore. A 17,600mAh battery. A 3K AMOLED display peaking at 3000 nits. A 2K TI DLP projector with 220-lumen output and laser autofocus to four metres. Triple 50-megapixel rear cameras. Android 16 out of the box. On paper, this reads like a wish list written by someone who spends more time on a mountainside than in a meeting room.

The catch, as ever, is the physical reality. At 715 grams and nearly 34 millimetres thick, the Tank 5 is not a device you slip into a jacket pocket. It is a tool. And like any serious tool, it rewards the user who actually needs what it offers.

Is this one of the best rugged phones? That entirely depends on what features you value. For those who don’t care about size and weight but want battery capacity, exotic features and colourful display, this is certainly a contender.

8849 Tank 5: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $900/£697/€809
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Direct from the maker or via an online retailer

The Tank 5 launches at $999.99 in pre-order configuration with the standard retail price listed at $1,599.99. However, now that those numbers have come down somewhat, with the US pricing at $899.99. In the UK, it’s £696.87, and across Europe it is €808.52, direct from the 8849tech website.

To put that into perspective, the Tank X launched at $549.99 early bird against a $1,049.99 RRP. The Tank 5, therefore, represents a substantial step up in cost, but is justified by improvements in specification.

Currently, the Tank X costs $699.99 from Amazon.com and £599 via Amazon.co.uk, making the Tank 5 pricing less of an uplift for those in the UK.

When considering alternatives, it's worth noting that remarkably few phones have a projector, and none of them has one with the same specification as the DLP unit in this phone.

Other than the Tank X and Tank 4 Pro by 8849, rugged phones with projectors include the Ulefone Armour 34 Pro Plus and Oukitel WP100 Titan. From Amazon.com, the Tank 4 Pro is $789.99, and the Ulefone Armor 34 Pro Plus is $594.99. The Oukitel WP100 Titan isn’t available from Amazon, but can be bought directly from the makers for $869.99.

The cover these in a spec comparison, the Tank X offers a slower Dimensity 8200 SoC and a lower resolution 1080p projector. The Tank 4 Pro only has a Dimensity 8300 SoC, but only a 720p projector. And the Ulefone Armor 34 Pro has the slowest processor, with a Dimensity 7300, and a weird projector resolution of 854 x 480. And finally, the Oukitel WP100 Titan has the same processor as the 34 Pro, and the same odd resolution to its 100 lumen projector.

Most of these have more battery capacity than the Tank 5, but critically, their projectors don’t come close to being a match.

Based purely on value for money, the 8849 Tank 5 is a winner.

• Value score: 4.5/5

8849 Tank 5: Specs

8849 Tank 5: Design

• Thick and heavy
• Vents for projector on both sides

Pick up the Tank 5, and the sheer physical commitment of it registers immediately. At 177.1 x 87 x 33.8mm and 715 grams, this device sits somewhere between a phone and a piece of site equipment. The chassis combines brushed metal plates, rubberised TPU corner armour and polycarbonate panels, and the build quality throughout is excellent. Seams are tight. There is no flex anywhere. It feels, correctly, like something engineered to survive conditions that would end a normal phone's life in seconds.

The layout of the Tank 5 is dictated by one thing above all others: cooling. The projector needs active thermal management, and the ventilation grille that serves it runs across a significant portion of the left frame. That grille is not a cosmetic addition. It is a structural constraint, and it shapes where every other control can go. The volume controls and shortcut buttons sit above it, pushed into the upper corner.

Below it, separated by a visible gap of bare metal, sit red and silver programmable buttons. The vent physically cleaves the left side into two distinct groups. It is an honest piece of industrial design. Nothing is where it is by accident, but you need to be careful where you place your fingers when the projector is running.

The right side tells another story. A second vent grille occupies the upper portion, again serving the projector cooling system, and below it, the frame is noticeably cleaner with only a single large silver power key with its integrated fingerprint sensor. The visual contrast between the two sides is immediate. Where the left side is busy by necessity, the right side breathes.

The rear is where the Tank 5 makes its most direct statement of intent. The camping light bar dominates the centre of the chassis, a wide rectangular strip that illuminates with 1200 lumens and RGB warning modes. Above it sits the camera module, with two main lenses at the top right, the night vision lens below left and four infrared LEDs in a horizontal strip. The "TANK PROJECTOR INSIDE" text sits between the camera cluster and the lamp, which is either endearing or unnecessary depending on your tolerance for that kind of thing. The projector aperture itself is at the top edge, along with another flashlight and the SIM card slot.

Compared to the Tank X, the Tank 5 is a more resolved design. The Tank X was 91.8mm wide and 750 grams. The Tank 5 pulls back to 87mm and 715 grams. Those numbers sound modest, but the difference in hand is real. The Tank X sat at the outer limit of a comfortable two-handed span. The Tank 5 comes back just enough to feel deliberate.

What has not changed is the fundamental reality of the form factor. This is not going into any conventional pocket. A jacket chest pocket, a belt holster or a vehicle mount is the practical answer for daily carry. That is the honest consequence of fitting a projector, a 17,600mAh battery and an active cooling system into a single chassis, and the Tank 5 makes no apology for it.

Design score: 3.5/5

8849 Tank 5: Hardware

• MediaTek Dimensity 9400e
• AMOLED display
• 17600 mAh fast charge battery

The Dimensity 9400e is an important specification decision. Most rugged phones at this price use mid-range silicon from three to four years ago. The Tank X stepped up to the Dimensity 8200, and that was already a significant advance. The 9400e goes further still, using a 4nm process with Cortex-X4 architecture.

The 'e' suffix indicates a slightly binned or optimised version of the full 9400. In practice, real-world performance at this specification level is well beyond anything a rugged phone buyer has previously been able to access at this price point. The comparison with the Immortalis-G720 MC12 GPU is also notable for mobile gaming and sustained workloads.

The Tank X, launched in February 2026, was the first 8849 device to achieve 1080p DLP projection at 220 lumens. The Tank 5 carries that hardware forward and adds 2K output with laser autofocus rated to four metres. That four-metre figure is a meaningful practical upgrade, because how far away from the wall you can get dictates the size of the projection. Earlier models topped out at three metres, and the keystone correction has been expanded from two to four points. What this means in practice is a more practical outdoor cinema experience.

The 220-lumen figure also requires context, as it's extremely competitive within this product category, where some devices can only manage 100 lumen. The Ulefone Armor 34 Pro, a direct rival, managed 150 lumens at a lower resolution. However, any projector of this size still demands reasonable darkness for a clear image. The spec sheet implies more than the physics can deliver in daylight, as it needs to be twilight outside or in a shaded room for a good experience. But, this is more than any other brand is currently offering.

My only complaint about the projector is that not long after it is activated, the cooling fan starts up and can be a little noisy. This won’t be a problem if you are projecting an action blockbuster, but it isn’t ideal for anything with quiet audio and dialogue.

Earlier Tank models used AMOLED panels, but the Tank 5 moves to a 3200x1440 native resolution. The 3000 nits peak brightness is a headline figure borrowed from premium consumer phones, and the results are spectacular.

Considering how good the display is, that 8849 went with Panda Glass to protect it, and not stronger Gorilla Glass Victus is disappointing.

That choice looks entirely cost-driven, but conversely, the battery technology used in the Tank 5 doesn’t hold back.

Seventeen thousand six hundred milliamp hours is a substantial number, even by rugged phone standards. The Tank 4 used an 11,600mAh cell. The Tank X brought the 17,600mAh configuration back after the Tank 3 and Tank 3 Pro sat at around 23,800mAh. The Tank 5 pairs that 17,600mAh capacity with 120W charging, which can be recharged in just over 90 minutes, incredibly. It does this by using a dual-cell design, so it works like two 8800mAh batteries.

The addition of 25W reverse charging makes the Tank 5 a practical field power bank. At that capacity, it can top up a standard 5000mAh smartphone three times over. For field workers and outdoor users, this is a genuinely compelling capability, even if you lose some of the capacity in the transfer.

Another full-cream feature is Wi-Fi 7. Most rugged phones ship with Wi-Fi 6 at best. The inclusion of eSIM alongside dual nano SIM slots gives the Tank 5 flexibility that neither predecessor offered. For travellers, the combination of eSIM, dual-frequency GPS and extensive 5G band support is a strong package. The addition of eSIM also means you can ditch one of the physical Nano SIMs, fit a MicroSD card in the tray, and still have two network services.

With a few minor exceptions, the specifications of the Tank 5 place it in the premium rugged phone bracket.

• Hardware score: 4.5/5

8849 Tank 5: Cameras

• 50MP main + 50MP telephoto + 50MP night vision
• 32MP on the front
• Four cameras in total

The 8849 Tank 5 has four cameras:

Rear camera: 50MP Samsung ISOCELL S5KGN1SP, 50MP OmniVision OV50C40, 50MP OmniVision OV50D40
Front camera: 32MP OV32B40

The camera cluster on the Tank 5 is a significant rethink compared to what came before it. On the Tank X, the three sensors were arranged in a vertical strip, with the 8MP telephoto the obvious weak link in the lineup.

The Tank 5 design addresses this directly with all three rear sensors now 50 megapixels, and this is a much more balanced package.

The two primary lenses sit at the top right of the module in a paired arrangement, noticeably larger than the sensors below. The night vision camera sits below and to the left, with the four infrared LEDs arranged in a horizontal strip beneath it. It is a purposeful, asymmetric layout that prioritises the main imaging hardware without pretending everything is equal.

The main sensor is a Samsung ISOCELL GN1 with phase detection autofocus. That’s a well-regarded chip with a strong track record on mainstream flagship devices. It is a genuine step up from the Sony sensor used on the Tank X, which, while capable, was hampered by the overall image processing pipeline more than the sensor itself. The GN1 brings improved low-light capture and better dynamic range handling. It might not be the 108MP sensor we’ve seen elsewhere, but the arrangement is decent and effective.

The caveat to this choice is that, while there is a PRO mode in the camera application, there are relatively few other special modes or HDR. This camera doesn’t do panoramas or slow motion, though it can do timelapse and super-resolution.

Video capture can be in resolutions up to 4K, but there is no control over the framerate, irrespective of the capture resolution.

The telephoto upgrade is the most important change for practical use. Going from 8MP to 50MP with optical image stabilisation transforms what the camera can do at a distance. The Tank X telephoto was essentially a crop tool dressed up as a lens. The Tank 5 telephoto is a genuine optical system with 3x zoom, and OIS means it remains usable in the kind of low-stability field conditions this phone is designed for. Hiking, construction sites, and vehicle-mounted use. All of these benefit from stabilisation in ways that a rugged phone buyer will actually notice.

The night vision camera is the one area where the upgrade is less straightforward. The Tank X used a 64MP OmniVision sensor for its night vision work, paired with four IR LEDs. The Tank 5 drops to a 50MP sensor for that role, but it's just as effective. The megapixel reduction is not inherently a problem, as night vision performance depends far more on sensor size, IR LED power, and processing than on raw resolution.

The front camera remains unchanged from Tank X, a 32MP with an OmniVision OV32B40 sensor and an f/1.7 aperture. A competent selfie and video-call solution by definition.

What the cluster cannot do is match a photography-focused flagship. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra or Pixel 9 Pro operate in a different league for computational photography, colour science and video processing.

That comparison is not unfair, but it is also largely irrelevant. The Tank 5 camera system is built for documenting field conditions, capturing evidence, seeing in the dark and shooting at range from an unstable platform. On those terms, it is well-equipped, and the results are better than those of some phones with more megapixels to play with.

One disappointment is that with a camera that can capture 4K video, and play that back nicely on the AMOLED screen, you won’t be using that display to see high-quality streams, because 8849 wouldn’t pay for Widevine L1 encryption.

8849 Tank 5 Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

8849 Tank 5: Performance

• 4nm SoC
• Premium performance

With so few competitors in this niche, it seemed logical to compare this 8849 to its predecessor, the Tank X.

And what we quickly learn here is that the Dimensity 9400e is a beast compared to the Dimensity 8200, outperforming it in every respect. The most sobering score is the 3DMark Nomad Lite performance, where it is nearly 300% better at this demanding benchmark.

But the other takeaway here is that you can have a more powerful SoC, without it impacting the power consumption dramatically. With the same battery capacity, the running time is remarkably similar to that of the Tank X, even though it does more over that time.

But where the Tank 5 really shows the most dramatic improvement is in the recharging of the battery, which took hours on the Tank X, and can be done in close to 90 minutes on the Tank 5. In just thirty minutes, being able to recover 46% of the battery is excellent.

Overall, the Tank 5 is a top-tier performer for whatever apps you wish to install.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

8849 Tank 5: Final verdict

The 8849 Tank 5 is the most technically accomplished rugged projector phone yet made. It takes the Tank X's headline concept and delivers a genuine performance upgrade at every level. The Dimensity 9400e is fast. The 3K AMOLED display is bright. The 17,600mAh battery is enormous. The projector is now 2K capable with laser autofocus at four metres.

None of that comes without compromise.

The device is very heavy, and the projector still benefits from darkness, whatever the spec sheet implies. And the lack of a published software update policy is a concern worth flagging for any buyer planning to keep this device for several years.

For the specific buyer this device is designed for, the Tank 5 is a compelling proposition. It does things no other phone can match in a single chassis. That remains, as it has been throughout the Tank series, both its greatest strength and its clearest self-selection filter.

Yes, it might have the ideal characteristics to make a decent boat anchor, but when you pack this much technology into a phone, it was never going to be lightweight and slim.

Should I buy a 8849 Tank 5?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

For more ruggedized devices, we've reviewed the best rugged tablets, the best rugged laptops, and the best rugged hard drives

• Analyst report claims primary smartphone market is expected to decline 14.8% in 2026
• Entry level smartphone prices have already risen more than 50% this year
• Refurbished smartphone sales grew 4% year-on-year during the first quarter of 2026

The global smartphone market is heading toward a difficult 2026 as rising component costs force manufacturers to increase device prices, new research has claimed.

New findings from FDM CCS Insight note the primary smartphone market is expected to decline by 14.8% in 2026 as memory shortages continue affecting production.

The decline follows a 4.4% year-on-year contraction in the primary smartphone market during 1Q26, despite manufacturers and retailers building inventory earlier.

Memory shortages push buyers toward refurbished smartphones

As consumers search for cheaper alternatives to new devices, the demand for refurbished smartphones is expected to increase but so is the price.

FDM CCS Insight reports that some entry-level smartphones have already experienced price increases exceeding 50% compared with the previous year.

“Many consumers will hold onto their phone for longer, and these effects will be much more pronounced for consumers buying phones under $500,” said Ben Hatton, Research Analyst at FDM CCS Insight.

“Some consumers will need a new phone…and so we do expect more demand for refurbished smartphones as many are priced out of the new device market.”

The memory shortage driving these price increases is largely attributed to surging demand from AI data centers and AI-accelerated computing infrastructure.

These facilities compete for the same DRAM and NAND flash production capacity that smartphone manufacturers depend on, leaving less supply available for consumer devices.

Memory components now represent more than 30% of the bill of materials for some smartphones, increasing pressure on manufacturers.

The impact is expected to continue to affect low- and mid-range devices as companies adjust pricing strategies throughout the year.

The secondary smartphone market has already started benefiting from changing consumer behaviour, with organized sales increasing by 4% year-on-year during 1Q26.

FDM CCS Insight forecasts this market segment will expand by 15.4% globally during 2026 as demand shifts away from new devices.

However, stronger demand could also create higher refurbished smartphone prices as available supply struggles to match consumer interest.

Supply challenges could determine refurbished market growth

The refurbished market faces a major challenge because expanding supply depends heavily on trade-ins, buybacks, and upgrade programmes.

FDM CCS Insight expects premium smartphones, particularly devices priced above $750, to continue driving much of the available trade-in supply.

These devices are less affected by current pricing pressures, allowing manufacturers and retailers to maintain stronger upgrade incentives.

"The secondary market has an opportunity to serve some of the demand that will be unfulfilled by the primary market. The major challenge in the near term is to grow supply during a fallow period of flagship launches,” Hatton said.

“Countries with mature trade-in programmes will be in a much stronger position to capitalize on this opportunity and maintain higher growth rates in the secondary market over the rest of the year.”

The shift suggests that consumers may increasingly evaluate refurbished smartphones as alternatives when new device prices continue rising.

“Demand continues to heavily outweigh supply in the global secondary market. Trade-in discounts, early upgrade offers and more-lucrative trade-in promotions will be key to unlocking the market's full growth potential in 2026 and 2027," he added.

Whether this trend produces sustained growth will depend on supply availability, pricing stability, and how manufacturers respond to changing market conditions.

Oukitel WP500 Ultra: 30-second review

Oukitel has plenty of mid-tier phones, but it’s always interesting to see what it comes up with for a flagship release.

The WP500 Ultra brings a 640 x 512 thermal camera, a hardware privacy kill switch, and a Dimensity 8300 chipset into a single package. Most of those things aren’t gimmicks and are potentially useful to the right buyer.

This design packs a punchy SoC with a good GPU and NPU in the package, plenty of RAM, tons of storage, and a decent camera cluster. But at the asking price of nearly $700, you might reasonably expect that, and possibly more than the 10000mAh of battery.

But the headline feature here is the AI thermal imaging solution using Smart ClearTherm and SceneSync Fusion. This produces remarkably detailed thermal images and video.

For those professionals who want a rugged worksite phone that does most things, the Oukitel WP500 Ultra ticks plenty of boxes. But the asking price still seems a little on the high side for a company that makes some excellent $200 rugged phones.

The only thing stopping this from being one of the best rugged phones we’ve tested this year is the price.

Oukitel WP500 Ultra: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $700/£522/€604
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Direct from the maker or via an online retailer

The Oukitel WP500 Ultra launched with an MSRP of $1,099.99. Direct from Oukitel, the ‘Early Bird’ price is $699.99 in the USA, £521.77 in the UK and €603.86 for those in Europe.

I do hope those lower prices stick a little, because north of $1,000 seems excessive even with these specifications.

At this price, the hardware package is genuinely strong. A Dimensity 8300, 1TB of storage, and a 640 x 512 thermal camera at under $700 would have been exceptional by 2024 standards. And, in the middle of 2026, the price point remains an important factor.

The caveat is that the specialist features inflate the cost relative to buyers who do not need them. A user who wants only a fast, durable, rugged phone can spend less and get a comparable daily-use experience. The WP500 Ultra makes the most sense for buyers who will actively use the thermal camera and the special privacy switch.

To a certain degree, Oukitel is competing with itself for rugged phones with thermal cameras, since they also have the WP61 Ultra. That design costs about $30 less and has double the battery capacity, but that comes with a weight and size penalty.

A phone with thermal vision is the AGM G3 Pro, which sells for the same price, but has less storage, a less powerful SoC and a lower thermal resolution.

If you just want thermal vision and don’t care about the resolution of the sensor, Blackview still makes the BL9000 Pro, which can be found for as little as $550.

Overall, the Oukitel WP500 is offering a better platform than the majority of competing options, but matching their price isn't easy.

• Value score: 4/5

Oukitel WP500 Ultra: Specs

Oukitel WP500 Ultra: Design

• Chunky rugged phone
• Anti leaking technology
• No SDCard slot

There is no pretending the WP500 Ultra is anything other than an industrial tool. It is big, heavy, and it is built to take punishment. At 414.3g and nearly 23mm thick, this is a device that earns its keep rather than lives in your pocket unnoticed.

The chassis is reinforced polymer with rubberised grips along the sides and corner armour that looks like it means business. It does. The thermal camera module dominates the rear panel. It is the largest single element on the back of the device and leaves nobody in any doubt about what this phone does for a living. Unless they mistake it for a speaker.

Oukitel has covered all the certification bases. IP68 handles immersion to 1.5 metres. IP69K adds resistance to high-pressure water jets at close range. MIL-STD-810H extends protection to extreme temperatures, shock, vibration, and altitude. That is the full rugged stack. Nothing has been left out.

The screen is covered by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 at 1.1mm. That is a sensible, honest choice. The privacy kill switch sits alongside the standard power and volume controls on the chassis. Its position matters. It needs to be reachable with gloves on, and Oukitel appears to have thought about that.

However, the phone comes with a bumper that left this reviewer entirely confused. In other Oukitel phones I’ve seen recently, a soft TPU bumper was included, but this is a hard, rigid plastic that is as likely to transmit any shock it receives to the phone as it is to protect it.

There is another issue with this bumper that I’ll discuss in the camera section, which might encourage many to dump it.

Where Oukitel haven’t wandered off the rugged phone highway is with the button layout, which has all the usual suspects located where you might reasonably expect them.

The one exception to this model is an extra button that Oukitel amusingly labelled as the “Anti leakage button” and also as ‘the one click encryption button’, or even ‘Privacy kill Switch’, depending on where in their documentation you look.

So what does it actually do, you might reasonably wonder? According to Oukitel, “A single slide instantly disables cameras, microphones, and GPS, preventing photos, videos, audio, and location data from being captured. Ideal for sensitive meetings, confidential work, and situations where privacy matters most.”

My immediate reaction is that it’s a feature someone involved in a criminal enterprise might like, but it makes almost no sense in a business context. Because if you are your worst security threat, and record conversations and take pictures in sensitive meetings, then you’re probably not going to click this button to stop yourself, are you?

And if the phone is doing all these things on its own because it’s been compromised by malware, then that’s probably disabled the button anyway.

Oukitel promises peace of mind with this feature, but presumably only if you don’t think about it.

Other aspects of this design seem better considered, especially the screen.

The 6.78-inch panel runs at 1080 x 2460 with a 120Hz refresh rate. Those numbers sit comfortably alongside mainstream mid-range phones. That is exactly where you want a rugged display to be in 2026. Peak brightness comes in at 550 nits. It is adequate for most conditions, but in direct sunlight, it will test it severely.

As for the rest of this design, there are a few things that look a little rushed or that ended up entirely omitted. On the rushed side are holes for a lanyard, where one isn’t included in the box. And missing in action are a headphone jack and a MicroSD card slot.

What’s truly odd about the MicroSD card situation is that on Oukitel’s specification, it mentions storage expansion being a 2TB TF card. But unless I’m being remarkably dumb, there is no place for this to go. The SIM card tray is incredibly small and only carries two Nano SIMs back-to-back. If this phone does take a memory card, I’m interested to know where it goes.

Those points aside, the design of this phone isn’t terrible, but a few things, like the misplaced features and issues with the bumper, do hint that it might have been brought to market at such a pace that didn’t allow these details to be ironed out.

Design score: 3.5/5

Oukitel WP500 Ultra: Hardware

• MediaTek Dimensity 8300
• 1TB of storage
• 10000 mAh battery

The Dimensity 8300 is the right chip for a phone at this price. It is built on TSMC's 4nm process, uses Armv9 CPU cores, and pairs with the Mali G615 GPU. Benchmarks from other devices using the same chip place it ahead of the Snapdragon 778G and close to the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in sustained loads. This is not a mid-range chip in a rugged case. It is a proper performance part.

Previous Oukitel flagships relied on the Helio G99 or Dimensity 7050. Both chips did their jobs. Neither came close to the 8300. The step up here is real, and it shows in everyday use.

I’ve yet to test a device using the new 9000 series chips, which can use 10667 MHz RAM, but until those become more common, chips like the Dimensity 8300 are a solid choice for both compute and graphics.

The 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM is the honest figure to focus on. Some listings inflate RAM numbers by using virtual memory expansion, which uses storage space rather than physical chips.

Oukitel are one of these, putting 36GB in big letters on the box, and then in a much smaller font 12+24GB below. Yes, you can map 24GB of storage as if it were memory, and with 1TB, you have plenty to spare, but it doesn’t mean this phone has 36GB.

Anyway, 12GB physical is a good number for this category, and it will handle multitasking and demanding applications without complaint.

The 1TB of internal storage is where the WP500 Ultra genuinely pulls ahead. That capacity rivals that of a budget laptop and gives field professionals ample room for thermal imaging, 4K video, and documentation without worrying about running out of space for some time.

Unless weight is a big priority, a 10,000mAh battery is expected at this level. What changes the runtime picture compared with older rugged phones is the chipset. The Dimensity 8300 is a 4nm part, and it is noticeably more efficient than the 6nm and 7nm designs it replaces. That efficiency advantage compounds across a full working day, allowing the WP500 Ultra to perform more and extend its running time significantly.

The 45W wired charging is acceptable, and better than some 33W options we’ve seen elsewhere. Filling a 10,000mAh cell from flat at 45W takes close to two hours and fifteen minutes. Some competitors at this price point have moved to 66W and above, but even with 45W, you can get the battery half full in around thirty-five minutes from flat.

Sadly, there is no wireless charging, and Oukitel could reasonably have done better here given the asking price.

The quoted video playback time is 15 hours, and the standby is a whopping 1754 hours, or just over 73 days.

Some will wonder why it doesn’t have a 20000mAh battery, but that would have elevated the weight closer to 600g, and 414g is enough without making it entirely impractical to carry.

• Hardware score: 4/5

Oukitel WP500 Ultra: Cameras

• 108MP, 8MP and thermal on the rear
• 32MP on the front
• Four cameras in total

The Oukitel WP500 Ultra has four cameras:

Rear camera: 108MP Samsung ISOCELL S5KHM6, Samsung 8MP S5K4H8, Thermal AI sensor
Front camera: 32MP Sony IMX616

This camera arrangement can be confusing, especially from the Android 16 OS perspective.

If you ask the phone how many camera sensors it has, it will tell you it has five, not four, but it's obvious, examining the cluster, that there are three cameras on the rear, and another on the front.

The confusion comes with the 8MP S5K4H8, because the phone thinks it has two of these, where in reality it has one pulling double duty. Normally, it is a night vision sensor that uses infrared to illuminate the darkness and capture images.

But it also provides a source for the thermal camera to mix into its data to improve the detail and context of its thermal image captures.

This is where the WP500 Ultra makes its case. A 640 x 512 thermal camera is the highest resolution sensor currently found in a rugged smartphone. The AGM G3 Pro sits at 512 x 384. The Blackview BL9000 Pro manages 160 x 120. Oukitel leads the segment on this single metric, and the gap is not small.

Resolution tells part of the story. NETD tells the rest. The WP500 Ultra claims a figure below 50 millikelvin. NETD measures thermal sensitivity. A lower value means the sensor can resolve finer temperature differences, which produces more useful images in real conditions. The stated accuracy of plus or minus 2 degrees Celsius is standard for sensors in this class.

Two AI processing layers sit on top of the raw sensor output. Smart ClearTherm handles image enhancement. SceneSync Fusion attempts real-time scene interpretation and object classification.

The problem here is that I’ve no idea what the actual sensor is, because Oukitel haven’t divulged that. And, it might be that what I’m seeing is 320 x 256 thermal data that is then AI processed with the 8MP data from the S5K4H8. That said, however these results are achieved, it looks remarkably good in my examples.

(ed: The actual resolution of thermal imaging is 640X512. AI-upscaled to 1440×1080 in RGB mode)

The practical applications are genuine. Electricians finding overheating components, surveyors checking insulation continuity, security professionals detecting heat signatures, and maintenance engineers spotting failing machinery before it breaks are all realistic use cases for this technology.

If you want to take ordinary pictures, the 108MP Samsung ISOCELL S5KHM6 is a stalwart, delivering great colour-balanced images that are sharp and have a great dynamic range even without HDR turned on.

However, it was when I was taking night vision images that I ran into some issues, specifically in relation to the hard plastic bumper.

It appears that the IR lights used to illuminate scenes interact with the bumper, causing it to emit or refract light back into the Samsung 8MP S5K4H8. This causes odd reflections and smears that can clearly be seen. In one of my example images is a printer, and there is one of these aberrations crossing over it. Once I removed the bumper, these went away, and the images had significantly more contrast.

This is clearly a problem Oukitel overlooked, and those who use the night vision mode will need to ditch the bumper and find something else.

To finish on a high note, Oukitel used some of the asking price to cover Widevine L1 certification. That means Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ deliver full-resolution content rather than a downgraded stream. For professionals on extended deployments who want something decent to watch in the evening, it is a useful detail.

Oukitel WP500 Ultra Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

Oukitel WP500 Ultra: Performance

• 4nm SoC
• High-tier performance

Initially, I was going to compare the WP500 Ultra with another phone that had thermal credentials, but my tests don’t cover that aspect, so I went with a different approach.

From the same brand, the WP210 has similar specifications but a smaller battery and no thermal camera. The smaller battery sheds 25% of the weight, though the Dimensity 8200 isn’t far from what its 8300 brother offers at computing tasks.

Where the 8300 excels is with its GPU, which, in a few tests, was 70% quicker at OpenGL and Vulkan. But deep diving into the data I captured when I tested these phones, the GPU improvements mostly come from the memory model each phone deploys.

On the WP210, the average memory latency was 42.5 ns, and database operations were 55,8 KOps per second, whereas on the WP500 Ultra, those numbers were only 32.7ns latency and 228 KOps per second. Those memory enhancements, coupled with the 4th Gen Valhall architecture improvements in the Mali-G615 MC6, explain why the 8300 is that much better at graphics than the 8200.

While the battery life looks similar, as I recall, the WP210 was completely exhausted at 22 hours and 44 minutes, whereas the WP500 Ultra still had 19% capacity left. That implies another 4 or more hours of runtime to completely empty the battery.

A slightly sobering point is that you can get the WP210 direct from Oukitel for $449.99/£295.99, making it substantially cheaper than the WP500 Ultra. It comes down to whether you need the thermal camera or the extra performance if you wish to invest another $250 in the WP500 Ultra.

• Performance score: 4/5

Oukitel WP500 Ultra: Final verdict

The Oukitel WP500 Ultra is a phone with a clear identity. It knows exactly who it is built for, and it does not try to be something else. The thermal camera resolution leads the segment, and the hardware kill switch is a unique feature in consumer smartphones.

The Dimensity 8300 and 1TB storage give it a performance foundation that most rugged phones cannot match.

The price is the problem. At $699.99, the WP500 Ultra faces serious competition from the AGM G3 Pro. Both offer compelling alternatives for buyers who do not need a hardware privacy disconnect. Oukitel wins on specialisation. It loses on the value aspect for the general buyer.

For professionals who regularly work with thermal imaging, operate in environments where hardware privacy controls are not optional, and need a rugged phone that can keep up with serious workloads, the WP500 Ultra earns its price. For everyone else, the AGM G3 Pro is the smarter spend.

One thing needs resolving before any enterprise buyer commits. Oukitel must confirm its software update policy. Seven years is the benchmark. Anything less at this price needs to be disclosed clearly and reflected in the final recommendation.

That said, no other phone matches 640 x 512 thermal resolution at this cost. The Dimensity 8300 is genuinely fast, and the 1TB of storage is exceptional. For professionals who will use those tools every day, these features might justify the outlay. For everyone else, there might be cheaper alternatives elsewhere.

Should I buy a Oukitel WP500 Ultra?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

For more ruggedized devices, we've reviewed the best rugged tablets, the best rugged laptops, and the best rugged hard drives

Oukitel WP66: 30-second review

.Oukitel seems to have a particular strategy in the rugged phone market that involves launching lots of products, presumably on the assumption that a percentage of them will find favour with some customers.

The WP66 is at the end of a long list of recent phones, which includes devices I’ve covered, like the WP61 Plus, WP60 and WP30 Pro. Typically, these devices are affordable, rugged designs which avoid the latest SoC technology but often have some core features that make them attractive.

On paper, the WP66 isn’t much of a step away from its WP61 Plus predecessor, using the same MediaTek Dimensity 7025 SoC, identical memory and storage sizes, However, the WP66 has roughly half the battery capacity, and that makes it much easier to use as a daily driver.

With this level of practicality baked in, this is probably Oukitel's most design-aware rugged phone yet. It trades brute bulk for a slimmer profile and adds a neat 1.81-inch secondary display that does real work. The 11,000mAh battery is the headline number, and it delivers genuinely exceptional runtime. The Dimensity 7025 is capable enough for daily tasks, but it is not a performance chip.

Camera quality is fine in good light and ordinary in other conditions. At under $450 from the makers, this is a competitive proposition for anyone who needs genuine ruggedness without the usual aesthetic punishment.

It’s mostly the SoC that stops this from being one of the best rugged phones we’ve seen this year.

Oukitel WP66: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $450/£337/€390
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Direct from the maker or via an online retailer

Oukitel is one of those phone makers that likes to discount its phones at launch and sets a huge MSRP that the device is never sold at. Doing that in Europe isn’t legal, but it's something Chinese phone makers don’t appear concerned about.

It's available in the US via Oukitel's official site, where the MSRP for the WP66 is $639.99 - but at the time of review, it's down to $450. On Oukitel's UK site, it retailss for £474.99, while currently being discounted to £287.99.

Considering the specifications and features of this phone, the price seems competitive enough, but how they came up with the MSRP values is a mystery.

The phone most likely to be compared is the Doogee S200, as it also has a rear display. The Doogee phone typically sells for $360/£285/€328 via AliExpress. But the processor in it is less powerful, it has half the storage and can’t do 4K video. However, it has twice the battery capacity if you need longer runtime.

Given the recent price increases for both RAM and storage, the Oukitel WP66 is probably priced right, but maybe in the next six months, it needs to get a little cheaper to cope with phones with more concurrent technology being released into the busy mid-tier market.

• Value score: 4/5

Oukitel WP66: Specs

Oukitel WP66: Design

• Slim for a rugged phone
• No wireless charging
• Rear display

The WP66 that Oukitel sent was the orange model, and I think this version looks much more interesting than the one with a black colour scheme.

One oddity I noticed almost immediately is that on the rear of the case is a GT logo, and this also appears on the maker's webpage. But this phone isn’t the WP66 GT; it's just the WP66, which suggests a change of plan in the naming scheme before launch.

Another chin-scratcher is that this phone has holes in the bottom-right corner for a lanyard, but there isn’t one in the box. It also comes with a TPU bumper that has a slot for the same purpose.

I’m glad about the bumper, because if it weren’t attached, the camera cluster would be excessively prominent, with each of the three elements sticking out at least 2mm. The included bumper guaranteed that this phone doesn’t have wireless charging, and to confirm that, I removed it and tested for wireless functionality. That’s a shame, because below the camera and rear display, the underside of the WP66 is extremely flat.

What I liked was that WP66 bucks the rugged phone aesthetic in a meaningful way. Most rugged devices lean into aggressive styling: heavy frames, pronounced corner armour, and military-surplus colour palettes. The WP66 is comparatively restrained. The Orange colourway is vibrant rather than utilitarian, and the Black variant suits a professional context.

At 15.8mm thick, this is slim territory for a phone carrying an 11,000mAh battery. The trade-off is visible: the bezels around the main display are wider than a mainstream consumer phone would accept in 2026. The screen-to-body ratio sits at roughly 75%. For a rugged device, that is acceptable. For anyone accustomed to modern frameless designs, it might feel dated.

The secondary display on the rear panel is the most distinctive design element. It sits cleanly within the casing and gives the phone a dual-screen character that most rivals lack entirely.

Oukitel has packed the rear display with functionality, showing you a calendar, battery status, messages, and a million other things. My only issue with it is that by the time you’ve scrolled through all the functions to find the one you want, you could have easily turned the phone over and gone directly to that information three or four times over.

The button layout is by-the-numbers, and the designer has resisted the temptation to add extra buttons when they’re not specifically required. The right side has the power button with integrated fingerprint reader and volume controls, and the left has a single user-definable button and the SIM card slot. The card slot supports a MicroSD card and a Nano SIM, or you can forgo the MicroSD card and use a second Nano SIM. As this phone comes with 512GB of storage, not having a MicroSD card isn’t that limiting.

Overall, for a business user who might want a rugged phone for site visits or other outdoor work, the WP66 is pleasantly restrained, and it's not so big and heavy that it couldn’t be used as a daily driver.

Design score: 4/5

Oukitel WP66: Hardware

• MediaTek Dimensity 7025
• 512GB of storage
• 11000 mAh battery

In other reviews, I’ve talked about the current MediaTek strategy that involves taking older technology and rebranding it with relatively small changes to make it look current.

What they can’t paper over is that the Dimensity 7025 is a 6nm SoC, because its origins are the Dimensity 930, an SoC that first appeared in 2022.

Oukitel used this in the WP300, WP60 and WP55 Pro, so this will be the fourth design to use the same platform.

My view of this silicon is that the CPU is workable, but the PowerVR IMG BXM-8-256 GPU is a poor GPU that struggles with the OpenGL and Vulkan APIs.

What challenges the GPU in this phone design is that the display is 1080 by 2408 pixels, whereas in the WP60, as an example, it only had a 720 x 1560 pixel screen.

If you like to game or use more demanding 3D titles, this probably isn’t the platform for you, but for everyday use, it works well enough to navigate Android.

What many people might consider a high point of this design is the 512GB of storage, which is enough when combined with the 12GB of RAM to handle plenty of applications and the data that comes with them. This SoC doesn’t have an NPU; instead, it has an APU, which is the CPU and GPU merged to perform a similar function. Thankfully, most AI done from phones is cloud-based anyway.

One interesting change from its predecessor is that the battery is now rated at 11,000mAh, where the WP58 Pro and WP60 had 10,000mAh. That’s not a huge increase, but it might take you 10% further depending on how you use it.

While the makers did source a larger-capacity battery, they didn’t find one that charged any faster or delivered more power to other phones.

It’s got the same 33W wired charge and 7.5W reverse-charging specs as the 10000mAh devices, which translates to a full recharge from flat in under two hours.

Like most of the Oukitel designs I’ve seen in the past two years, the WP66 doesn’t represent cutting-edge technology. It’s assembled from a collection of parts that are chosen based entirely on price, and that create an ensemble of functions that can attract customers at the right cost.

Oukitel aren’t the only Chinese rugged phone maker using the same approach or with a selection of middle-of-the-road devices that use older technology, but there aren’t any huge surprises here for those willing to do their research about this brand.

• Hardware score: 3.5/5

Oukitel WP66: Cameras

• 108MP and 2MP on the rear
• 32MP on the front
• Three cameras in total

The Oukitel WP66 has three cameras:

Rear camera: 108MP Samsung ISOCELL S5KHM6, Macro 2MP GalaxyCore GC02M1
Front camera: 32MP GalaxyCore GC32E1

This is a similar camera arrangement to the WP61 Plus, with the primary sensor being the excellent Samsung S5KHM6, supported by a less-than-epic 2MP macro camera from GalaxyCore. What’s missing, and was on the WP61 Plus, is a night vision sensor.

The primary sensor can produce some top-notch results in bright lighting, ideally outdoors, but it's not as impressive when there is less light. But the worst aspect of this design is the 2MP macro camera, a camera that produces results from the dawn of cameras on phones.

It’s grainy, difficult to get the optimal focus and often not worth the effort.

What’s also crushingly disappointing is that even with a 108MP sensor and 512GB of storage to handle some big recordings, this phone doesn’t offer 4K video. The best it can manage is 2K video at 30fps, which, considering the capabilities of the ISOCELL S5KHM6, is pitiful.

Also, like all the Oukitel phones I’ve tried recently, this phone doesn’t support Widevine L1, so streaming services are often reduced to 480p resolution.

You can take good pictures with this phone, but it takes more effort than it should.

Oukitel WP66 Camera samples

• Camera score: 3.5/5

Oukitel WP66: Performance

• 6nm SoC
• Mid-tier performance

Even if initially, this looks like a pointless comparison, since both phones use the same SoC, there is some interesting data in these tests to examine. For most benchmarks, the difference between the two is within the standard deviation.

But it’s interesting to note that now running Android 16, the WP66 can run Wildlife and Nomad Lite, where the WP61 Plus, which was also running the same OS, could not. The obvious conclusion is that the WP61 Plus launched with some issues that may have been resolved, or that UL has tweaked 3DMark to make it more forgiving.

This isn’t to say that the WP66 runs either of the benchmarks well, but at least it pops out a number. It also succeeds on GeekBench for OpenGL and Vulkan, where it previously failed on the WP61 Plus, but the numbers are still horrible. The IMG BXM-8-256 isn’t a GPU anyone would want if they got a choice.

What I found most fascinating about these results was the battery performance, with the WP61 Plus running longer than the WP66. That’s not much of a revelation given the relative battery capacities, but it is worth noting that the WP61 Plus lasts only 17% longer despite having nearly twice the battery capacity.

This makes little sense, since they use a practically identical platform, and if I still had the WP61 Plus, I’d be curious to see what it was when running that used up the battery. It would be guesswork to pin this on any aspect of that phone, but it does suggest that the WP66 may be in a better place at launch than its predecessor.

Looking at these numbers overall, neither of these phones is ideal for gaming or VR, since the GPU can’t offer the range of features that more modern silicon can.

Battery life is decent, but everything else is bordering on an entry-level performance envelope.

• Performance score: 3.5/5

Oukitel WP66: Final verdict

The Oukitel WP66 is the rugged phone that does not punish you for choosing durability. The slim profile, the secondary display, and the extraordinary battery life form a compelling package. The Dimensity 7025 processor is an honest mid-range device that does support 5G, but isn’t a gaming platform.

The camera is capable in daylight and ordinary in poor light. The 33W charging rate is the one frustrating limitation in an otherwise well-considered design. At the launch price of $450, this is one of the more interesting propositions in the mid-market rugged segment.

With Oukitel having so many phones in the WP series, the company's shotgun approach aims to make a handset that’s perfect for most customers. The WP66 is aimed at those who want a rugged phone without impractical size or weight. It manages that, and it even shows off a little with its rear-facing display.

I’m just not convinced that with such relatively old technology on the SoC, there is much longevity to be had. There are similarly priced rugged phones with better cameras and newer silicon for those who can spot them. The WP66 has a platform on its fourth outing for Oukitel, and that might be one or two bites of that cherry more than the Dimensity 7025 deserves.

Should I buy a Oukitel WP66?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

For more ruggedized devices, we've reviewed the best rugged tablets, the best rugged laptops, and the best rugged hard drives

RugOne Xever 8: 30-second review

While this phone won’t make our best rugged phone collection, what it offers might be perfect for some customers, and it is reasonably affordable for a phone with a swappable battery.

RugOne is Ulefone's premium rugged sub-brand, launched in late 2025. It targets buyers who want a genuinely capable device rather than a cheap, rough-and-ready handset. The Xever 8 is the entry point to the second generation of that vision. It arrived in May 2026 and carries forward the headline idea from the Xever 7 series: a battery you can swap without powering down the phone.

That concept matures here into what RugOne calls Swappable Battery 2.0. The claim is that critical apps stay running throughout the swap, and within quite narrow criteria, it achieves that.

I can confirm that the Xever 8 ships with two 4,800mAh batteries and a charging dock in the box. For field workers and outdoor users who simply cannot afford downtime, the proposition is clear.

There is a catch, though, and it is worth addressing upfront. The Xever 7 was a 5G device with a Dimensity 8020 chipset. The Xever 8 steps down to a Helio G200 on a 4G-only platform. For a phone launching in 2026, that is a significant concession, and it, to some degree, negates some of the advantages this phone has over its previous generation. RugOne made a deliberate trade-off, prioritising the battery system and audio hardware over performance. Whether buyers agree that trade is fair depends heavily on what they need most.

With a better SoC, this might have been one of the best rugged phones, but it appears that we might need to wait until the Xever 9 to get all these ducks in a row.

RugOne Xever 8: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $368/£380
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it directly from RugOne or via many online retailers such as AliExpress.

The RugOne Xever 8 comes in two colors, Back and Sand Dune, and each of these offers two SKUs, one with 128GB of storage and another with 256GB.

While the machine is shown on the RugOne website, there isn’t any option to buy it from the maker, and I was forced to search for it elsewhere. The only place I could find it was AliExpress, and for US customers, the only option is the 128GB model for $367.99.

UK customers get both capacity phones, with the 128GB being £379.39 and the 256GB option (reviewed here) being £414.59. Spending £35.20 and getting an extra 128GB of storage doesn’t seem like a poor deal. It doesn’t appear to be available to those in the EU at this time, but I suspect it will be at some point.

I complained that the previous RugOne Xever 7 Pro was too expensive, and admittedly, its predecessor, the Xever 8, is cheaper. However, given its specifications, it should be less.

The obvious competitor for this phone is the Samsung Galaxy XCover7 Pro, a phone that sells for roughly $560 in the USA, and £425 in the UK. That’s for a phone with only 128GB of storage and a single battery. Batteries are freely available for around £22 each. The Samsung Galaxy XCover7 Pro uses a Snapdragon 7 Gen3 SoC, making it a substantially more powerful device, justifying some of that extra cost.

The Xever 8 is a better value than its Xever 7 Pro predecessor, but it's hardly a bargain in the remarkably competitive rugged phone sector. What helps RugOne justify the price somewhat is the relatively small number of designs with replaceable batteries.

• Value score: 4/5

RugOne Xever 8: Specs

RugOne Xever 8: Design

• Industrial aesthetic
• Extra custom buttons
• Easily swappable batteries

In many ways, this phone is a derivative of the Xever 7 Pro, but with some extra elegance and refinement in places. That it comes with the charging stand, a second battery, a charger, and a bunch of other accessories does make it feel more worthy of the asking price.

The Xever 8 measures 168 x 80 x 14mm and weighs 320g. It is not especially light or slim, but it fits better into a pocket than some rugged phones I’ve reviewed. That is the reality of a phone engineered to survive two-metre drops, high-pressure water jets, and the demands of MIL-STD-810H testing. The IP69K rating alongside IP68 is notable. IP69K specifically covers resistance to high-temperature, high-pressure water streams, which is relevant in agricultural and industrial settings where a regular waterproof phone would fail.

RugOne has tried to soften the bulk with bevelled edges designed for grip. The company calls the speaker and camera module arrangement symmetrical, which is unusual in this category. Two colourways are available: Black and Sand Dune. The latter is a muted, low-saturation tone clearly inspired by the rugged outdoor aesthetic that is now common across the category.

The rear cover is removable, obviously, since the battery sits beneath it. The dual-latch system on that cover is a practical addition. An internal latch secures the battery cell itself, and the outer cover adds a second retention point. The claim is that this significantly improves drop resistance at the point where a single-latch design would typically allow the battery to shift on impact.

A dedicated button on the side can be used to activate the TorchX flashlight, rated at 230 lumens. That is a useful addition for anyone working in unlit environments. The 3.5mm headphone jack is also present on the top edge. These are small decisions that matter to the people this phone is built for.

The Xever 8 uses a 6.5-inch IPS LCD panel running at 1080 x 2400 pixels. At 405 pixels per inch, sharpness is not an issue. The 120Hz refresh rate makes scrolling and navigation feel fluid. Peak brightness reaches 680 nits in high brightness mode, which should be adequate for outdoor use in most conditions, though it does not match the 1,000-plus nit figures now appearing on flagship OLED panels.

Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protects the display. That is two generations behind Gorilla Glass 5 and four behind Gorilla Glass Victus, both of which appear on competing devices in this price range. It is functional protection, and the overall rugged construction means the chassis absorbs much of the shock that would otherwise reach the screen, but it is worth noting for buyers who have had cracked screens before.

The aspect ratio is 20:9, which suits one-handed use in portrait mode. RugOne says the display is grip-friendly, and the physical dimensions suggest the narrower 80mm width helps with that. All the buttons are metal, which does give the Xever 8 a premium feel.

Design score: 4/5

RugOne Xever 8: Hardware

• MediaTek Helio G200
• UFS 2.2 storage
• Swappable batteries

The MediaTek Helio G200 is a 6nm octa-core chip running two Cortex-A76 performance cores at 2.2GHz alongside six Cortex-A55 efficiency cores at 2.0GHz. The GPU is a Mali-G57 MC2.

If you didn’t read the clues in those statements, this is a mid-range platform, not a flagship one. For everyday use, including calls, navigation, messaging, and camera work, it will perform without complaint. Gaming above casual titles and GPU-intensive tasks is where this chip reaches its ceiling.

The RAM configuration is 8GB physical with an additional 8GB of virtual dynamic RAM. Storage ships in 128GB and 256GB variants, both using UFS 2.2. That is an area where the Xever 7 series outshone this device. UFS 2.2 is not slow, but the step from higher-grade storage feels like a backwards move in a product that otherwise claims to be purpose-built for professional use.

USB connectivity is USB 2.0. There is no video output. For a field worker wanting to mirror the screen to a display or transfer large files quickly, that is a real limitation. The Xever 7 Pro carried the same USB 2.0 restriction and received criticism for it. The Xever 8 repeats that choice, though that’s another feature that hinges on the choice of the SoC.

Where the Xever 8 makes its strongest argument is in the battery department, because in theory, it could have a massive capacity. Each battery holds 4,800mAh. Two are included.

The Swappable Battery 2.0 system allows one to be replaced while the phone keeps running. A small internal power buffer maintains the system during the swap. RugOne states that critical apps, calls, and GPS remain active throughout, provided the swap is completed within two minutes. Beyond two minutes, the phone enters a 60-second safety lockout to protect data.

In practice, that means a user carrying one spare battery has access to something approaching 9,600mAh of usable capacity across a working day without needing a cable at all. The four-in-one charging station that comes in the box charges batteries independently, so the spare can top up while the device is in use.

However, where this scheme trips up somewhat is with respect to charging, which peaks at 18W wired. That is not fast by 2026 standards, but the swappable system largely renders charging speed less critical than it is on sealed-battery devices. The phone also supports 10W reverse wired charging, allowing it to top up other devices.

One concern raised in early community commentary is that RugOne's customer support has indicated that additional batteries are not sold separately. Buyers receive what comes in the box and cannot stock spare cells beyond that. This is a significant limitation if a battery degrades over time, or you wish to carry more than one replacement.

For this reviewer, the biggest issue here is the G200 CPU, as it's far from modern phone technology, and it doesn’t support 5G comms, only 4G LTE. This choice seems to fly in the face of the notion that newer designs should have better technology.

As a platform, the Xever 8 is underwhelming.

• Hardware score: 3/5

RugOne Xever 8: Cameras

• 64MP, 20MP on the rear
• 32MP on the front
• Three cameras in total

The RugOne Xever 8 has three cameras:

Rear camera: 64MP Sony IMX682, 20MP Sony IMX350 Night vision,
Front camera: 32MP GalaxyCore GC32E1

The main sensor is a 64MP Sony IMX682 with an f/1.9 aperture and PDAF. This is a well-regarded 1/1.7-inch sensor that appears across a range of mid-to-high-end devices. Paired with sufficient processing and a capable aperture, it can produce usable results in daylight. Video tops out at 2K at 30fps, which is adequate but hardly wonderful.

The second rear camera is the more interesting choice for this category. It is a 20MP night vision camera with an f/1.8 aperture and two integrated infrared emitters. In total darkness, without any visible light, this sensor can produce usable images and video.

The applications this is suitable for are straightforward: wildlife observation, search and rescue, perimeter checks, and pinhole camera detection. It is a genuinely specialist capability that most smartphones simply do not offer.

Oddly, in the supported camera section of Android, it mentions that this version of the OS was compiled with support for the GalaxyCore GC8034, an 8MP sensor often used for special focus scenarios like Bokeh mode. But I couldn’t find any evidence for this hardware in the camera app, so it might have been omitted from the final phone.

On the front, a 32MP f/2.5 selfie camera covers video calls and self-documentation. The 0.7-micron pixel size is small, which may limit low-light performance, but the resolution is generous for the category.

An underwater camera mode is included, accessible via side buttons to avoid touchscreen failures when submerged. Given the realistic limits on how deep you can submerge a phone like this, I’m not sure providing an underwater mode is a good idea. Take it much beyond the two-metre depth limit, and pressure will force water inside, ending the fun abruptly.

For still image capture, the primary camera on the Xever 8 is effective, and the night vision sensor is a tried-and-tested solution. There are also plenty of special modes such as slow motion, time lapse, panorama, document capture, group photo, dual video, sports and Pro controls.

What’s less wonderful is that there are only two levels of digital zoom, and the maximum video resolution is only 2K. Note that the Sony IMX682 supports 4K capture, whereas the G200 SoC can only handle 2K video. Yet another way that the SoC choice stymied this design.

RugOne Xever 8 Camera samples

• Camera score: 3.5/5

RugOne Xever 8: Performance

• 6nm SoC
• Mid-tier performance

If the Xever 7 Pro were made by a different brand, then perhaps comparing it to the Xever 8 might be considered unfair, but it's mostly the numbering convention here that sends a confused signal.

From a hardware perspective, the Xever 8 is a retrograde step, with the exception of graphics. The IMG BXM-8-256 used on the Xever 7 Pro is a horrific GPU that doesn’t support OpenGL or Vulkan properly, and it gets outperformed by the modest Mali-G57 MC2. To anchor that assessment, the Xever 8 still isn’t a gaming phone, or anything approaching that.

Where these scores get interesting is when we look at the battery, because the Xever 8 has a smaller battery than the Xever 7 Pro, but manages similar efficiency. As I recall, on the Xever 7 Pro, the phone was entirely exhausted after the battery benchmark, but the Xever 8 still had 15% battery left. If you at 15% to the running time of the Xever 8, it’s almost exactly the same time as the Xever 7 Pro.

Except, it has 14% less battery capacity. That demonstrates that the Helio G200 is more efficient than the Dimensity 7025. But compared to a modern 4nm SoC, it's not that efficient.

Overall, neither of these devices is anything more than a mid-tier device, and by the end of this year, they’ll be entry-level. But if you do invest in the Xever 8, it’s nice to know you have more than 30 hours of runtime with both batteries.

• Performance score: 3/5

RugOne Xever 8: Final verdict

Before I wrote this review, I immediately looked at my RugOne Xever 7 Pro piece, and was amused by the first paragraph in that verdict. I’d said the Xever 7 Pro design had gone somewhat off the rails when they discovered that the 5550mAh battery in that phone wasn’t enough for the SoC that RugOne had probably planned for it. It was a guess on my part that the Dimensity 7025 used in that design was an alternative that better fitted the battery capacity.

And, now in the Xever 8, I’m getting the same vibe. Instead of starting with the SoC and then designing the battery system to work with that, it looks like RugOne started with the battery and worked backwards. Which is how this machine ended up with the G200 SoC.

For those familiar with MediaTek’s range, the G200 only appeared in mid-2025, although its technology dates back to the G100 (2024) and the G99 (2022). And, the giveaway about the underlying age of this design is that it's fabricated at 6nm, not the 4nm that MediaTek sells for mid-tier designs, or the 3nm (soon to be 2nm) on its flagship chips. The G99 wasn’t entirely new when it was launched, and the G200 is three iterations from that.

The irony is that a newer SoC might have allowed the battery in the Xever 8 to last even longer if used correctly, and enabled more concurrent features like 5G comms and 4K video.

Overall, for someone who can work with these specifications, the Xever 8 is a workable solution, but, like the Xever 7 Pro, it's compromised in several important areas.

Should I buy a RugOne Xever 8?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

For more ruggedized devices, we've reviewed the best rugged tablets, the best rugged laptops, and the best rugged hard drives

8849 TANK Pad Ultra: 2-minute review

The 8849 Tank Pad Ultra arrives as the company's most ambitious device to date. It builds on the original Tank Pad's projector concept and refines it considerably. Where the first Tank Pad offered a dim 100-lumen DLP unit running at sub-HD resolution, the Ultra steps up to 260 lumens and native 1920x1080 output. That is a 2.6x improvement in brightness in one generation, and it matters enormously in practice.

The hardware underneath is a MediaTek Dimensity 8200 paired with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 512GB of storage. This is not the fastest platform available in 2026, but it is more than sufficient for field work, document management, and media playback. Android 15 ships out of the box, which is a refreshing improvement over the Android 14 found on many rivals.

The camera cluster is genuinely impressive for a rugged device. A Sony IMX766 50MP main sensor sits alongside a 64MP night-vision camera using an OmniVision OV64B sensor backed by four infrared LEDs. The 32MP front camera uses a Sony IMX616. This is a meaningful step beyond the dual-camera arrangements on most competing rugged tablets.

Battery capacity is the headline stat: 23,400mAh. 8849 claims this is 11% larger than its predecessor. Charging speed is 66W, which is serviceable but falls well short of the 120W found on the recently launched Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra. At that battery capacity, 66W takes over two hours to fully recharge.

The body measures 268.3 x 170.3 x 24mm and weighs 1.345kg. It is a heavy device, though it sits below the Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra's 1.6kg. The integrated handle doubles as a kickstand and is the most practical design element here for outdoor projection use.

IP68 and IP69K certification allows for both submersion and high-pressure water jets. That is the expected baseline for a device at this price and positioning. A 4-metre laser rangefinder and an 800-lumen camping light round out the utility toolkit.

In the annals of tablets that came with a projector, this is clearly one of the best rugged tablets so far.

8849 TANK Pad Ultra: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $690/£524/€605
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it directly from 8849.

The Tank Pad Ultra is available in a range of territories and regions via the official 8849tech website here.

At $689.99, this rugged tablet is priced way below the Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra, which commands closer to $799. It sits significantly above the original Tank Pad's sub-$400 positioning. The price increase reflects genuine hardware improvements rather than marketing inflation, particularly in the projector and camera departments.

UK pricing is £525.84 and in the EU its €604.79. There is a summer sale for US, EU, UK and CA customers with a further $20 reduction until the 12th of June.

Currently, this machine isn't on Amazon.com, but given that everything else 8849-branded is, it's probably only a matter of time before it is. The hardware is also sold by AliExpress, but it was more expensive than buying it directly for whatever reason.

Given the specification, even if the TANK Pad Ultra isn't exactly cheap, it offers the best value for a tablet with a projector.

• Value score: 4/5

8849 TANK Pad Ultra: Specs

8849 TANK Pad Ultra: design

• Heavy duty
• Kickstand issues
• Idiosyncratic layout

On paper, the Tank Pad Ultra follows the established formula for rugged tablets. The body is thick and reinforced, with corner bumpers and rubberised edges. At 24mm deep it is not a device that slips into a jacket pocket unless you’re a friendly giant. The intention is clear: this is business equipment, not a lifestyle accessory.

The integrated handle on the rear is a practical touch. It locks flat against the body for carrying and swings out to serve as a kickstand for projection or media use. For a device this heavy, the handle is not an option, it is a functional necessity.

Which is why I was annoyed when I couldn’t get the one that came with my tablet to fit correctly. The stand is metal and is pinned to the TANK Pad Ultra by a single large bolt that has a straight slot that a ‘8849 coin’ is provided to tighten. On mine, it would never tighten enough to fully engage the stand, making it loose.

Initially, I thought this was because of an excessive amount of blue thread-locker on the bolt, but after I’d scraped that off and realised it didn’t fix the problem, I concluded the thread in the tablet was poorly manufactured.

I didn’t have the thread cutter to fix this handy, so I filed the bolt down a little to make it extend less, and it fitted much better. Not sure why 8849 quality assurance didn’t notice this, but they need to make sure that they do in the future.

One oddity about the stand is that it has a square profile that engages, allowing for four possible ways to attach it. Except that only one direction works properly, because the others interfere either with the camera cluster or the camping light. Perhaps a polariser is needed to help users put it on correctly?

The top edge houses the volume keys and two PPT buttons in roughly the middle of that side, with the projector mounted to the left. The power button with an integrated fingerprint scanner is on the left side, where I kept accidentally hitting it while trying to take photos.

I tried to set that button up with fingerprint unlock and failed miserably. When you enter the fingerprint training mode, it tells you to firmly press the button, and when you do, the tablet turns off. Thankfully, the face unlock works much better, so it’s hardly a deal breaker.

The SIM tray is on the lower edge, and the USB-C and audio jack ports are under a rubber plug on the right side.

What’s missing here is any pogo pin pads or extra USB port that could be used to connect the tablet to a vehicle cradle. Which, when you have a tablet that’s 1345 g, you would reasonably expect to exist. There isn’t one, which explains why the designers never considered supporting that functionality.

Overall, the layout of this tablet isn’t the best I’ve seen, but most people could probably adapt to it.

Design score: 3.5/5

8849 TANK Pad Ultra: hardware

• MediaTek Dimensity 8200 5G
• 260 Lumen Projector
• 23,400 mAh battery

The Dimensity 8200 is a solid midrange to upper-midrange platform. Built on a 4nm process, it delivers capable performance for multitasking, Android gaming, and field software use. It is not the Dimensity 9000 series or a Snapdragon 8 Gen equivalent, and buyers with heavy sustained workloads should note the distinction. For the use cases this device targets, it is more than adequate and a step up from the Dimensity 7400X that Ulefone used in its most recent design.

For no logical reason, rugged tablet makers seem to think decent processors or camera sensors aren’t required, when they’re as critical as they are in phones.

Sixteen gigabytes of LPDDR5 RAM is generous. Combined with the expandable storage via microSD, the Tank Pad Ultra avoids the storage cliff that afflicts cheaper rugged tablets.

But it's the DLP projector that is the engineering centrepiece in this design. At 260 lumens, it is 2.6 times brighter than the original Tank Pad's 100-lumen unit. Auto-focus handles throw distances between 0.5 and 4 metres. A micro-ranging laser assists the focus calibration for precise image sharpness. The native output resolution of 1920x1080 is a substantial step up from the 854x480 of the original device, and better than the 960 x 540 projector on the Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra.

My only issue with the projector is that 8849 didn’t implement a low-throw solution where the tablet could be flat on a desk and still project an image on the wall. With this design, you need to use the stand or a pile of books to elevate the tablet to a height where the projection will work.

The 23,400mAh battery is enormous, even if some rugged tablets have even more. Runtime estimates in the field will depend heavily on whether the projector, camping light, and 5G radio are active simultaneously. With the projector running, expect significantly reduced endurance versus a typical standby or browsing scenario.

One last special feature of this tablet is the GPS solution. It uses dual frequencies L1+L5 GPS for more precise positioning, in theory. I've not seen this in a rugged tablet before, and it could be genuinely useful for those flying drones or doing surveys. In my testing, it did seem marginally more accurate than the GPS in a typical phone.

• Hardware score: 4.5/5

8849 TANK Pad Ultra: cameras

• 50MP, 64MP on the rear
• 32MP on the front
• Three cameras in total

The 8849 Tank Pad Ultra has three cameras:

Rear cameras: 50MP Sony IMX766 , 64MP Omnivision OV64B1B Sensor (Night Vision)
Front camera: 32MP Sony IMX616

The camera configuration is one of the Tank Pad Ultra's stronger arguments over rivals. Most rugged tablets treat imaging as an afterthought. 8849 has invested meaningfully here.

The main camera uses a Sony IMX766 sensor at 50MP. This is the same sensor found in numerous premium Android smartphones, so expectations for image quality are reasonably well established. The large 1/1.56-inch format and all-pixel autofocus should deliver solid results in good light.

The night-vision camera is the headline differentiator. The 64MP OmniVision OV64B sensor is backed by four infrared LEDs and a dual-tone LED flash capable of 1.5A output. 8849 claims usable images in near-total darkness. This is genuinely useful for inspection work, security documentation, or field work in unlit environments.

The 32MP Sony IMX616 front camera is well specified for video calls and document scanning. For remote workers filing from a site office, the quality here matters more than it might for a consumer device.

Looking through my examples, the rear camera on this tablet produces some excellent results. The colour is accurate and not oversaturated, the edges of objects are crisp, and even the sky avoids being blown out. Using editing tools, it’s easy to get extra detail out of shadows and crop without making images appear blocky.

And, the 64MP Omnivision OV64B1B is one of the best choices for a night vision sensor, currently.

There are limited special photo modes, but you do get timelapse, super resolution, and QR codes, and there is a PRO mode. Video capture has scene modes and a full spectrum of resolutions from VGA up to 4K.

The only way this could get much better is if the optics had a proper zoom and not a digital one, but relatively few phones or tablets have that feature.

The only blot here is that 8849 wouldn’t pay for Widevine L1 encryption, so the best resolution you can stream from major providers is 480P, even if the screen would handle 1080p easily. Unfortunate, but a predictable limitation.

That point aside, this is one of the best camera solutions on a rugged tablet I’ve encountered, and for those doing surveys or wanting to capture property or vehicle damage, the provided tools are more than most will realistically need.

8849 TANK Pad Ultra Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

8849 TANK Pad Ultra: Performance

• Modern SoC
• Good battery life

The Dimensity 8200 platform performs comfortably in daily use. Android 15 runs without the stuttering or lag that can affect less powerful rugged tablets. Multitasking between field apps, maps, and documents is smooth.

Gaming performance is functional rather than flagship. The Mali-G610 MC6 GPU handles lighter titles well. Sustained gaming or graphics-intensive applications will cause throttling, as is typical for this class of chip under prolonged load.

The projector introduces a notable power draw. Thermal management under combined projector and processing load is an area worth monitoring in extended field scenarios. The device body will warm noticeably during sustained projection.

If we compare the 8200 with the 7400X that the Ulefone tablet uses, this SoC is roughly 25% quicker across the board, and better than that in graphics performance.

However, with great performance comes even greater power consumption. And, while the battery life of the machine looks good at 30 hours and 43 minutes, there is a caveat that the Ulefone device still had 27% of its battery unused when the benchmark aborted. Where the 8849 machine only had 5%, therefore the win should go to the Ulefone.

That said, this is more than enough capacity for most uses, and if curated, a running time of more than five days is easily within reach.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

8849 TANK Pad Ultra: Final verdict

For field engineers, survey teams, and outdoor professionals who project content regularly and need the clearest image possible from an integrated device, the Tank Pad Ultra earns a confident recommendation. For everyone else, the 8849 Tank Pad Ultra is the current high-water mark for built-in pico projection in a rugged tablet.

The leap from 100 lumens and 854x480 to 260 lumens and native 1080p is a generational step, not an incremental one. Add a Sony sensor main camera, a 64MP night-vision unit, a laser rangefinder, and a 23,400mAh battery at $690, and the value proposition is difficult to argue against.

The shortcomings are real but predictable. Sixty-six watts of charging is slow for a battery this large, even if it can manage a complete cycle in two hours. The device is heavy and thick by any standard other than the rugged-tablet category it occupies. The Dimensity 8200, while capable, is not a premium 2026 platform, even if it’s the exception to the rule that rugged tablets are typically underpowered.

Against the Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra, its most direct rival, the Tank Pad Ultra wins on projector brightness, projector resolution, SoC power, weight and price. It loses on charging speed and the dual-floodlight provision. Which device wins depends entirely on which compromises suit your workflow, and how tight your budget is.

Should I buy a 8849 TANK Pad Ultra?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

For more ruggedized devices, we've reviewed the best rugged phones, the best rugged laptops and the best rugged hard drives

• Two-thirds of Brits say slow and unreliable broadband is their pet peeve
• 3.7m UK homes still don't have full fiber (60% of which are in cities)
• Vodafone's 5G/full fiber can now reach 26 million homes

Vodafone says it's researched what bothers UK consumers the most, with 67% of citizens stating that slow and unreliable broadband is now their biggest pet peeve.

The issue is so significant, Vodafone found, that more than 20 million people say they would consider moving home to secure a better broadband connection, with many regions yet to receive full fiber rollout.

With hybrid working now commonplace and other factors like connected devices all driving traffic higher, 87% of Brits now consider fast broadband essential for daily life.

Vodafone believes 5G Broadband could plug current fiber gaps

In response to growing concerns over slow and unreliable broadband, the company, which recently merged with Three, has launched its own mobile broadband package to provide customers with cellular connections throughout their homes as an alternative to cable connections.

According to the firm, more than 26 million UK homes can now access full fiber or 5G broadband on its network, which it says is more than any other UK provider.

Cellular connections play an important part in the rollout of full fiber – those 5G networks already exist for smartphone connectivity, however around 3.7 million UK homes are still limited to old copper cables or part-fiber. Interestingly, it's not necessarily a rural issue, with three in five of those remaining homes actually located in cities.

Mobile networks already play a role, with half (49%) of Brits using a smartphone hotspot when broadband is an issue. Having this type of connection available via a router or a mesh Wi-Fi network would enable all devices to connect – not just those within reach of a smartphone (when the smartphone is home).

"This launch means we’re giving customers real choice: full‑fibre broadband where it’s available, and powerful 5G Broadband where it’s not – plus, better options for anyone just wanting speed with ease and flexibility," VodafoneThree said.

Vodafone's website is now showing 5G Broadband deals supporting up to 150Mbps, priced from £19 to £29 per month for 30-day and 24-month contracts.

Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1: 30-second review

The ThinkTab X11 Gen 1 is Lenovo's first serious push into rugged Android territory. It arrives with MIL-STD-810H certification, an IP68 rating, and a genuinely useful screwless removable battery.

To avoid the power demands of PC hardware, Lenovo went with an ARM-based architecture, using the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 to deliver capable everyday performance. This SoC is combined with a modest 10.95-inch display that is sharp and readable outdoors.

One interesting feature in all SKUs is that this tablet has a replaceable battery. But given the exercise to change it isn’t something you’ll want to be doing on a regular basis, this feature is more about extending the tablet’s life, not giving it extended run time with extra batteries.

While it ticks lots of boxes for performance and durability, the one major weakness of this option is its cameras, which are low quality by modern phone standards

The starting price of around £499 is competitive with the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active5 Pro, which appears to be the inspiration for this device.

If your work takes place on a factory floor, a building site, or in a vehicle cab, this is a credible option. Those looking for a general-purpose consumer tablet should look elsewhere, but if you need a go-anywhere tablet for drone flying or collecting data outdoors, this could be one of the best rugged tablet choices.

Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1: price and availability

• How much does it cost? £499/€499
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it from online retailers such as Insight in the UK.

Lenovo announced the ThinkTab X11 Gen 1 at MWC 2026 in Barcelona on 2 March 2026. It's currently listed as 'Coming soon' on the UK website.

Availability was confirmed for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa from April 2026. At the time of writing, Lenovo has not confirmed a US retail date, describing the X11 as a commercial product with pricing starting at €499 in the Eurozone.

What’s likely to confuse customers is the sheer number of SKUs that Lenovo has in this product line, which is ridiculous. In the UK alone, they make eight different options. The differences are primarily the storage capacity (typically 128GB or 256GB) and whether it includes mobile phone comms.

But there are models with no (Beidou + GPS + GLONASS + Galileo + QZSS + A-GPS), because the market for people who don’t want to know where they are is obviously huge. Some models come with a pen, while others do not.

The review hardware was a ZAHL0035GB, which comes with 256GB of storage, the Rugged Smart Case and Lenovo Tab Pen XE, but no slot for a mobile SIM.

That puts it directly in the orbit of the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active5 Pro, which carries a street price of between £499 and £549 in the UK, depending on configuration. Samsung uses the same Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset, so the competition is genuinely close on paper.

The UK retailer Insight carries three models, the cheapest being £563.99 inc. VAT for one with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, but no 5G SIM card slot. The top model has 256GB of storage and is 5G-capable, and has a price of £615.49.

Higher-specified configurations with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage will command a premium when they become available. Lenovo has not published a full pricing matrix for all SKUs at launch. Business buyers will typically be quoted against volume contracts rather than consumer retail pricing, so the headline €499 figure should be treated as a floor.

• Value score: 4/5

Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1: Specs

Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1: design

• Lightweight
• Rubber bumper
• Toolless battery change
• Camera postioning

Pick up the ThinkTab X11, and the premise is immediately clear. This is not a tablet designed for the sofa. The chassis is thick by consumer standards, sitting at 9.9mm, and the 650g weight is modest for the category but noticeably heavier than a consumer 11-inch slate.

In the review hardware, it came with a soft silicon bumper that didn’t obscure any of the ports and is relatively easy to remove should you want to access the battery compartment.

The MIL-STD-810H certification covers a demanding set of environmental tests. That includes thermal extremes, vibration, altitude, humidity, and shock. The IP68 rating means submersion in up to 1.5 metres of water for 30 minutes, and that’s without a rubber plug in the USB-C port. For field workers in manufacturing, utilities, or construction, these are not marketing checkboxes. They are basic requirements.

To get inside requires one strong fingernail to be inserted into a cutout on the back that then starts popping clips to remove a cover. To be clear, taking this cover off isn’t easy, and it isn’t something I’ve want to do multiple times. But when the tablet arrives, the battery isn’t installed, so it’s necessary to get it working.

Where I’d place this in the Parthenon of replaceable battery systems is that it's good that you can swap the battery, especially because it could extend the working life of the device, but it isn’t something you would want to consider doing on a regular basis. Eventually, the clips on the cover will fail, and with them goes the environmental protection.

It's worth noting that you also need to access the battery area for the installation of a MicroSD, or if you have a 5G capable model, the Nano SIM slot. I think an approach more like the Samsung Active5G with screws might have been a better plan, I’d assert.

That said, most tablets don’t allow the battery to be replaced without entirely dismantling the hardware, and battery exhaustion is a major component in tablets and phones reaching the end of their useful life.

The display supports glove and wet-touch input, and it's designed to work with the Lenovo Tab Pen XE, which comes with some SKUs.

That is an important detail on a site where latex gloves are mandatory, or inclement weather intervenes. The Corning Gorilla Glass should handle the usual workplace knocks, and the front-mounted NFC will appeal to logistics and access-control use cases.

An OLED panel might have been a good option, but the IPS panel used is reasonably colourful, and using something better might have driven the price up.

Dual USB-C ports allow simultaneous charging and peripheral connection without an adapter or dock. Although the second port is clearly also designed for an add-on keyboard, which Lenovo didn’t provide for this review. This is such a useful feature, and SoCs generally support more than one USB port, that I do wonder why other brands don’t offer multiple USB ports.

An external feature I’m not a fan of is the camera's placement, which is positioned deep in the left corner. The upper corners are the common place to hold a tablet and I found that I activated the camera app and saw nothing, as my hand was obscuring the sensor.

If the camera cluster had been placed in the middle, this could have avoided fingers and also provided more natural framing for image and video capture.

Other than that point, and the nail-breaking nature of the battery cover, the design of this tablet is pretty good.

Design score: 4.5/5

Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1: hardware

• Snapdragon 7s Gen 3
• Adreno 810 GPU
• 10,200mAh battery

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 is the same platform Samsung chose for the Galaxy Tab Active5 Pro. On a 4nm process with an octa-core configuration (four Cortex-A720 performance cores and four Cortex-A520 efficiency cores), it delivers capable everyday performance without generating excessive heat in a sealed chassis.

Spoiling my performance reveal slightly, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 has a similar performance profile to the MediaTek Dimensity 7400X that I saw recently in the UleFone Amor Pad 5 Ultra.

The Adreno 810 GPU handles the expected range of business and light productivity workloads without difficulty. Video calls, document editing, ERP applications, and camera-intensive tasks are all within its comfort zone. Nobody is buying a MIL-SPEC enterprise tablet for gaming, and the hardware reflects that reality.

Memory options cover 8GB and 12GB LPDDR5, but all the UK SKUs were 8GB. For field workers running one or two dedicated applications, 8GB is sufficient. Environments running multiple concurrent enterprise apps, particularly with persistent background sync, will benefit from the 12GB option. Storage ranges from 128GB to 512GB UFS 3.1, supplemented by a microSD slot.

That combination is practical. Enterprise deployments often include large offline databases, maps, or media libraries. Being able to use a second USB device also allows for an external drive, and it would be easier to replace than the MicroSD card.

The 10,200mAh battery, charged at 45W, should cover a full shift under typical enterprise workloads. Lenovo has not published an official battery life figure. In my testing that I’ll talk about later, it recharges quickly, which makes the overall capacity less of an issue.

As a total capacity of 10,200mAh isn’t huge, and I’ve seen plenty of rugged phones with more, but in this context, it's enough to get at least two full working days out of the device, and with curation, the better part of a third day.

The front-mounted NFC is an unusual placement. Most tablets put NFC on the rear, which suits tap-to-pay and general contactless use. Positioning it on the front (upper right) of the screen makes it more accessible for door access control and identity verification, where the user faces the reader.

The hardware specification of the Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1 is decent, and the choice of the efficient SoC has enabled the battery to be scaled to a level where the machine becomes awkward to carry or only suitable for vehicle mounting.

• Hardware score: 4/5

Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1: cameras

• 16MP on the rear
• 8MP on the front
• Two cameras in total

The Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1 has two cameras:

Rear camera: 13MP Omnivision OV13B10, AF, LED flash
Front camera: 8MP GalaxyCore GC08A8

As seems the norm these days, extracting the correct camera sensors from the Android system provided little hard information about the camera sensors. At one point it the primary sensor could have been from Omnivision, Samsung or Sony.

But thankfully, I dug into the replacement parts list on Lenovo, and that revealed that the main sensor is a 13MP Omnivision OV13B10, and the selfie camera is an 8MP GalaxyCore GC08A8.

Anyone with a decent phone will immediately be thinking how underwhelming these sensors sound, and they’re not exactly cutting-edge. I’m not sure why tablet makers immediately assume that their customers don’t need high-quality images, but it’s a cost-saving that many take.

That said, the pictures taken by the 13MP Omnivision OV13B10 are reasonably sharp, and if you don’t activate HDR mode, the colour makes a stab at being representative.

The problem with a 13MP sensor is that there isn’t much margin for errors. There is no anti-shake compensation, only two levels of digital zoom (1X and 2X), and there are no special modes, like panorama or time-lapse, whatsoever.

However, there are two functions that people will like, the first being that there is a specific camera mode for capturing documents. That’s useful, and the other thing that impressed me is that even with only a 13MP sensor, it will capture both 2K and 4K video. There is no means to change the FPS; it’s 30 FPS by default, but at least you can capture a proper resolution.

I won’t talk about the 8MP fixed focus front-facing camera, to avoid annoying anyone at GalaxyCore. But that it can only capture 1080p video is probably a good thing.

Overall, if you have good lighting conditions, you can make the 13MP Omnivision OV13B10 work for photography and video. Though I wouldn’t expect miracles, and it might have been a better plan if Lenovo had splashed out another dollar or less for a 32MP Samsung sensor.

Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1 Camera samples

• Camera score: 3.5/5

Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1: Performance

• Modern and efficient SoC
• Workable battery life

Normally, I’d present the numbers of the review machine against a prior tablet in this instance, but I chose not to here.

That’s because no other tablet I’ve tested could get anywhere near these numbers, including some of the previous Ulefone Pad series. For example, the Ulefone Armor Pad 3 Pro scored only 296 and 1358 on the Geekbench single and multithreaded tests, which is a fraction of what this tablet offers.

Equally, GPU power is a magnitude better with the Pad 3 Pro, managing only 647 points on WildLife, or 18%. I’m sure there are Android tablets available that could go toe-to-toe with the Pad 5 Ultra, but I’ve yet to see them.

Another area this design excels in is battery life, even if I had some issues with getting PCMark to completely exhaust the battery without crashing. That’s not a problem specific to this tablet; it seems to happen with many tablets and phones, where something happens in the background that trips up the PCMark tool.

After running it a number of times, the best result I got was that it ran for 28 hours and 27 minutes, but there was still 39% of the battery capacity left. That result indicates that the total running time of the test using all the battery would be around 46 hours or more, which is substantial.

Using the provided 120W charger, it can recover about 27% of capacity in 30 minutes. That puts the total recovery from empty at between two and three hours. There is no wireless option, and given the battery's size, that’s probably not a bad thing.

Overall, the performance of the UleFone Armor Pad 5 Ultra is top-notch, and dramatically better than most rugged Android tablets.

• Performance score: 4/5

Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1: Final verdict

I’m going to make one complaint that has nothing to do with the hardware-software combination Lenovo has created. It’s the naming convention.

When I live and breathe platforms on a daily basis, and I can even get confused, then something is badly wrong. Calling something a Lenovo ThinkTab X11 when you already have a Lenovo ThinkPad X11 is a patently dumb idea. And this recent thing of calling them Gen 1 and so on, that’s hyperbolically stupid too.

Here’s a ‘next-gen’ idea: stop now! Lenovo makes far too many SKUs of all its products, and naming them so similarly only causes further customer confusion. Someone wanting an Android tablet doesn’t need a degree in the nuances of Lenovo product naming conventions, if there are any. Rant over, and I should say that this problem isn’t exclusive to Lenovo; it's all over the commercial platform space.

For the purpose of this review, the ThinkTab X11 Gen 1 is a well-considered entry from Lenovo into a market that Samsung has dominated for years. The removable battery alone separates it from most of the competition. In a sector where devices must survive shifts rather than evenings on the sofa, that matters.

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 provides enough headroom for the applications that enterprise Android tablets actually run. The IP68 and MIL-STD-810H certifications are genuine rather than decorative. The dual USB-C configuration is practical and is something that competitors typically do not offer.

There are only two areas that the ThinkTab X11 Gen 2 should embrace when it inevitably arrives. One is to repackage the battery so that the cover is part of the battery, and swapping them in and out is easier. And the other area that needs to be addressed is the cameras, which need to be brought up to the level of entry-level phones from today, not ones from five years ago.

With those things addressed, this would be the perfect rugged tablet solution for many people. In the meantime, the ThinkTab X11 Gen 1 is an affordable option that isn’t a bad device, though Lenovo could have made it even better with a bit of adaptive thinking.

Should I buy a Lenovo ThinkTab X11 Gen 1?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

For more ruggedized devices, we've reviewed the best rugged phones, best rugged laptops and the best rugged hard drives

• AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are working together to offer standardized satellite connectivity
• It would benefit customers not covered by cell towers, like in national parks
• Operators globally are looking to use satellite for more than emergencies, now

In a rare turn of events, three of the biggest mobile carriers in the US have announced they will be working together to tackle 'dead zones' across the country using satellites.

The joint venture, formed by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, should help to improve connectivity in areas where traditional towers can fail, such as national parks and highways.

Satellites could also provide continuity in disaster-struck regions, where land-based infrastructure damages can cause widespread outages.

Satellite technology to eliminate dead zones

Because the joint venture's plan revolves around direct-to-device satellite tech, it would mean that regular smartphone could access signal in rural areas without consumers needing to buy specific satellite phones. While many phones now offer limited services via satellite, it's hoped that the scheme would make roaming between cellular and satellite networks more seamless.

"Having launched the first nationwide, satellite-powered direct-to-device network for text and data, we’ve seen firsthand how critical reliable connectivity can be when America needs it most," T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan commented.

T-Mobile already partners with SpaceX, which has been expanding its footprint across voice and data services on top of earlier emergency texting functionalities. AT&T and Verizon also have partnerships with AST SpaceMobile for their satellite services.

The announcement comes amid a broader global shift, whereby satellite networks are becoming more tightly integrated with regular 5G and 6G cell connections, instead of being a separate emergency-only tool.

As well as improving coverage and performance for customers, the joint venture also anticipates industry benefits, such as industry-wide device compatibility and an easier way for mobile network operators (MNOs) to integrate satellite connectivity for their customers.

The agreement in principle is yet to be confirmed, pending regulatory approval and confirmation of the finer details.

• BT reveals host of new offerings for businesses and consumer users across the UK
• Business users will now get free security tools as part of BT contract
• BT also selected as official telecoms partner of Euro 2028

BT has announced a host of new updates and upgrades for its customers across the UK, as well as revealing it has been chosen as the official telecommunications partner for the upcoming Euro 2028 football tournament.

Launching a new "Behind Brilliant Things" at London's Wembley Stadium, the company unveiled a host of new announcements as it looks to continue its role as a mainstay of UK connectivity.

Along with its Euro 2028 news, the company also revealed the comeback of its BT Mobile brand, new eSIM offerings, and extra security tools for business and customer accounts.

Euro 2028 and more

"As the connector of the country, BT really matters, especially when it comes to events that connect the country, unite the country and showcase the country to the rest of the world," noted Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive, BT Group.

Since the start of the decade, BT has been the single biggest investor of all FTSE companies into UK infrastructure, she added, with the group spending £25 billion to become "digital backbone" of the country in what Kirkby called "a once in a generation investment."

This puts BT on track to reach more than 90% of UK homes and businesses by the end of the decade - a major rise from the current two-thirds.

The company already connects over a million businesses across the UK, along with public sector partners, making it a crucial ally for firms around the country.

"BT really is the only UK operator with the ability, the security expertise, and the operational resilience that can deliver connectivity of this magnitude across the UK," added Jon James, CEO Business.

"BT is trusted every day to deliver the services that help the UK succeed."

In order to help maintain this success, James revealed "a significant upgrade" to the security tools BT offers business customers across the UK, who will now receive Cyber Threat Protect, a new security solution powered by CrowdStrike, free of charge.

"BT is delivering big security for small and medium businesses, at a time when cybercrime has never been more worrying," James added.

Set to be held across 9 cities and broadcast to over 2 billion fans worldwide, Kirkby noted how Euro 2028 offers BT a huge opportunity to show off the state of its network, as well as providing a lasting technology legacy to continue after the tournament.

"Only BT could be behind moments," she said, adding , "you can't always see it, but we're there...trusted to connect homes, businesses and communities, trusted to protect families, organizations and critical public services, and trusted to supercharge the UK - powering progress, so everyone can thrive in this digital age."

Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra: 2-minute review

I’ve reviewed several Ulefone Armor Pads over the years, and they often seem to be repackaged rugged phones with big batteries but poor cameras.

However, the Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra is a rugged tablet that defies an easy categorisation. It is not trying to be a slimline productivity device or a premium consumer slate. It is something far more specific: a field-ready workhorse for professionals who need serious capability in seriously hostile conditions.

Start with the headline feature. The Armor Pad 5 Ultra includes an integrated DLP projector delivering 200 lumens, with smart autofocus and auto distance detection. The projector supports a throw distance of 106 to 213 centimetres and can display content at up to 80 inches. That is a genuinely useful tool for engineers projecting blueprints on site, or field teams running presentations without dragging additional equipment into the field.

The rest of the hardware is equally serious. A 24,200 mAh battery supports 120W fast charging and is rated for up to 1,662 hours of standby time. The Dimensity 7400X drives 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage, expandable to 2TB via a microSD. The camera array includes a 64MP Sony IMX682 primary shooter and a 64MP OmniVision night vision sensor, plus a 32MP front camera. Dual camping lights with 754 LEDs deliver 1,000 lumens, alongside dual red-blue warning lights. The IP68, IP69K, and MIL-STD-810H certifications round out an impressive durability story.

The weight, however, demands an honest conversation. As with any of the best rugged tablets I've tried, it's heavy. The Armor Pad 5 Ultra is 27.8mm thick and weighs 3.5lb / 1.6 kg. That is roughly three times the weight of a standard iPad. Carrying it for extended periods in the field will be fatiguing for most users, and one-handed use is largely out of the question. The built-in handle stand helps somewhat, but it cannot disguise the sheer mass.

The device targets outdoor professionals and field workers who need equipment that can handle extreme conditions and double as a portable workstation. Construction site managers, emergency responders, utility engineers, and night-survey teams will find genuine utility here. For anyone else, the weight alone makes this a hard sell. This is not a general-purpose tablet. It is a specialist tool that happens to run Android.

If this hardware has the features you want, and there aren’t any others that have this exact mix, then you might well consider it to be one of the best tablet choices.

Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $800/£592/€683
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it directly from Ulefone or via many online retailers such as Amazon.

Often, hardware like this tablet is cheaper from Amazon or other online retailers, but in this case, the best price for it is directly from the makers.

UK readers can get the Armour Pad 5 Ultra direct from Ulefone for £591.22, where the next-day delivery price from Amazon.co.uk is £719.89, or £128.67 more.

What’s slightly curious is that the price on the site isn’t any different for US customers, so you might as well order it from Amazon.com.

For those in the EU, the price is €682.55 from Ulefone, and €799.99 via Amazon.fr, which is probably replicated in Germany and other EU nations.

The Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Pro is the natural comparison point: it shares the same chipset, RAM, storage, battery, and camera system but omits the projector and reduces the lighting complement, coming in at $499.

If the projector is not required, the Pro offers all the core functionality at a lower cost. The Oukitel WP30 Pro and Doogee T30 Ultra sit in adjacent territory for rugged tablets with large batteries, though neither matches the Armor Pad 5 Ultra's projector or lighting specification. Enterprise alternatives from Panasonic or Getac with similar MIL-STD credentials start at significantly higher prices.

At this time, the Ulefone Armour Pad 5 Ultra has created a unique tier to itself, making it an exceptional value for money.

• Value score: 4.5/5

Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra: Specs

Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra: design

• Two-handed game
• Elegant kickstand
• Built to take abuse

Rugged tablets tend to be large and heavy, and the Armor Pad 5 Ultra makes no pretence otherwise. Measuring 269.7 x 179.5 x 27.8mm and weighing a substantial 3.5lb, makes it roughly triple the mass of a standard consumer tablet.

That is the unavoidable consequence of fitting a 24,200mAh battery, a projector module, dual floodlight arrays, a cooling fan, and a reinforced chassis into a single device.

The construction follows Ulefone's established rugged formula: polycarbonate and aluminium combined with rubberised impact zones at the corners and edges. The chassis carries both IP68 and IP69K certification, meaning it can handle submersion to 1.5 metres for 30 minutes and withstand high-pressure water jets.

The MIL-STD-810H rating covers 1.5-metre drop resistance onto hard surfaces. Both the USB-C port and the 3.5mm headphone jack are sealed with waterproof plugs, which must be properly fitted before any exposure to water.

I wish it didn't have a big rubber plug over the USB-C port, but it does cover a 3.5mm audio jack alongside the USB.

The attachable carry handle is a practical addition that sets this apart from most rugged tablets. It folds flat against the rear when not in use and doubles as a kickstand, propping the tablet at a useful angle for video playback or to position the projector correctly when the device is laid flat. The uSmart accessory port is present on the chassis, maintaining compatibility with Ulefone's range of endoscopes and microscopes.

The back side houses the two rear cameras alongside the IR LED array for night vision, the projector lens at the top edge, and the dual LED light panels on each side. The warning lights, which can simulate fire, ambulance, and police car audio alongside their visual output, sit alongside these.

The overall layout is purposeful and dense rather than elegant, which is entirely appropriate for what this device is trying to be.

If anything, there are too many buttons, which isn't something I normally say about rugged devices.

The 11-inch IPS panel runs at FHD+ resolution of 1200 x 1920 pixels with a 90Hz refresh rate. The 10-bit color depth is a specification more commonly associated with premium consumer tablets, and it allows the display to render a significantly wider range of tones than the 8-bit panels found on most budget-tier rugged hardware.

Peak brightness of 600 nits is moderate rather than exceptional by 2026 standards, and outdoor legibility in bright direct sunlight will depend on where that peak is achievable in practice.

The 90Hz refresh rate keeps scrolling and navigation feeling fluid, which matters more than it might seem on a working device used to read documents, navigate maps, or monitor data streams throughout a shift.

Corning Gorilla Glass 3 provides screen protection. As noted in my RugKing 5 Pro review, it is not the latest generation, but it is well-proven against incidental tool and key contact in the field.

Overall, the main vibe of this device is that it would take some serious abuse to put it out of action. The quality of construction seems at odds with the single year of warranty that Ulefone offers on this hardware, which seems implausibly short.

Design score: 3.5/5

Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra: hardware

• MediaTek Dimensity 7400X
• 200 Lumen Projector
• 24,200mAh battery

The MediaTek Dimensity 7400X is a genuine step up from the Unisoc chips found in Ulefone's more affordable devices, and it changes the tablet's character into something much more suitable for local data processing.

Built on a 4nm process and capable of clocking up to 2.6GHz, it is a current-generation mid-range chip that can handle video editing, heavier applications, and more demanding multitasking without the hesitation that defines budget silicon.

The 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM is generous, and Ulefone's dynamic RAM expansion feature can add up to a further 32GB of virtual RAM from the storage pool if needed, though the practical benefit of this is dependent on each use case. The 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage is fast for this class of device, and the microSD slot is dedicated, so there is no compromise between expansion and dual-SIM operation.

The built-in active cooling fan is an unusual inclusion in a tablet. Ulefone's stated rationale is sustained performance under load, which is relevant for a device expected to run demanding field applications continuously over a working day. Whether it meaningfully extends sustained performance or simply provides peace of mind is worth checking under extended load testing.

The DLP projector is the specification that distinguishes the Armor Pad 5 Ultra from the Armor Pad 5 Pro and from virtually every other rugged tablet currently available. It produces 200 lumens of output at a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels.

The throw design uses 100% offset with a 26-degree upward angle, which means the device can sit flat on a surface and project upwards onto a wall or screen without the image being obscured by the tablet itself.

At 200 lumens, this will work well in controlled indoor environments with reduced ambient light and adequately in shaded outdoor settings, but it will struggle against bright daylight. The autofocus and automatic distance detection are welcome practical features that remove the fiddly manual adjustment that made earlier portable projectors frustrating to use quickly in the field. Ulefone states a maximum image size of 80 inches at appropriate throw distances, but I’d strongly suggest that’s only a possibility in complete darkness.

The throw distance range of 1,063mm to 2,134mm gives a workable bracket for most indoor use cases. The 1.2:1 throw ratio is relatively tight, meaning the device does not need to be positioned very far from the surface to produce a useful image size. This makes it practical in confined spaces such as service vans, site offices, and meeting rooms without projection screens.

The one issue with the DLP projector is that it requires proper cooling to operate, and the fan noise can be easily distracting in a quiet location at night. Given the amount of heat that DLP projectors generate and the power they consume, there isn’t any easy fix for that.

The dual LED floodlights are rated at 1,000 lumens per side, with each panel containing 377 LED beads. Both warm and white colour temperatures are available, which is a thoughtful detail for environments where colour rendering matters, such as inspection work or even a photography setup.

At a combined 2,000 lumens when both sides are active, this is a genuinely powerful lighting tool that could replace a dedicated work light in many field situations. However, if you attach the stand, which most people will do, these panels are partly obscured, something that clearly the designer regretted when they realised this mistake.

The 24,200mAh battery could be the largest fitted to any Ulefone product so far and is more than double the capacity of a mainstream consumer tablet. The practical consequence is multi-day use without charging for most workloads, with Ulefone quoting 1662 hours standby (69.25 days), 109 hours take time and the same in video playback.

Big batteries are wonderful, but often they can take an inordinate amount of time to recharge. Therefore, the 120W wired fast charging is the most significant battery specification after capacity. At this rate, topping up even a cell this size becomes a manageable overnight or rest-period task rather than an all-day affair.

The 10W reverse charging allows the tablet to act as a power bank for other devices, but as each transfer costs efficiency, this isn’t as useful as it might seem.

Overall, the hardware in this tablet is great, and while a few things might have been better, like a projector that could handle 1080p video natively, it's mostly well chosen from a technical standpoint.

• Hardware score: 4.5/5

Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra: cameras

• 50MP, 64MP on the rear
• 32MP on the front
• Three cameras in total

The Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra has three cameras:

Rear camera: 50MP Sony IMX682, 64MP Omnivision OV64B1B Sensor (Night Vision)
Front camera: 32MP Samsung ISOCELL GD1

The camera specification on the Armor Pad 5 Ultra is unusually strong for a rugged tablet making it equally ideal for adventure photography or site surveys.

The primary rear sensor is a 64MP Sony IMX682, a proven performer in mid-range smartphones that delivers sharp, well-resolved images in good light. The secondary rear camera is a 64MP OmniVision OV64B configured for infrared night vision, paired with four IR LEDs rather than the two found on the RugKing 5 Pro phone. The front camera is a 32MP Samsung ISOCELL GD1, a stalwart of mobile phone use that is perfectly suitable for selfie images and video.

Video recording reaches 4K at 30fps with gyro-EIS stabilisation, which puts it ahead of the RugKing 5 Pro phone and is a credible option for site documentation, inspection recording, and field reporting at resolutions that can be edited and used professionally.

The infrared night vision camera is most usefully thought of as an inspection tool rather than a photography feature. Four IR LEDs provide greater illumination at a distance, which should reduce the hotspot problem that sometimes affects two-LED implementations.

The example images give an accurate impression of how sharp these sensors can be, and the dependable colour balance they offer.

Also, and I rarely forget to mention this point, this is one of the few tablets I’ve ever seen with Widevine L1 encryption, enabling streaming services to be seen on the screen in at least 1080p, connection allowing. Well done, Ulefone.

Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra: Performance

• Modern and efficient SoC
• Great battery life

Normally, I’d present the numbers of the review machine against a prior tablet in this instance, but I chose not to here.

That’s because no other tablet I’ve tested could get anywhere near these numbers, including some of the previous Ulefone Pad series. For example, the Ulefone Armor Pad 3 Pro scored only 296 and 1358 on the Geekbench single and multithreaded tests, which is a fraction of what this tablet offers.

Equally, GPU power is a magnitude better with the Pad 3 Pro, managing only 647 points on WildLife, or 18%. I’m sure there are Android tablets available that could go toe-to-toe with the Pad 5 Ultra, but I’ve yet to see them.

Another area this design excels in is battery life, even if I had some issues with getting PCMark to completely exhaust the battery without crashing. That’s not a problem specific to this tablet; it seems to happen with many tablets and phones, where something happens in the background that trips up the PCMark tool.

After running it a number of times, the best result I got was that it ran for 28 hours and 27 minutes, but there was still 39% of the battery capacity left. That result indicates that the total running time of the test using all the battery would be around 46 hours or more, which is substantial.

Using the provided 120W charger, it can recover about 27% of capacity in 30 minutes. That puts the total recovery from empty at between two and three hours. There is no wireless option, and given the battery's size, that’s probably not a bad thing.

Overall, the performance of the UleFone Armor Pad 5 Ultra is top-notch, and dramatically better than most rugged Android tablets.

• Performance score: 4/5

Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra: Final verdict

The Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra is the kind of product that takes a while to get your head around. On one level, it is a rugged tablet with IP68 and IP69K certification, MIL-STD-810H drop resistance, a 24,200mAh battery, and a chassis that has been built to take punishment in environments where consumer electronics would simply not survive.

Yet there is another side to it, something stranger and more interesting, because it also contains a DLP projector, dual 1000-lumen LED floodlights, dual warning lights with sound simulation, a built-in cooling fan, an infrared night vision camera, and a handle stand.

Throw all that in, minus the kitchen sink, and it is, in short, a field workstation in a single device.

The hardware underneath is more competitive than that of previous Ulefone tablets. The MediaTek Dimensity 7400X is a genuine mid-range 5G chip built on a 4nm process, and paired with 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. The 11-inch display runs at 90Hz with 10-bit colour depth. The better cameras are from Sony and Samsung rather than the house-brand sensors found on cheaper rugged devices.

While it is not cheap for a rugged tablet, the combination of features has no obvious direct equivalent at anywhere near this price. It’s good to see Ulefone pushing the boundaries of the technologies we are used to seeing in this sector, and I can only hope it encourages other brands to be less reticent about SoC and feature choices.

Should I buy a Ulefone Armor Pad 5 Ultra?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

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Ulefone RugKing 5 Pro: 30-second review

UleFone has a rugged phone for everyone, or so it seems. The newest addition to the RugKing series is the 5 Pro, a low-cost option available for around $220.

Its calling card is a 20,000mAh battery that Ulefone rates at 110 hours of endurance, which, in practice, translates to several days of real use before you need to hunt a power station or a wall socket. The trade-off is a 629g frame that is genuinely large and heavy. Though anyone who regularly carries tools, kit bags, or works outdoors will probably not find that a dealbreaker.

Beyond the battery, the RugKing 5 Pro earns its moniker through dual IP68 and IP69K certification alongside MIL-STD-810H compliance. It can be submerged, jet-washed, and dropped onto hard surfaces and, allegedly, remain functional.

The addition of a 20MP infrared night-vision camera and a 976-lumen flood flashlight also makes this phone suitable for camping adventures and emergency situations.

Where this design falls short is in processing power and connectivity: the Unisoc T7250 chipset is functional rather than fast, 5G is absent, and the camera maxes out at 1080p video. For the right buyer at the right price, though, those limitations are entirely manageable if they don’t expect too much.

With the cost of memory and storage rapidly increasing, it's likely we’ll see more of these hardware-curated designs, but this isn’t something we’d be inclined to label as one of the best rugged phones around.

Ulefone RugKing 5 Pro: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $270/£205/€235
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it directly from UleFone or via many online retailers .

As with many rugged phones, the cheapest place to buy this typically isn’t the maker, and the RugKing 5 Pro is no exception.

Direct from UleFone, the price of this phone is $269.99/£201.59/€231,26, depending on where you are based. You can check the site by clicking here.

At the time of writing, it isn’t available via Amazon.com, but I did find this phone for £229.99 on Amazon.co.uk, which seems a significant hike for next-day delivery.

The cheapest option is AliExpress, where the prices are $226.19 (£214.40 / €244.84), making that source the cheapest choice for Americans, but more expensive than the maker pricing for Europeans.

Almost wherever you source this, it isn’t an expensive phone, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t cheaper alternatives.

For less than this phone, the Blackview BL7000 is a great choice, as it features a 50 megapixel main camera with a Samsung JN1 sensor that performs surprisingly well, runs on a Dimensity 6300 chip, and offers 5G connectivity. And, it can be found for $200.

The downside of the BL7000 is that it only offers 7500 mAh of battery, and most of the competitor devices around this cost have 10,000 mAh or less.

But, if battery capacity isn’t a priority, I’d look at the Blackview BL7000, Blackview Fort 1, Ulefone Armor X16 Pro 5G, DOOGEE Blade 10 Ultra or OUKITEL G3. Some of these have 5G, others have better cameras.

And, if you want the same battery with a better SoC, the Blackview Oscal Tank 1 is a good choice.

• Value score: 4/5

Ulefone RugKing 5 Pro: Specs

Ulefone RugKing 5 Pro: Design

• Not pocket-friendly
• Odd button arrangement
• No wireless charging

The RugKing 5 Pro does not pretend to be subtle. Measuring 179 x 85 x 26.5mm and weighing 629g, it falls into a category that goes well beyond oversized and approaches a handheld piece of equipment.

Ulefone has clad the chassis in a polycarbonate and aluminium combination, using rubberised corner guards to absorb impact energy, a formula the company has refined across many generations of its rugged line.

The overall aesthetic follows a well-established Ulefone template: metal banding along the sides, pronounced corner protection, and a carbon fibre texture finish on the back panel. The rear camera module is described as visually distinctive, with a clean arrangement housing the main sensor, the infrared night vision camera, and the two IR illuminator LEDs.

A 976-lumen camping flashlight sits separately on the body and is a practical addition for field use, not an afterthought.

Where the RugKing 5 Pro diverges from most rugged designs is in the button layout, which is a curious combination of conventional and unexpected.

The power button, which doubles as a fingerprint reader, and the volume rocker sit on the right side. On the left, there are two user-programmable shortcut buttons and the SIM tray.

The SIM tray itself accepts two Nano-SIM cards plus a microSD card on a dedicated slot, so you are not forced to sacrifice expandable storage to run dual SIMs, which is a sensible decision for a working phone.

What’s odd is the placement of the user-definable buttons, which, if you have two, are often close together. Here, one of them is where you might expect it for using a talk-to-speak function, but the other is low on the left-hand side. This lower button is remarkably easy to accidentally press while holding the phone, and by default, it activates the camping light, annoyingly.

The display bezels are reported to be thick by current standards, which is a cosmetic compromise that is difficult to avoid given the structural requirements of the surround. Corning Gorilla Glass 3 is the chosen screen protection, which is not the latest generation but remains practically resilient against the kind of incidental scratching that comes with field use.

The 6.78-inch IPS panel runs at FHD+ resolution, which works out at 1080 x 2460 pixels and a pixel density of 396ppi. Text and images are sharp at normal viewing distances, and colour reproduction is described in third-party assessments as accurate.

The headline display specification is its peak brightness of 910 nits, which is designed to keep the screen legible under direct sunlight. For a phone explicitly marketed at outdoor workers and adventurers, the brightness of this display is an important feature rather than a marketing exercise.

Ulefone has added both Glove Mode and Water Lock Mode to the software. The former keeps the touchscreen responsive when the user is wearing work gloves, which is a well-understood requirement for tradespeople. Water Lock Mode disables touchscreen input to prevent false touches from rain or spray, while keeping the display visible. This is particularly useful for navigation in wet conditions.

Overall, aside from the odd placement of the second custom button, there isn’t much wrong with the external design of the RugKing 5 Pro.

Design score: 4/5

Ulefone RugKing 5 Pro: Hardware

• Unisoc T7250
• AI subscriptions
• 2000 mAh battery

I’m not a huge fan of the Unisoc SoCs, but it's hard to ignore how many phone makers are gravitating to using them, presumably due to cost.

The Unisoc T7250 is an octa-core design built around two Cortex-A75 performance cores running at 1.8GHz, backed by six Cortex-A55 efficiency cores at 1.6GHz. The GPU is an ARM Mali-G57 MP1 operating at 850MHz. Benchmark figures place the AnTuTu score at approximately 256,822, with Geekbench 6 returning around 441 in single-core and 1,426 in multi-core testing.

Those numbers put this firmly in the budget-to-mid-range territory, well behind current flagship processors. For everyday tasks such as navigation, communication, document viewing, and running field-specific applications, the T7250 is serviceable. Where it will show its limits is in graphics-heavy gaming or any processor-intensive creative work.

The 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage are enough for most purposes, but hardly generous. Thankfully, the microSD expansion slot provides additional headroom without compromising the dual-SIM capability.

Android 16 is the operating system, which is notable and puts this phone ahead of many rivals in terms of software currency. Ulefone has also included a suite of AI productivity features, although I’m reasonably sure that it doesn’t offer inherent AI processing powers.

The AI functionality on offer is cloud-based and requires a subscription; I’d avoid it like the plague.

Of greater use is the 20,000 mAh battery, which is enough to keep this relatively low-power device running for at least four days or more. The only caveat to the large battery capacity is that the maximum recharge wattage is 33W.

Even with the provided 33W PSU, the RugKing 5 Pro took an inordinate amount of time to recharge, especially when it was down to the last 10%. This isn’t a phone you want to find that didn’t charge before you are about to leave on a long journey.

A 6W wired reverse charging function turns the phone into a portable power bank, allowing it to top up other devices such as earbuds, a smartwatch, or a colleague's handset via the USB-C port. Wireless charging is not supported.

Returning to the SoC, one critical limitation of this design is that it doesn’t support 5G comms, only 4G LTE, 3G and 2G. Equally, the Wi-Fi is dual-band, covering 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. Bluetooth 5.2 handles peripheral connectivity. NFC is present for contactless payments and device pairing, which is practically useful even in industrial contexts. FM radio is included.

The takeaway from this hardware platform is that this isn’t for anyone with special performance requirements, unless those are to run for an impressive length of time on its ample battery capacity.

• Hardware score: 3/5

Ulefone RugKing 5 Pro: Cameras

• 64MP and 20MP on the rear
• 16MP on the front
• Three cameras in total

The UleFone RugKing 5 Pro has three cameras:

Rear camera: 64MP Omnivision OV64B40 Sensor, 20MP Sony IMX350(Night Vision)
Front camera: 16MP Samsung S5K3P8 SP

The RugKing 5 Pro features a dual-rear-camera setup, which, on paper, appears suitable for capturing video and still images while away from home.

The primary shooter is a 64MP sensor from OmniVision, the OV64B, which handles standard photography. The secondary camera, the veritable Sony IMX350, is the more interesting of the two: a 20MP infrared night vision unit paired with two IR LEDs.

The night vision system allows the phone to capture usable imagery in complete darkness by using IR illumination rather than visible light. This has obvious utility for anyone working in poor lighting, conducting inspections, or exploring environments after dark.

The 16MP front camera uses a Samsung CMOS sensor and is aimed at video calling and documentation, which seems adequate for those jobs.

What’s harder to comprehend is why the Omnivision OV64B40, a 64MP sensor, only captures 1080p video, the same resolution as the 16MP front-facing Samsung sensor.

There is no 4K, or even 2K, capability, which may be a straightforward limitation of the SoC and sensor combination. For a phone at this price point and with this emphasis, that might be seen as an acceptable trade-off, though it is worth noting if the buyer has media production requirements or just expects something better from a 64MP sensor.

For basic image capture, the cameras on this phone are acceptable, but if you want to document a location or journey, I’d pick something that can at least record video at 1080p or higher.

Ulefone RugKing 5 Pro Camera samples

• Camera score: 3.5/5

Ulefone RugKing 5 Pro: Performance

• Battery-efficient SoC
• Dire CPU and GPU results

For this comparison, I went with another rugged design that offered a 20000 mAh battery that’s close in price to the RugKing 5 Pro; the Blackview Oscal Tank 1.

What’s slightly shocking about these results is how much more powerful the MediaTek Dimensity 7050 is when compared to the Unisoc T7250. Often, it's double the performance, especially when the benchmark requires any GPU support. What makes this deficit even more worrying is that the Dimensity 7050 is a rebranding of an older MediaTek SoC, the Dimensity 1080, a 6nm chip first launched in 2022.

A modern 4nm SoC, such as the Dimensity 7300, would have a GeekBench single-core score of over 1,000 and a multi-core score between 2,500 and 3,000. And, a Wildlife score of nearly 3,200.

To say that the Unisoc T7250 is underwhelming is an understatement. However, being a slug has one virtue, and it's that it makes the 20000 mAh battery last a long time.

In fact, when testing, the benchmark had an issue for some reason and stopped with 35% of the battery capacity still available, so it would have achieved more than 40 hours had that not happened.

The flipside of that coin, and this goes for both phones, is how slowly it recharges. Filling the 20000 mAh capacity from zero could easily take six hours or more, so don’t forget to plug it in before bed.

In short, those looking for CPU or GPU performance need to look elsewhere, but battery life is exceptional because it runs at these levels.

• Performance score: 3/5

Ulefone RugKing 5 Pro: Final verdict

There are some good things about this phone, especially its battery life, but they are overshadowed to some extent by the subpar SoC, video capture resolution, and a slow-charging battery.

All that said, given the price of this device, are those things an issue? That depends on exactly what the buyer is anticipating using the RugKing 5 Pro for.

If it’s a basic phone that takes over from the daily driver when the owner goes onto a building site, into the jungle or into a wet or dusty environment, then there is a place for it.

My concern is that it won’t take long to find the limitations of this device, and perhaps spending another $50 or more might have avoided those issues from the outset.

But, if all you want is a modern Android platform on hardware that’s abuse-resistant, then the RugKing 5 Pro is an option. But I’d check other phones in its price range for something that’s lighter and uses a more impressive platform.

Should I buy a Ulefone RugKing 5 Pro?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

For more ruggedized devices, we've reviewed the best rugged tablets, the best rugged laptops, and the best rugged hard drives

As this product isn't available and the hardware I was provided was an engineering prototype, consider this a hands-on, as between now and its release, some of the issues I'll talk about might well be fixed.

Punkt. is a Swiss company that manufactures in Germany, and the MC03, as the name suggests, is the third iteration of its secure, minimalist phone design.

If you like minimalist things, perhaps in black and white, and your Android phone not spaffing your personal data around carelessly, then perhaps the MC03 could be for you.

Compared to the MC02 model, the new MC03 trades up the Dimensity 900 for the newer Dimensity 7300 SoC, adds more RAM and storage, but largely keeps the same camera.

However, the thing that makes this offering stand out is AphyOS, a fork of AOSP 15, a GrapheneOS-related development, according to Punkt., is inherently more secure and able to keep the user's data from being easily harvested.

However, the AphyOS-specific apps are unique to Punkt. platforms require a monthly or yearly subscription after the first year, on top of the $699 base price of the device.

In terms of the phone's specifications, it's decent, but hardly premium. The SoC is mid-range, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage are hardly pushing the boat out, and a 64MP camera sensor is hardly cutting-edge. And, Punkt. phones have a reputation for bugs that linger over successive patches.

If you, or your business, are invested in the Proton suite the MC03 offers, including Mail, Calendar, Drive, VPN and Pass, alongside Threema for encrypted messaging, then perhaps the high cost and ongoing subscription might be worth it. But for regular Android users, the high cost of mid-range hardware and additional costs to ownership could be deal breakers.

Since this device hasn’t officially launched yet, it's way too early to say whether it is one of the best rugged phones yet.

Punkt. MC03: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? $699/£660/€699
• When is it out? On Pre-order
• Where can you get it? You can order it directly from Punkt.

Based on the most recent information, in Europe, the MC03 is on pre-order from the official site here, with the intention to ship at the end of April 2026. North American customers should be able to see this device in early Summer 2026, hopefully.

The pre-release pricing is $699/£660/€699. When exchange rates are taken into consideration, the most expensive place to buy is the UK, followed by Europe, where it's made, and the least expensive is the USA, which has tariffs on European goods. This makes zero sense, other than perhaps the market for secure phones in the USA is greater than in Europe.

As an alternative, Google's Pixel phones can run GrapheneOS, and a Pixel 10 is around $650 with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. And that phone has an optical zoom on its camera.

Punkt. MC03: Specs

Punkt. MC03: Design

• Minimalist
• By-the-numbers layout
• Internal access and battery replacement

Punkt has always been a design company that happens to make phones rather than the other way around. The MC03 carries that forward. The aesthetic is stripped back and deliberate, favouring clean lines over the glossy excesses that dominate this market.

This device is assembled at Gigaset's facility in Bocholt, Germany, which Punkt uses as a selling point and rightly so, given that German assembly brings with it a baseline assumption of quality control that assembly lines elsewhere do not always guarantee.

The dimensions are 163 x 76 x 11mm with a mass of just 240 grams. That is a meaningful presence in the hand and not a light phone by any measure, but it’s also significantly closer to a normal phone than those typically marketed as rugged. The IP68 rating for dust and water resistance is where it should be at this price point and covers immersion up to a metre for 30 minutes, which is the standard you would expect.

The frame is aluminium, and I suspect the display is Gorilla Glass protected, though Punkt's own materials are somewhat vague on those specifics.

The button layout is as derivative as it gets, with the volume rocker and power button on the right, and a custom button on the left.

However, due to unresolved beta issues with AphyOS, the fingerprint reading doesn’t currently work, and there is no way to define what the custom key does. By accident, I discovered it takes a shot while using the camera, but there is no tool to adjust what it does at this time. I’m assuming that the fingerprint will be read via the power button, because I don’t see the rear sensor that the phone mentioned when I tried to use this feature.

The bottom edge of the phone has the SIM tray and USB port, which doesn’t require a rubber plug, thankfully. It’s slightly odd that there is an external SIM tray, since the entire back of the MC03 comes off, revealing the replaceable battery and the TF card slot. Since there is only one Nano SIM supported by the external slot, why this wasn’t placed inside is a mystery. You can have a second SIM by eSIM, so you can have two phone numbers and a TF card in place simultaneously.

Having a battery you can replace is certainly a great feature, especially in an IP68-rated phone, although the capacity of only 5200 mAh isn’t huge. On top of the battery is a wireless charging coil that enables the phone to charge at 15W without a cable being inserted if you have a Qi-compatible charger.

Probably the other standout feature of the MC03 is the screen, a 6.67-inch OLED with a 120Hz refresh rate, a dramatic improvement over the IPS panel the MC02 got. However, I do find a strong sense of irony in putting OLED on a phone that uses monochrome icons as part of its minimalist ethos.

Although not in the Punkt. specs, the peak brightness is around 550 nits, which is workable but not especially impressive for outdoor use in strong sunlight. OLED's inherent contrast advantage helps considerably, and the 120Hz refresh makes the interface feel responsive rather than sluggish in a way the old panel never could. Punkt describes the display as supporting HDR, which should benefit anything streamed from Proton or accessed via the Wild Web environment.

The MC03 certainly has a love-or-hate aesthetic based on how you feel about minimalism as a design concept. While I’m not a massive fan of excessive embellishments, there isn’t much to get excited about here from a style perspective either. Because I have the view that a lack of style isn’t an actual style, in the same way that black isn’t truly a color.

But, you might think differently, and the replaceable battery is something few alternatives can match.

Punkt. MC03: Features

• MediaTek Dimensity 7300
• 5200 mAh battery

The Dimensity 7300 is such a common SoC that I must have written a sixteen-part white paper’s worth of words about this octa-core chip that uses 2x Cortex-A78 @ 2.5GHz + 6x Cortex-A55 @ 2.0GHz.

Technically, it can address up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, but on this device, you get half of that amount in each case. The issue here isn’t that the Dimensity 7300 is a poor SoC, because it's far from that, but frankly, it’s a mid-range SoC, not something built for a premium design.

That said, I’m wondering if the sort of customer Punkt. is aiming the MC03 at will care, because it’s unlikely they’ll be running the sort of tasks that demand more performance than the Dimensity 7300 has to offer. But it should be clear that if this phone were made in China, and not Germany, the justification for its asking price would be even more contradictory than it already is.

The one advantage of using a 4nm SoC design is that it can make the battery go a long way, and with only 5200 mAh of capacity under the hood, then maybe it was the right choice.

While it is possible to change this battery, this isn’t one of those situations where you would want to buy an extra battery to carry along to swap when you need more power. Replacing the battery requires partially dismantling the phone, and the connectors aren’t designed for repeated detachment and reattachment cycles. Swapping the battery is something you might do when it doesn’t hold a charge reliably, maybe three years from now, not because you forgot to charge it up.

With a battery of this size and 33W charging, it can be recharged from empty reasonably quickly, I estimate in under two hours.

And using wireless charging, it should take about twice that timeframe. That there doesn’t appear to be a provision for reverse charging is no huge surprise on a battery of this capacity.

Punkt. MC03: Software

AphyOS, developed by the Swiss firm Apostrophy, is the entire reason the MC03 exists and the source of its most interesting commercial divergence. The operating system is built on AOSP 15, meaning the Android foundation is familiar and functional, but Apostrophy has replaced the tracking and monetisation infrastructure that normally sits on top of that foundation with its own privacy-first layer.

The most visible expression of that approach is the dual environment. The Vault is the primary home screen and contains only applications that have been vetted and approved by Punkt and AphyOS.

In practice, that means the full Proton suite, including Mail, Calendar, Drive, VPN and Pass, alongside Threema for encrypted messaging and Punkt's own curated app selection. The interface in this environment is intentionally monochrome and minimal, which sounds austere, but the logic here is that it actively discourages the aimless scrolling that characterises most smartphone use.

The Wild Web is the second environment, accessible via a swipe, and it is where the MC03 reveals its pragmatism. Google Play is not installed by default, but users can enable it during the setup process if they wish. Third-party applications installed here operate within sandboxed environments with visible, adjustable permissions. The MC03 does not pretend the wider Android ecosystem does not exist; it simply insists that applications within it be contained and transparent about their data appetites.

Additional AphyOS features include Digital Nomad, a built-in VPN that encrypts traffic, and the Ledger, which gives per-app privacy controls ranging from full access to complete lockdown. The Ledger also includes a Carbon Reduction view showing background energy consumption by application, which is either a genuinely useful tool for the environmentally conscious or a conversation starter, depending on how you look at it.

The snag? The first twelve months of AphyOS are included with the device. After that, continued access to the full feature set costs $9.99 per month, or around $120 per year. Multi-year bundles reduce this significantly: three years of future subscription is priced at $129 (a saving of 45 per cent), and five years at $199 (a saving of 60 per cent).

Without a subscription, the phone reverts to a basic AOSP device, which means losing the Vault environment, the Proton integration, the VPN, and the managed app ecosystem.

Given the device's relatively high cost, is this additional subscription justified?

The honest answer is that value depends entirely on your existing outgoings and your threat model. If you already pay for Proton Mail and a separate VPN service, the MC03 subscription bundles several things you are already paying for into a device-level solution.

Many Proton users pay $9.99 per month for Proton Unlimited on its own, and that does not include device-level hardening or a Threema subscription. From that angle, the MC03 subscription is competitive with the status quo rather than additional to it.

For journalists, legal professionals, medical practitioners, activists in high-risk environments, or anyone handling commercially sensitive communications, the total cost-of-ownership argument is reasonably straightforward. For a general-purpose user who mostly wants social media and a decent camera, the case is harder to make.

Punkt. MC03: Cameras

• 64MP, 8MP and 2MP on the rear
• 32MP on the front
• Four cameras in total

Rear camera: 64MP Omnivision OV64b40 Primary Sensor, 8MP GalaxyCore GC08A3 Wide Angle, GalaxyCore GC02M1 Macro
Front camera: 32MP GalaxyCore GC32E1

Let’s cut to the chase, some of these sensors are decent, others less so, the thing they all have in common is that they are inexpensive. Evidently, Punkt. doesn’t consider its core audience to be interested in photography, which is why we see Omnivision and GalaxyCore sensors across the board.

While the 64MP Omnivision OV64b40 isn’t a bad primary sensor, it's not something I’d expect to see on a premium device, but rather on a low- to mid-tier device.

It can take some sharp photos in good light conditions, and it has ML-PDAF focusing, but it only has digital zooming, not optical, and its native 0.7μm pixels are smaller than many competitors.

But as I’ve seen more of the results of this sensor, I’ve also noticed that the dynamic range isn’t wide, and it tends to wash out bright areas too easily. Some of its deficiencies can be addressed by post-capture software processing, but I see little evidence of this on the MC03, resulting in missing detail in shadows, for example.

The redeeming aspect of this camera cluster is that it will take 4K video, even if the storage capacity of this phone isn’t ideal for doing that.

One disappointment is that Punkt. wouldn’t pay for the Widevine L1 license, only L3, so if you use the MC03 to watch streams from the likes of Disney or Netflix then the resolution will only be 480p, even if you have an HDR-rated display capable of better than 1080p.

In short, not a photographer's phone, although it can take the odd decent image.

Punkt. MC03 Camera samples

Punkt. MC03: Performance

Originally, I was going to compare this phone to the AGM G3 Pro, since it uses the same SoC, but instead, I went with the Motorola ThinkPhone 25, which also uses that platform. I could have used the Doogee V Max LR, Ulefone Armor 34 Pro or Ulefone Armor 30 Pro, as these all use it too.

As you can see from these numbers, the performance of the Dimensity 7300 is reasonably consistent irrespective of the brand of phone, and it delivers reasonable if unexciting results.

However, what I found genuinely interesting was that with less battery, 20% less, the Motorola managed to run for a little longer. That hints that when you reorganise the OS to be more secure, there might be an impact on power efficiency. And, the Motorola also charges more rapidly, because it can charge at 68W, not 33W.

But the most damning aspect of this comparison isn’t in these benchmark scores. It’s that the ThinkPhone costs only £275 in the UK (not available in the USA), and it comes with a far superior camera platform that includes an optical zoom.

Therefore, if you strip away the AphyOS part of the MC03 offering, it appears to be more than double the price that the hardware can reasonably justify.

Punkt. MC03: Early verdict

I can rationalise that some people find minimalist tech attractive, probably because of companies like Microsoft and others that overstuff their products with features their customers never asked for.

However, my experience with the MC03 engineering sample didn’t make me want to embrace the ringfenced mindset behind this design for numerous reasons.

As a reviewer of this device, along with the device I was provided by the makers with a long list of critical, major and minor known problems with the MC03. Having had the phone for a month, none of these has been addressed so far, and I’ve found additional problems along the way. Considering that this phone is meant to be ready for customers at the end of April, it’s concerning that I haven't seen a rapid succession of updates.

It may be that the retail version of this phone has changes, and the engineering sample I had wouldn't run the latest version of the OS. Or none of the subsequent releases are considered 'stable' and instead are alpha or beta releases.

If I do see a bug-squashing firmware release before it is available to purchase, I’ll add a note to that effect below.

But those flaws aside, my first complaint is that this device assumes, probably because the customer bought it, that they’ve entirely bought into the Punkt. ecosystem even before they’ve used the phone.

When you run through the typical question-and-answer system of a phone initialisation, you are told to create an Aphy account, which gives you one year of free use, and then it’s a paid subscription. You don’t get to skip this and come back to it later, which I personally hated.

Then it asks you which Aphy apps you want to install, even if you have no idea which ones you want, and it won’t accept the answer ‘none of them’. Again, the same approach to the customer is blatantly to do as you are told.

I randomly picked Proton VPN, and then I discovered that while you need an Aphy account to access the app, you also have to pay extra to use it.

It’s like at every turn, this device holds its hand up and declares that where you are heading is out of bounds. A personal favourite, and not one of the documented bugs, was that I couldn’t take screenshots of my benchmark results.

It told me that either the app or my organisation had not given permission for that! Yes, that overburdening corporation I work for decided I couldn’t take screenshots, even though I’m self-employed.

I could go on, but it’s all rather tedious to recount, and it made me just want vanilla Android more than ever.

Yes, I’m sure that what Punkt. has been built is technically more secure, and reducing the app model to this form has undeniable benefits. But, as has been the complaint with previous Punkt. phones, they’re expensive and can have significant bugs that the company seems slow to fix.

Others have commented that the security credentials of AphyOS come from companies that Punkt. does business with, where alternatives like Graphene have had independent third-party appraisals. I don’t have the inside knowledge to confirm or refute that view, but it would be interesting to see what the Mythos AI, created by Anthropic, made of this platform from a vulnerability perspective.

The security angle aside, the biggest issue here is asking this much for a phone with mid-tier components and additional subscriptions for the secure apps seems to shrink the number of potential customers for the MC03. But since this company has sold enough MC01 and MC02 devices to remain in business, it must be doing enough right to have brought us the MC03.

For more options, check out our selection of the best business smartphones we've tested.

• Lidl signs deal with 1Global for new MVNO
• Looks to offer low-cost, short-term mobile plans
• Lidl boasts over 100 million customers worldwide

Lidl has signed a deak to create a new MVNO offering mobile phone plans to its customers.

The as-yet-unnamed new MNVO will look to offer "simple, digital, and affordable mobile plans" for users across the world.

The supermarket giant has stores in 30 countries across the world, and boasts 100 million customers, making for a huge possible customer base.

Lidl expansion

Lidl says its deal with telecoms firm 1Global will look to address "a key need" for customers - getting access to reliable, flexible and affordable connectivity without being locked into long-term contracts.

“We are democratizing mobile communications," noted Julian Beer, Executive Vice President of Purchasing at Lidl International. "In doing so, we are setting new standards and making affordable mobile communications easier than ever for our customers. By integrating state-of-the-art technology, we can meet the needs of millions of customers for uncomplicated connectivity for their devices."

Lidl does already provide mobile deals in several countries via its existing MVNO Lidl Connect. The company operates in Germany using Vodafone’s network, in Switzerland with Salt Mobile, and in Austria on Drei’s infrastructure - but will now look to expand this into new markets across the world.

The deal will see Lidl take a 9.9% stake in 1Global, which already has partnerships with operators in 12 countries.

“Lidl is the partner that shares our vision: We want to make mobile communications as intuitive, flexible, and digital as possible for millions of people," noted Hakan Koç, founder and CEO of 1Global.

"Our technology focuses on digital offerings tailored to the needs of users and their various devices. We want to successfully drive the technological transformation of the global telecommunications market in the best interests of people.”

8849 Tank X: 2-minute review

For those unfamiliar with 8849, this is a sub-brand of Unihertz, and it takes its name from the height of Mount Everest in metres. Well, other than plate tectonics is pushing the mountain up, and rocks and ice fall off, so at the time of writing, it is 8,848.86 metres to be correct.

Oddly, the Tank series on 8849 has styling and functionality similar to the Unihertz Tank series, so perhaps the Unihertz brand will go away at some point.

The target demographic of the Tank X is those who need a go-anywhere design that packs plenty of battery capacity, are probably travelling to remote locations where they will want a camping light and to capture high-quality images and video.

A flagship product from 8849, the Tank X was launched in February 2026 at an early bird price of $549.99, against an RRP of $1,049.99. At that higher price, it will face serious scrutiny, but even at launch pricing, it is one of the more expensive rugged smartphones available.

The justification for that cost is a combination of headline features that most competitors simply cannot match. These include a built-in 1080p DLP projector rated at 220 lumens with laser autofocus, a 64MP night vision camera with four dedicated infrared LEDs, and a 17,600mAh dual-cell battery paired with 120W fast charging.

The MediaTek Dimensity 8200, built on a 4nm process, is a genuine step up from the mid-range chips used in most rugged phones at this price. Combined with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, the Tank X has the hardware to handle demanding tasks.

The downside to the kitchen-sink approach to feature selection seen here is that at 750g, this is one of the heaviest rugged phones around, and not something that anyone travelling on foot would choose to include in their backpacks.

That bulk is a deliberate engineering choice, since a smaller device wouldn’t be able to mount the dedicated FPC connections for the projector, flashlight, camping lamp, sensors, and antenna array. The absence of wireless charging is also intentional, with 8849 prioritising a field lantern over Qi coils.

Durability credentials include IP68 and IP69K waterproofing, along with MIL-STD-810H certification, which covers immersion, high-pressure water jets, shock, vibration, and temperature extremes. The device runs Android 15, which is current but not cutting-edge, and 8849 hasn’t mentioned if it will see an Android 16 upgrade.

The inclusion of features like a projector always takes this device into niche areas, since this isn’t a capability that everyone needs on their Smartphone. And because of that, I won’t be including it in our list of the best rugged phones. But that’s not to say it isn’t perfect for somebody.

8849 Tank X: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $550/£460 (early-bird)
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it directly from 8849 or via many online retailers such as Amazon.

Many phone makers like to make the launch of a new phone something special, probably because in the first month or so, it's likely they will see the largest number of sales.

The aggressive pitch of the 8849 Tank X is an early bird price from the makers of $549.99 (£460.46), which is almost half the $1,049.99 RRP. Call me cynical, but I feel it is unlikely the makers will sell any at the RRP, but the early bird price is attractive considering the specification of the Tank X.

The Amazon.com price is $629.99 with a coupon if you want next-day delivery.

To put that in perspective, the last phone I reviewed with a projector was the Ulefone Armor 34 Pro, a phone that cost $550/£519 when launched. It offered a bigger 25500 battery, a 150-lumen projector, and the current official price is $699.

However, Unihertz has the competitively priced Tank 2 Pro that can be bought for $479.99 direct from the maker, but only $412.59 on Amazon.com. And what makes that doubly interesting is that Unihertz is behind the 8849 sub-brand, so it's competing with itself with these products.

The Tank 2 Pro has more battery capacity, only 12GB of RAM, an older Helio G99 SoC, and is only 4G. But if it’s the projector that you want, this is the cheaper way to get that functionality.

There aren’t many phones with projectors, and the one in this design is higher quality than most, so the asking price seems realistic.

• Value score: 4/5

8849 Tank X: Specs

8849 Tank X: Design

• A blunt instrument
• Odd button arrangement
• No wireless charging

The Tank X is a substantial piece of hardware. At 31.9mm thick, it is approaching the depth of a small portable battery pack, and at 750 grams, it is heavier than many 13-inch laptops. Carrying it in a trouser pocket is impractical; a jacket chest pocket or belt holster is the more realistic option for field use. Personally, I think it's best mounted on a vehicle.

The chassis uses a half-board, double-sided internal layout to house its unusual combination of components. The projector occupies the upper rear section of the body, with a dedicated lens housing visible on the back panel. The 1,200-lumen camping light and emergency warning lights are also rear-mounted, along with the triple camera array.

Where the Tank X goes slightly off the well-worn path, it’s the button layout, which is odd for those who have used many Android phones. The right side has only the power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader, a choice that’s not ideal for left-handed people.

On the left are two tiny volume buttons, and why they’re so small, I’ve no idea, and then two customisable push-to-talk buttons. The SIM tray isn’t on either side; instead, it gets relegated to the top edge alongside the projector and an infrared emitter.

Why this phone ended up with such a non-standard button layout seems inexplicable, given how big it is and the large amounts of unused space on the sides.

Build quality is reinforced throughout with corner protection and a textured rear panel. IP68 and IP69K ratings mean the device tolerates water immersion to the 1,8M depth for up to 30 minutes and high-pressure wash conditions. MIL-STD-810H certification covers a broad set of environmental tests, making the Tank X suitable for deployment in demanding field environments ranging from construction sites to remote expeditions.

Although, and this is something I’ve not seen before, owners are not recommended to operate the buttons underwater. And, you are warned that “In daily use, exposure to seawater, swimming pool water, soapy water, hot water, or other liquids may reduce protective performance”.

The absence of wireless charging is worth noting for buyers accustomed to Qi pads. It is an intentional trade-off: 8849 replaced the Qi coil with the field lantern hardware, reasoning that users in the environments this device targets are more likely to have a USB-C cable than a charging mat.

The USB port is 2.0 spec, which means that getting files off the Tank X is substantially quicker over Wi-Fi than with a cable.

One aspect of the design I admired more was that the 6.78-inch LCD Punch-Hole Display is both bright, at up to 750 nits, and the colours are well saturated. This panel also has a small border to the physical front edge of the phone, which makes it seem even bigger than it is.

As a design, the priority for those making the Tank X was to stuff all the technology inside and protect it from the environment, which they achieved. However, there is almost nothing about this phone that is elegant or refined; it's more like a brick that’s had its sharpest edges filed down.

Design score: 3.5/5

8849 Tank X: Hardware

• MediaTek Dimensity 8200
• 17,600 mAh battery
• 1080p 220 Lumen Projector

The last phone I reviewed that used the MediaTek MT6896 (Dimensity 8200) was the Oukitel WP210 (read it here), and then I remarked that this SoC is a solid choice for those seeking a capable and efficient SoC in the mid-range smartphone market.

Built around an octa-core CPU, combining high-performance Cortex-A78 cores with energy-efficient Cortex-A55 cores, and a Mali-G610 MP6 GPU for enhanced graphics capabilities.

What’s great about this SoC is that it's extremely well-balanced in terms of processing power and graphics capabilities, and it supports high-end camera sensors and 5G comms.

There are more powerful chips available, like some of the Samsung options, and the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon designs, but you don’t typically see them in rugged phones.

In this context, the Dimensity 8200 has 16GB of LPDDR5 memory to work with, and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage, along with up to 2TB on an optional TF card. That’s plenty of RAM and space for most use cases.

Before we get to the headline feature, it’s worth talking about the battery in this phone, and how it seems slightly smaller than I’d have expected. While 17600 mAh isn’t a small battery, a phone that weighs 750g or more, like the Ulefone Armour 33 Pro, for example, would normally have 20000 mAh or more battery capacity.

In fact, the Ulefone Armor 33 Pro has 25500 mAh, or 7,900 mAh more than the Tank X. And that phone isn’t special, the Blackview Oscal Tank 1 has 20000 mAh of capacity, but is only 640g.

But as we’ll discover in the performance section, thanks to the power efficiency of the Dimensity 8200, the Tank X can make its reduced capacity go as far as, or farther than, phones with larger batteries.

Clearly, the culprit in making this phone 750g and reducing the space for extra battery capacity is the built-in projector.

The DLP projector is the defining feature of the Tank X and the one most likely to determine whether this device is relevant to any individual buyer. It can output at 1920 x 1080 with a claimed brightness of 220 lumens and uses laser autofocus for rapid alignment.

The throw range is approximately 0.5 to 3 metres (1.6 to 10 feet), allowing image sizes from small desk-surface projections to something approaching a practical portable screen.

I’ve seen other phone makers put projectors in their devices and claim all sorts of things, but this is the first one I’ve seen that could practically deliver most of what was claimed.

I should say that a home or office use projector might be rated at three times as bright, but then that’s physically much larger and requires mains power. But it should not be compared to a standalone projector with an equivalent lumen rating; the lens size and thermal constraints of a phone-integrated DLP mean the effective perceived brightness will be lower than that of a dedicated unit.

For a phone, however, it is the most capable projection system currently available in a handheld device, beating the 720p, 100-lumen units found in earlier 8849 and competing products. The 220 lumens offered here is genuinely usable in a darkened tent or unlit room, something I found quite shocking.

The one-touch projection feature allows rapid deployment without navigating menus, which is important for professional presentations and field briefings. 8849 claims the projector operates without excessive battery drain, but that’s something I’ll talk about in the performance section.

• Hardware score: 4/5

8849 Tank X: Cameras

• 50MP, 64MP and 8MP on the rear
• 50MP on the front
• Four cameras in total

The 8849 Tank X has four cameras:

Rear camera: 50 MP Sony IMX766, 64MP Omnivision OV64B1B Sensor (Night Vision), 8 MP HiSilicon HI847 Telephoto with 3x optical zoom and AF
Front camera: 50MP Hi5022Q Fixed Focus

The camera layout of the Tank X is unusual, and probably a little bit ground-breaking.

Although it doesn’t have a Samsung 108MP sensor, this is easily one of the most capable camera setups I’ve found on any rugged phone tested to date. The primary rear sensor is a 50MP Sony IMX766, the same component used in several mainstream flagship handsets from the past two years. It is a strong choice for a device targeting serious outdoor photography and documentation work.

But ironically, it isn’t the sensor with the most elements. That’s the 64MP Omnivision OV64B1B, a night vision camera that is supported by four infrared LEDs and, crucially, retains autofocus capability in IR mode.

Fixed-focus night vision cameras, which are common on competing rugged phones, struggle with anything but stationary subjects at predictable distances. The Tank X's AF capability in infrared mode is a meaningful operational advantage for field surveillance, wildlife observation, and low-light navigation.

And rounding out what is already an impressive rear camera cluster is an 8MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom and autofocus. The dual-LED flash system uses two colour-temperature LEDs at 1.5A maximum output, supplementing the IR LEDs for mixed-lighting situations. The front camera is a 50MP sensor, which is exceptionally high resolution for video calls and documentation selfies.

When I first ran the camera app, I was disappointed that it presented me with 1X and 3.4X options, but you can easily slide all the way from 1X to 20X, although it gets rather grainy over 10X. Being able to frame images without having to move is great, and the results, especially from the Sony IMX766 and Omnivision OV64B1B, are generally excellent.

If there is a weakness here, it's how bare the screen is for special modes.

It offers you Timelapse, QR-code, Mono, Super resolution and an editing mode. There is a PRO control set, but what happened to sports mode, or Panoramic?

Thankfully, there is no dumb AI mode where it puts hats or animal features on people, but a more fleshed-out photo application would be ideal.

One of the best things about this phone is the restraint of the Android 15 installation, as it leaves the AI to Gemini, and avoids all the cash-grab chatbots that other brands (Blackview, looking at you) have smeared onto their devices.

Overall, it could have more features in the photo app, but the camera offering here is exceptionally strong for a rugged phone.

8849 Tank X Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

8849 Tank X: Performance

• Modern and efficient SoC
• GPU issues with OpenGL 3.1 and Vulkan 1.3
• Great battery life

If it wasn’t for the projector, this phone would probably weigh around 650g, and have at least 20000 mAh of battery, so I thought it best to compare it with one that has almost exactly that spec. I should also mention that the typical price of the Blackview Oscal Tank 1 is only $285, although it doesn’t have a projector and has less memory and storage.

What these numbers are a good representation of is how much better the newer MediaTek 4nm SoCs are over their older 6nm models.

This gives the Tank X more processing power, more GPU performance, and it's singularly more power efficient. In fact, the CPU-GPU combination is so potent that it maxed out most 3DMark tests, except for Wildlife and Steel Nomad Lite.

One note about the battery consumption is that while it didn’t last as long by roughly an hour, the Tank X has roughly 88% of the capacity, and the test stopped with 20% of the battery capacity left. Had it used that final fifth of the battery, it would have exceeded Tank 1 by at least three to four hours, I estimate.

If given the choice between these two phones, it comes down to how much eight is too much and whether your budget goes far enough to have the superior features of the Tank X.

I almost forgot to mention the projector, which has both good and bad aspects. The bad first is that the fan needed to keep it cool is loud, and you will need to turn up the volume to be able to hear whatever content you are watching. I estimated that it was in the 55-60 dB range, which isn’t something easily ignored.

To see the impact on battery performance, I ran a YouTube video for 30 minutes and recorded the battery consumption before and after. Projecting 30 minutes of video used up 11% of the available battery, suggesting you might get through the first Lord of the Rings movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, but I suspect not the extended edition.

Therefore, you can watch a whole movie with a fully charged battery, as long as you choose the right one.

• Performance score: 4/5

8849 Tank X: Final verdict

Putting all the good things that 8849 put into the Tank X to one side for a moment, the elephant in this room is disguised as a phone or the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, depending on taste.

This isn’t a phone anyone would carry casually, unless they’re related to the late Andre the Giant.

That said, if you can put up with something as big and heavy that it could be mistaken for a useful part of house construction, then there is plenty to like here.

The screen on the Tank X is bright and large, with an excellent colour gamut. The camera cluster goes way beyond what most rugged phones offer, and you can take exceptional photos and video with it. This device also has the first truly practical 1080p projector I’ve seen on a phone, and that’s an exclusive feature.

As for price, the early-bird pricing is good, but I couldn’t see many of these being sold at a price greater than $1000 RRP.

It’s time to create a feature matrix and see how many boxes it ticks, because the Tank X might not be for everyone, but it could be for you.

Should I buy a 8849 Tank X?

Buy it if...