UMI ROME Review | Low Budget Smartphone For Only $100

Company Introduction

FirstFun is a relative new trading company with a mission to become the premier online electronics seller by providing an unparalleled selection of the very best gadgets, an unbeatable shopping experience, prompt shipping and exceptional customer service that exceeds expectations and it’s also worth mentioning that they are UMI official products distribution partner under their PHONECT brand name. With their latest new campaign, the company offers the new UMI ROME Phone with above average hardware specifications at very affordable price tag ranging between USD 100-109 Retail price.

The Phone hardware specifications include: 1.3GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 processor, 3GB RAM, Sony IMX164 13MP rear camera with Dual LED flash and 2MP selfie front camera, 5.5-inch 720p (1280 x 720) AMOLED display and 2,500mAh battery which should provide at least two days worth of battery life. In the connectivity arena, phone has dual micro SIM card slots and fully supports 3G / 4G networks.

UMI ROME Product review (TOC)

Company Introduction.
Specs & Product Information.

Package.
The items inside Package.
Umi Rome Unboxing / First Look
UMI ROME Hands on Review
Build Quality & Design
Software.
Hardware Performance
Touch Screen
Camera
Speaker
Microphone.
GPS
Battery
Final Words

Highlights:

Brand: UMI
Model: UMI ROME
OS: Android 5.1 System
Colors: Gold / Black.
Screen: AMOLED 5.5 Inch, 1280*720 Pixel
MTK6753 1.3GHz 64bit Octa Core
3GB RAM + 16GB ROM
8 MP Back Camera (Max Pixels 13 MP) + 2 MP Front Camera.
Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz, WCDMA 900/2100MHz, FDD-LTE B3/B7/B20.

UMI ROME Black Edition

UMI ROME Gold Edition

UMI ROME Package

Items inside Package

1x UMI ROME Phone.
1x Warranty / Contact Card.
1x 2500 mAh Battery.
1x Micro USB Data / Power Cable.

Umi Rome Unboxing and First Look

UMI ROME Hands on Review

Build Quality & Design

From first impressions and checking both quality and design are good. If I would to rank the quality from 1 to 10, I would give it a score between 7.5 – 8.

Things I didn’t Like:

The power button was a bit loose, but it’s not a major issue problem in terms of quality. But still, it shouldn’t happen and worth mentioning.

Front Flash: According to user guide there is one, but it doesn’t seem to work.

The “Home” button key isn’t properly centered relative to the other navigation keys.

Build Quality & Design

The phone is mostly composed from plastic material with a nice metal made frame with two grills located in the bottom of the speaker unit. This location of the speaker really makes sense, because if you look at most phones, it’s normally located on the back side of the phone which is not the ideal place, especially if put the it on a surface such a table sounds are observed by the “interfering” object.

UMI ROME | Back & Front Views

UMI ROME Phone | Back View

Software

The UMI ROME phone ROM comes Rooted with UMI’s customized launcher which runs under Android 5.1 Operating system and Kernel version 3.10.65+. From first impression, after playing with the device few days system works smoothly and overall user experience was good.

Hardware Performance

In the hardware performance arena, device preformed fast and stable. The Phone Specifications include 3GB RAM and a Mediatek MTK6754 Processor which runs at peak speed of 1.3GHz for each core.

AnTuTu Benchmark Results:

Score: 33671
3D: 4056
UX: 15137
CPU: 12711
RAM: 4767

Touch Screen

UMI decided to use a 2 point capacitive touch screen and not 5 points due to cost issues, for most applications you will not see any difference or feeling because in 99% of the cases users use only 2 points. For example: when typing, rotating a map or zoom pinching when taking stills photos.

After pointing that out, the quality of the screen is very reasonable and above it for 720P resolution touch screen. The screen is responsive and bright. If you set brightness level is set manually to the minimum, screen is still viewable and not too dark.

Cameras: Both camera’s performance and quality were reasonably good.
Speaker: Sound quality was relative good, with high volume level.
Microphone: Tested and had good sensitivity in picking low environment sounds.

UMI ROME | Photo Samepls

GPS Performance

GPS Worked out of the box without any need to tweak settings with third side apps.
Accuracy level: 14-18 feet.
Test App Name: GPS Test

Navigation Test:

Worked ok and tested without a data 3G/4G Connection with Here Maps App in offline mode.

Battery

The UMI ROME is equipped with 2500 mAh Li-Ion battery. After testing the phone for a day, running basic apps such as WeChat, Whatsapp and also surfing the web battery lasted about 3h:21m of screen usage, which is very reasonable. When level brightness is set manually to the lowest level you should expect about up to 4 hours of usage and perhaps even more, depending on what apps user is running in the background.

UMI ROM Battery

Test:

Monitoring App: GSam Batter Monitor.
Adaptive brightness: ON.
Data Connection: 4G LTE

Final Words

The UMI ROME is a high performance phone, which offers very high specifications vs. price ratio. If you’r looking for a cheap device with an Octa-Core (8 Cores) at affordable price and short on money, Then this phone is the best buy you can get for 109 USD retail price (including shipping). For users that are looking for more higher quality device more suitable for gaming, I recommend adding additional USD 40-60 and checking other brands.

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