What is it?

The Umidigi F1 is a modern phone with excellent specs that whisper in the ear of flagship phones. It sports a Helio p60 processor made by Mediatek, often a budget favourite among Chinese phone manufacturers, 128GB ROM storage and 4GB RAM, all powered by a 5150mAh battery. It runs almost stock Android 9 Pie and has a full HD 6.3 inch display, which shows a resolution of 2340 x 1080. I also has features not often present in Chinese phones such as NFC connectivity and a dual camera. I arrived upon this phone myself because it seemed to have specifications far better than the price would suggest – a hallmark for any true barg.

Does it look and feel good?

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Magnetic strip on the back was added by me.

I can confirm that, for the most part, it looks and feels good. A naive child just the other day asked me whether I had an iPhone X, which shows that it certainly has a flagship look. The display covers most of the front of the phone barring a small stripe at the bottom and a notch at the top encasing the forward facing camera. The front glass is slightly curved towards the edges, leading to the plastic back and side, which is one piece. It is plastic, which obviously isn’t a rich man’s material, but it feels all right, if a little slippery. The rear of the phone has a fingerprint sensor and the dual camera, both of which feel and look fairly high quality in the phone. The camera especially would not look out of place on any flagship. The side buttons are plastic and nothing to shout about. It came with a rubberised case, which is a rubberised case.

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At a glance, the specs tell a bargainous story.

The good bits:

The display : It covers the front of the phone and looks flash, to be honest.

: It covers the front of the phone and looks flash, to be honest. The camera: It looks premium on the back of the phone.

The not so good bits:

Plastic : Mr and Mrs Umidigi seem to be getting a cheap deal on plastic, because this phone is made from a big ball of it.

: Mr and Mrs Umidigi seem to be getting a cheap deal on plastic, because this phone is made from a big ball of it. Buttons: They haven’t got the textured feel that other phone buttons have – again, they are plastic, and that’s it.

Does it work well?

The specifications seem to point towards a phone that can push flagships for a fraction of the price, and I’m glad to say that this is the reality. Having owned the phone for six months, I have very rarely pushed it’s limits. The storage space especially is fantastic. I have used the storage recklessly over the past six months, rarely if ever deleting anything and downloading for offline usage with Google Drive and Spotify with abandon, and I have as of yet only used 44%, with 71.32GB remaining. It simply ceases to become an issue. I have not used the phone for gaming as such, but has performed admirably on Bloons Tower Defence and Motorsport Manager, my two vices. My average RAM usage is 2.6 out of 3.9 available, with Android OS using 1.2GB on average, so there is space for play there. Overall, it works bloody well for something that is a fraction of the cost of, for example, the Huawei P20.

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The camera in question.

One disappointment is the camera. If you hold it very still, in good lighting, it seems to do a good job; in particular, I have taken some fantastic photos using the ‘Bokeh’ mode, where the dual cameras seem to do a good job of focusing the immediate object whilst blurring the background. However, deploy it in any other situation, with any movement, bad lighting or action in the scene and it becomes obsolete. The blurring is so prevalent that my girlfriend, who owns an iPhone 8, oftens shoos my camera away when I whip it out. When reviewing other things, I use my old, broken first-gen Google Pixel or my girlfriend’s iPhone rather than this.



I have also had issues with the OS freezing in the past, but this has been corrected by updates deployed in August. I have seen people be suspicious of the nature of Umidigi’s updates, claiming they do not update, but so far I have been reasonably impressed.

The good bits:

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The NFC works perfectly.

The performance: It performs like a phone should, minimising any fuss and being functionally good.

It performs like a phone should, minimising any fuss and being functionally good. Storage: It feels good to be able to store everything including your dog on a phone without a care in the world.

It feels good to be able to store everything including your dog on a phone without a care in the world. Battery: Easily and comfortably lasts one day with regular usage, and two days in battery saver mode.

Easily and comfortably lasts one day with regular usage, and two days in battery saver mode. NFC: NFC is not usually a budget addition, so it is nice that it has this.

The not so good bits:

Camera: Genuinely unusable unless you have the perfect circumstances.

Genuinely unusable unless you have the perfect circumstances. Used to freeze: Now fixed, but was a regular irk for a few months beforehand.

To conclude: Is this a magical barg?

Overall, I would say yes, as it offers similar specs to the Huawei P20 whilst being less than half of the price. It has it’s foibles and does not necessarily feel premium, but if you want a solid phone that will do the job of a much better phone for a fraction of the cost, this is your phone. If you want a gaming phone, or a phone to take pictures with, I would recommend something western, as these are the features other chinese phones currently seem to lack too. However, if you are looking for something functional and simple, I can’t recommend this enough.



Barg Rating: 8/10 Wizard of the Barg

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