Umi Super-the Flagship Killer at 199.89$

No longer do you have to pay the big bucks for a phone that includes a great hardware, great design & decent camera performance. The UMi Super storms onto the stage, fixing the mistakes of the Umi Touch, whilst offering nearly all of the features most people look for in a modern smartphone.

Inside the UMi Super you’ll find one of the latest MediaTek Octa-Core Mobile Processors, 4GBs of RAM, 32GBs of Samsung eMMC storage, an ARM Mali-860 Dual-Core GPU, Full HD Screen and to top it all off it even includes a fingerprint sensor.

What we love

• Halo Notification LED
• Craftmanship & Build-quality
• Sensor packed (Hurray!)
• Screen Quality (Natural)
• 4GB RAM
• Helio P10 CPU (Octo-Core)
• Great gaming performance
• 32GB Fast Samsung storage

Could be better

• It’s Heavy (Big battery included)
• Camera isn’t a camera button
• Max volume is low
• Fingerprint sensor is temperamental
• Camera not as good as UMi Touch’s

Screen

The 5.5″ Full HD screen is a real pleasure to behold with its excellent viewing angles and natural colour tone. Images & video are crisp thanks to the 1920x1080p resolution that gives the phone a respectable PPI of 401 which is plenty for a 5.5″ phone. Also included is MediaTek’s MiraVision software which allows you to tweak the screen settings to your desired look (natural, vivid or custom).

Screen Tech Specs: SHARP 5.5″ LTPS Screen, Natural Colours, 1080×1920, 401 PPI, 2.5D, Gorilla Glass 3

Colours Available: Grey, Gold & Silver

Hardware & Responsiveness

Here’s the bit we all want to know, how does the UMi Super hold up when we put it through it’s Android paces. I wasn’t expecting anything less than fast, knowing that the Super has a 2GHz Octo-Core (Helio P10) mobile processor inside and you’ll be pleased to know all my expectations were met. It’s quick, noticeably quicker than previous generations of MediaTek processors like the MT6753 and the MTK6735.

Web pages load faster, apps open quicker, the whole experience feels fast and responsive.

CPU: Octa-Core 2GHz

GPU: Mali-T860 700MHz Dual-Core

RAM: 4GB
Storage: 32GB Samsung (Fast!) (read speed: 216MB/s , write speed: 145MB/s)
Expandable: 264GB

This is in part thanks to the new range of MediaTek processors, which include more sensors built directly onto the chip. You can see all the sensors & connectivity of the UMi Super under the Connectivity section of this review.UMi haven’t been frugal on the rest of the hardware either. Inside we find 32GB of fast Samsung eMMC memory which we clocked at 216MBs read and 145MBs write speeds. Add to this 4GB of RAM of we have some pretty impressive specifications to go into our gaming tests with.

Sensors? Really? Yes really! The UMi Super has all the basic sensors and more. Previously Chinese manufacturers have always left us feeling a little empty in the sensor department which is why it’s exciting to see a whole host of data collecting thingies inside the Super.

Storage

The UMi Super has just the right amount of storage that you would expect for the selling price. 32GBs of fast Samsung eMMC storage, leaving you with 24.69GB of usable space. What’s great is that you can expand this by up to a 256GB with aMicro-SD card, giving you a max of 280GB if you need it.

Battery

Inside the UMi Super, you’ll find a hefty 4000mAh Sony battery that scored one of the best Geekbench battery scores we’ve seen in a while. UMi have coupled this large capacity battery with PE+ Quick Charge Technology that they claim can charge the phone up to 75% in just 30 minutes.

We put this claim to the test below, although, I should point out that as the Super uses a 2-pin charger we did use an adapter, between the charger and the plug socket, during our tests.

As you can see below our results aren’t quite as optimistic as the UMi claims (still decent for a 4000mAh battery):

• 50% – 1 hour
• 75% – 1 hour 28 minutes
• 100% – 2 hours 10 minutes
  Buy it now

Camera

The first thing you’ll notice about the Panasonic camera lens is its fast, you can keep taking photos without pausing. Focussing feels much snappier than when using a Sony IMX lens although this may be in part due to the Helio P10. Face detection works well and tracked targets accurately.

Another nice feature is the inbuilt Instagram-like filters that UMi have built into their camera app. These work for both the selfie and rear camera.

Camera Features: HDR, Time lapse, EIS, ZSD, Anti-shake, Face detection, White Balance, Scene mode, Picture in picture mode, Beauty Mode, Gesture snap, Smile snap, Panorama, Live filters (9 modes)

Back Camera:

• Panasonic Lens (MN34172)
• 13MP
• Bright Dual LED Flash
• 1080P video recording

Final Verdict
Buy it now

Front Camera:

• 5MP
• GalaxyCore® GC5005
• Beauty Mode
• Inbuilt Filters