Two-minute review

For those watching the market for rugged phones closely, there is a crunch about to happen where the specifications of cheap phones seem destined to collide with those from the premium end ranges.

At this ground zero point are makers like Blackview, aiming to sell rugged designs for a minimum of $250, but also trying to take market share from those in the $300-350 bracket.

A case in point is the Blackview BV9200, a phone that, based purely on specifications, should cost more than the asking price.

However, to achieve this attractive price point, some compromises have been made, and it’s the purchasers’ choice if those are significant enough to warrant not buying one.

The boxes unreservedly ticker in the BV9200 are that it has a good Helio G96 processor, providing plenty of power, alongside a reasonable GPU, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.1-based storage.

The scale of this device allows for a large 6.58-inch IPS LCD panel with a 120Hz refresh rate and a natural resolution of 1080 x 2408 pixels, sufficient for unscaled 1080p playback.

This is also the first Blackview phone to have dual smart-PA BOX speakers designed by Harman AudioEFX for an enhanced auditor experience.

The first signs of cost saving appear in the cameras, as the best sensor is a Samsung ISOCELL JN1 50MP, and this is supported by an 8MP Macro lens with a 120-degree field of view and a 0.3MP sensor for depth of field control.

The cameras are far from useless, but this phone isn’t packing the 108MP sensors we’ve seen from Doogee and Ulefone.

Another limitation is the battery capacity, as 5000 mAh is on the low side for a rugged design. But conversely, this has the positive impact that at 310g this is one of the lightest waterproof designs we’ve seen so far.

More of an issue potentially is the installed OS, which is Android 12 but with the Doke-OS 3.1 interface sat over the vanilla Android core.

This version of Android seems stable, but Doke-OS preloads all manner of games and other junk that most users won’t want or care about. It is possible to remove this junk, but it’s disappointing that it was pre-installed in the first place. By not using the vanilla interface options, new Android releases are likely likely to be delayed by its integration, and Blackview doesn’t have the best history of passing all of these on to users.

The final point about this phone is that it is 4G, not 5G, and how important that is will be dependent on the region you live in and the mobile service you use.

Blackview BV9200 price and availability

• How much does it cost? $250 / £210 / € 240 / $AU 360
• When is it out? It is available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it in most regions direct from AliExpress

Coming in black, green and orange, the BV9200 is best sourced from AliExpress, as it doesn’t seem to be generally available through Amazon or other big online retailers.

The pricing is relatively consistent based on exchange rates, with the three colours all costing around $250. AliExpress does offer two bundle options; phone with “Airbuds 6” and “Smartwatch R1”. These add about $25 if you want either of those extras.

The downside of AliExpress is that the phone will only ship within 30 days and could take another 30 to reach you. Hopefully, Blackview will make this design more readily available through Amazon and other faster channels.

• Value score: 4/5

Blackview BV9200 design

• Slim
• Offset camera cluster
• A charging monster

We’ve seen a new class of rugged phones emerge in the past year that delivers a robust package but in a distinctly thinner aspect.

While not as light as the svelte 290g Ulefone Armor 17 Pro, the 310g BV9200 is still much lighter than the majority of rugged designs and 150g less than Blackview’s own BV7100.

The reduced weight and thinner form make this an easier phone to handle and secure in a pocket, although, with a 6-58-inch screen, it is still a substantial device.

It’s a nice tactile experience, the sides and buttons are mostly metal, and the visible bolt heads on these are neatly recessed.

The layout used is a cookie-cutter form with the volume rocker and power/fingerprint reader on the right and the SIM tray and custom button on the left. As with most rugged phones that use it, this layout is biased towards right-handed users and not those who are left-handed.

The camera cluster is oddly set to the top left when viewed from behind, placing the main 50MP sensor centre approximately 24mm from the centreline of the phone body.

This position might need some adjustment for those taking pictures, but due to a gentle curve of the underside, the sensor cluster projection doesn’t stop the phone from lying flat.

That it can lay flat is essential, as it supports wireless charging using the Qi standard, but not the usual 15W, but the higher 33W level.

For those wanting to charge even faster, the USB-C port is the weapon of choice, as this allows 66W mode using the PSU that Blackview includes with its phone.

This port is covered with a rubber plug that needs to be removed every time it is charged this way, and therefore the wireless charging option might be preferable.

We’d also like to comment that the rubber plug on the BV9200 is small, and the space it offers for USB charging cables is narrow. When we first took this phone from its box, we tried to attach it to a typical USB-C cable, and it wouldn’t fit. The assumption is that the connector approach is this narrow to avoid water or dust getting in, but being forced to find the narrower USB-C cable that came with it isn’t ideal.

To summarise the design of the BV9200, there isn’t any remarkable about it, but equally, no horrible mistakes. It might have been a little better, but it could also have been much worse.

Design score: 4/5

Blackview BV9200 features

• High spec platform
• Modest battery
• No audio jack

Chinese phone makers love MediaTek SoCs for commercial reasons, and Blackview uses them exclusively in its latest designs.

What is slightly odd is where many phone makers are going with the Helio G99 or even the Dimensity 900, but the BV9200 has the scaled-back Helio G96. This silicon has seen some use in the Doogee S99, POCO M4 Pro and Xiaomi Redmi Note 11S, to mention just a few.

Like the Helio G99, this is an eight-core design that has two Cortex-A76 performance cores alongside six Cortex-A55 efficiency cores and the same Mali-G57 MC2 GPU.

The only major computing platform difference is that the performance G99 can clock its Cortex-A76 parts up to 2.2GHz, whereas the G96 is capped at 2.05 GHz. The Cortex-A55 cores run at 2 GHZ on both chips.

While not the very fastest SoC that MediaTek makes, the G96 is powerful enough for most purposes.

Another strong point in the specification is the screen. This IPS panel offers strong colours, a good resolution and up to a 120Hz refresh along with 90Hz and 60Hz, and it is well protected from accidental damage with a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 5.

Where the BV9200 is less impressive is in the networking, cameras and battery specifications.

For example, the wireless networking on this phone is only WiFi 5, although it is Bluetooth 5.2, thankfully.

The camera selection is curious, as we’ve not seen another phone with this exact combination. While the primary 50MP camera and optics look decent, typically, we see them alongside 16MB supporting sensors. But here, the wide-angle option is just 8MP, and the depth of field sensor is 0.3MP, making it remarkably low res.

As we’ll cover in more detail below, these curious choices don’t impact the quality of the results, but they do seem to fly in the face of what other phone makers are doing.

A rugged phone only having 5000 mAh of battery capacity does seem on the low side, especially for those wanting to take this device on a long hike away from mains power.

That said, it is possible to carry charging packs or solar collectors to extend its operation, and when you do encounter power, the BV9200 can charge up remarkably quickly.

One final feature note is that this phone has no 3.5mm audio jack, and Blackview didn’t include an adapter to use the USB for headphones. These are cheaply bought, but it is worth noting that an adapter will be required.

• Feature score: 4/5

Blackview BV9200 cameras

• Plenty of performance
• Adequate for games
• Four cameras in total
• No night vision or thermal

The Blackview BV9200 has four cameras:

• Rear cameras: 50MP f/1.8 Samsung ISOCELL JN1 (Main), 18MP (8MP ultra-macro) GalaxyCore GC08A3, 0.3 MP (depth sensor)
• Front camera: 16MP Samsung S5K3P9SP (wide)

Despite a somewhat odd combination of sensors, the camera on the BV9200 performs admirably. The main sensor might be 50MP, but the maximum image size that is captured is 13MP in a 4:3 ratio, making the files significantly smaller. Having more sensor pixels than those on the output results is some crisp and colour-accurate results.

Our only complaint is that getting the best images requires good lighting, as the focus is poor in less-than-ideal lighting conditions. This issue is especially true of the night vision mode, something we’d avoid using.

But for daylight photography, it is possible to get some excellent captures that are generally free of optical aberrations and colour shifts. For those wanting the best results, we recommend Beauty mode and the HDR options since these make the best use of the ArcSoft True-Chroma software working behind the scenes to extract the best image fidelity.

The ultra-macro mode gets to within about 10mm of the subject, and the beauty mode has a depth control with ten levels of impact.

Probably one of the best features of the camera is that it will shoot video at a resolution above 1080p. It can record 2K or, more accurately, 1440p, aka 2560 x 1440 video.

The only downside of that functionality and video capture is that no controls are provided for frame rate. It’s 30fps at all resolutions, with no other choices.

The phone camera application does have H264 or HEVC encoding, balancing the options for the greatest compatibility with the most efficient encoding. And, image stabilisation is always available irrespective of capture resolution.

Overall, the camera on the BV9200 is better than anticipated, and unless you need night vision or some other special sensor modes, it does a reasonable job.

Camera samples

• Camera score: 3/5

Blackview BV9200 performance

• All-round performer
• Strong GPU
• Power and efficiency

Overall, the performance of this phone is excellent, and the 120MHz mode of the display makes the interface seem even smoother than normal.

If we compare the G96 used in the BV9200 with a G99-powered phone, the difference is about 10% lower across most benchmarks, but in some tests, it is much, much closer.

The PCMark 3.0 test, as an example, scores 8727 on the BV9200 and 9176 on the Ulefone Armor 17 Pro, a difference of just 5%.

To get significantly better performance than this requires the Dimensity 900 powered phone, and those cost more than double the asking price of the BV9200.

The graphics performance of this SoC will work for most mobile games, even if it’s only about 60% of the power that the Mali-G68 MC4 used in the Dimensity 900 SoC can output.

Understanding the wide range of capabilities, game creators tend to create predefined quality settings for specific SoCs and screen resolutions, and the BV9200 has enough visual performance that this shouldn’t be an issue.

The only issues you might encounter are those related to the lack of Widevine L1 encryption, a standard that many of the branded streaming services use to deliver their content to TVs and mobile devices.

Blackview only offers an L3 security level on the BV9200, reducing the streamed quality of most services to 480p (640 x 480), irrespective of the screen size.

But in some services, such as watching some, but not all, streamed movies through Google TV, possibly due to a mistake when the OS was compiled, movies appear with a large black border around them, and no icon appears to rescale them to the full display.

The lack of Widevine L1 and inconsistent scaling issues make the BV9200 unsuitable for watching TV shows and movies on this phone, despite the screen being suitable for this purpose.

• Performance score: 5/5

Blackview BV9200 battery

• 66W Fast charging
• 33W Qi charging

The SoC in the BV9200 is highly efficient and can make the most of the battery capacity, even if it is only 5,000 mAh. For a typical smartphone, that would be plenty of battery, but for a rugged design, it's on the light side of what is often provided.

That said, you should be able to get more than six hours of movie streaming on a single charge, and on standby, it should last 500 hours on standby and 37.5 hours calling.

But where the BV9200 has the advantage is when it charges. Because it has two charging options, and both of them get the phone ready to travel quickly.

For conventional USB-C charging, when empty, it can utilise the 66W charger Blackview include with the phone. That enables it to grab 20% of the power capacity in 5 minutes and be fully recharged in around 53 minutes.

Conversely, the 33W wireless charging option takes approximately twice as long, but it is still much faster than most wireless charging phones, as they usually only support 15W mode.

To be concise, the battery on this phone could be bigger, but making it this size makes the phone light and also enables it to charge quickly.

• Battery score: 4/5

Like the Ulefone 17 Pro, the Blackview 9200 provides an excellent alternative to the brick-like rugged phones that are heavy and somewhat impractical.

The SoC is a good choice, with plenty of RAM and storage. The camera seems somewhat quirky but delivers good results, and given the hardware in this phone, it is competitively priced.

What is less wonderful is the Doke-OS version of Android and all the apps you never asked for, and that it is 4G in a world that is increasingly 5G.

For those wanting to go into the wilderness and not take an iPhone, the Blackview BV9200 is an affordable choice. With the exception of the battery capacity, it is built for that job.

Blackview BV9200 score card

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Two-minute review

When you’ve recently reviewed the 16 Pro and then are sent the 17 Pro, it’s not an unreasonable conclusion that the new phone will build on the previous design.

But, the Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro takes very little, if anything, from its predecessor.

Where that was a super-cheap and heavy, rugged phone with a massive speaker on its back, the 17 Pro is double the cost, significantly lighter and generally has a much better specification.

Where the 16 Pro uses the lacklustre MediaTek Helio G25 SoC, the 17 Pro sports the very pinnacle of the Helio series, the G99. A chip that, in comparison to other SoCs, the G99 is a very powerful ARM processor and offers excellent performance.

The underlying platform allows this phone can handle most tasks with ease while also offering great battery life. Additionally, it supports a wide range of features, such as dual-SIM support, NFC, and Wi-Fi 6. In terms of gaming performance, the Helio G99 is enough power for most games, although it may struggle with more intense titles.

The strengths of this design over other rugged options are that at just 290g it is much lighter than most, and the case isn’t oddly shaped and thickened. That makes it a more practical phone to carry, even if you don’t use the optional protective case and its belt clip.

It also has an impressive 108MP rear camera, along with an 8MP PDFA wide-angle sensor and an 8MP night vision camera, Though even with that massive rear sensor, it still can’t capture 4K resolution video, only 2K.

There are two significant weaknesses in the 17 Pro, and the first of those is a battery capacity of just 5380 mAh, an amount that you would find in any typical mid-priced phone.

The battery can be fast charged, and the phone supports wireless charging, but this isn’t a phone that you would want to take on a long hike away from civilisation.

The second major weakness is that it doesn’t support 5G, making this a 4G phone with LTE support at best. Phones costing this much are starting to come with 5G, but this one doesn’t.

Overall, a phone that is more practical than most rugged designs and an interesting divergence from the previous 16 Pro.

This isn’t an expensive device and has plenty of useful features for the asking price..

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro price and availability

• How much does it cost? $340 / £290
• When is it out? It is available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it in most regions direct from AliExpress or on Amazon.com

Typically, on Amazon or other mainstream online retailers, the 17 Pro costs around $340, but for those willing to wait for AliExpress to deliver, it can be purchased for $60 less.

That still makes it almost twice the cost of the 16 Pro, but the power and performance in this design justifies the additional cost.

Alongside just the phone, the 17 Pro can be bought with an additional protective case, a wireless charging base, a portable Bluetooth speaker, or various combinations of those items. With them all included by AliExpress, it costs about the same as just the phone from Amazon.

Even with the increase over the 16 Pro, this is still one of the cheapest phones built around the MediaTek Helio G99 SoC and more sophisticated than the typical rugged designs.

• Value score: 4/5

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro design

• Solid construction
• By-the-numbers buttons
• Dedicated flashlight

Rugged phones tend to fall into two subcategories; chunky or slim. And, the 17 Pro is distinctly in the ‘slim’ category, only 12.5mm thick.

It would be even thinner if the camera cluster on the rear didn’t project outwards.

At just 290 g, this is one of the lightest phones from Ulefone we’ve seen, and unless specifically primed, most people picking up this device would assume it was a regular Chinese smartphone.

That said, there are a few rugged hints, in that the back has a faux carbon fibre finish, and the sides and all the buttons are metal.

The button layout is the de facto standard comprising of the audio rocker and power button (doubling as thumbprint reader) on the right and the custom button and SIM tray on the left.

On the bottom edge is the USB-C charging port and a 3.5mm audio headphone jack, and neither of these is protected by a rubber plug.

Despite the lack of a plug, the phone is rated for IP68 (maximum depth of 1.5 metres up to 30 minutes) under IEC, and it even has underwater camera modes.

Also, in the bottom left corner is a lanyard hole for those wanting to secure the Pro 17 to a strap or belt.

As with most modern phones, the standout feature is the display. It’s a 20:9, 1080 x 2408 FHD+ screen, offering 6.58‑inches of touch panel that even those with big fingers should be able to operate. It’s bright and colourful and has a decent resolution for viewing captured images and video. The refresh rate is 120Hz, enough to avoid screen tearing when rapidly scrolling images.

In the centre of the back are the cameras, in a generally good position for those that often accidentally put their fingers on the edge of their photos. This is a triple-sensor cluster with the top sensor offering an amazing 108MP resolution. The two other sensors are one for wide-angle work (8MP) and a night vision camera (also 8MP).

To provide flash illumination, three conventional LEDs and two IR LEDs are also part of the rear camera cluster.

The 16MP selfie camera on the front is centrally mounted in a cutout at the top of the display. Normally the loss of a part of the panel to this feature would annoy us, but the screen here has extra pixels to avoid this being a factor in presenting video or images.

Overall, the Pro 17 is a good example of a new generation of ruggedized designs where its ability to withstand the environment and a few hard knocks hasn’t compromised it as a phone in any substantial way.

Design score: 4/5

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro hardware

• Low spec platform
• Decent battery size
• Endoscope option

The Mediatek Helio G99 is a mid-range mobile system on a chip (SoC) released in 2021. It is based on the 12nm fabrication process and is the successor to the Helio G90T. The Helio G99 is an 8-core CPU with 4 ARM Cortex A-76 and 4 ARM Cortex A-55 cores. This package includes a Mali-G57 MC2 GPU for graphics and support for up to 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM and UFS 2.1 storage.

In this design, 8GB of memory is combined with 256GB of main storage, providing enough space for most use profiles. But this is also one of the new designs where some of the main storage can be reallocated to RAM, boosting the amount available by up to 5GB. But, the maker warns that not all Android software is compatible with this Virtual Memory Expansion feature.

While this chip doesn’t compete with some of the latest Snapdragon designs, it’s an excellent all-around performer and allows the 17 Pro to deliver impressive benchmark scores.

An SoC of this performance level is critical when you have a camera capable of 108MP images in the system for the post-processing of that data.

One contradiction of this design is that the screen has a resolution of 2408 x 1080, providing more space than a 1080p video requires to be fully represented without scaling.

However, the Pro 17 doesn’t support the Widevine L1 video decryption standard, resulting in streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ reducing the best resolution available to just 480p. It is possible to get 1080p playback on YouTube and with capture videos, but not over most streaming services.

This limitation appears to be the norm among Chinese phones, and it may be to do with the additional cost of getting L1, over the L3 decryption many come with.

While still image capture can be made at crazy resolutions, even with a 108MP sensor, the Pro 17 can only offer 2K recording at 30fps, with no 4K options.

While there may be good reasons for avoiding 4K, why they didn’t include faster frame rate versions of 1080p, 720p and 480p is a mystery. They’re all locked at 30fps.

For western buyers, the lack of 5G comms might be an issue, depending on the locale, but it does offer a pervasive selection of 4G LTE frequencies (FDD and TDD) alongside support for 3G and 2G legacy services.

One curiosity is that this design supports simultaneous dual SIM support, allowing both connections to be active. However, the support of two 4G connections to a single device depends on the local telecom operator and if they allow this on their service.

• Hardware score: 4/5

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro cameras

• 108MP sensor on the rear
• Wide-angle, macro and night vision
• Four cameras in total

The Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro has four cameras:

• Rear cameras: 108MP Samsung HM2, 8 MP GC08A3 Sensor (Wide), 8MP Samsung S5K4H7 Sensor (Night Vision)
  Front camera: 8MP SONY IMX481 Sensor (Wide)

When you see the Samsung HM2 108MP sensor on this phone, one is immediately drawn to conclude that this might be a good phone for pictures, and it is.

However, the 108MP mode that captures whopping 12000 x 8992 resolution images isn’t the one that most people will use. Because none of the ‘Pro Mode’ features exists at this level of detail, and with the exception of 4X digital zoom, there are no options.

The standard resolution for pictures is only 12MP, or 4000 x 2992, or about 12% of the sensor area.

Admittedly not as impressive as 108MP, but the lower quality setting gives full control over ISO, aperture and speed, resulting in much better quality results.

It’s also worth considering that the typical size of a 108MP image is between 20MB and 25MB, whereas a 12MP is usually below 10MB. It takes longer to take 108MP images, you have less control, and they take up excessive space.

Usually, we might complain that RAW isn’t supported, but 108MP RAW images would be exceptionally large and probably not practical on this platform.

It’s tempting to think that the 108MP is just a hook to get customers who want the best pictures, but it’s more complicated than that due to the results of using a 108MP sensor to take 12MP images.

These pictures are predictably good, display relatively few artefacts and chromatic aberrations, and are well colour balanced even with everything set to auto.

It would have been nice to have a 24MP or 56MP mode which had all the controls of 12MP, but it is possible to get some excellent results out of the Pro 17, just not by using 108MP.

Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro performance

• Performance powerhouse
• GPU isn’t the very quickest

These results are right up with the very best we’ve had from rugged phones, bettered only by those powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 900 SoC or Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 5G.

And, even those devices only make a handful of score points more, and not across all benchmarks.

To underline this, the Passmark score of 9359 is one the highest we’ve tested from a rugged phone, and only Dimensity 900-powered devices did better.

The only weakness we noticed is that the Mali-G57 MC2 isn’t as quick as the Mali-G68 MP4 that the Dimensity 900 SoC uses, delivering 1359 on the Wild Life test on this phone, but more than 2000 on the Doogee V30 and Ulefone Power Armor 18T.

That makes the G99 a little less suitable for gaming, but not by an amount most players would immediately notice.

What is more likely to be noticeable is the amount of battery capacity.

• Performance score: 4/5

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro battery

• Small capacity for rugged design
• 66W super fast charging
• Qi charging and MagSafe

The elephant in this powerhouse is the battery, or more specifically, the 5380 mAh battery Ulefone blessed the 17 Pro with.

By rugged phone standards, that’s not huge, and while it is bigger than the 4,323mAh that Apple gives the iPhone 14 Pro Max, we typically see phones with 10,000 or more mAh in this sector.

The available capacity has a quoted standby of 294 hours and a talk-time of 29 hours, but realistically most phones don’t run out of power on standby or while being used as a phone.

With a smaller battery, Ulefone did make some effort to enable the phone to charge quickly, and with a suitable charger like the one included with the phone, it can handle a 66W fast charge. Due to the flattened back, this design can also wireless charge up to 15W using Qi charging pad (not included). It will also wireless reverse charge to another phone with Qi.

Its final trick is that it can also magnetically wireless charge in much the same way as a recent iPhone, allowing it to be used with a magnetic wallet. Included in the box is a soft magnetic wallet that doubles as a phone stand, conveniently.

While the 17 Pro might not have the battery capacity of the 16 Pro or 18T, it does have a few other neat charging features that go some way to balance this equation. The smaller battery positively impacts the phone's overall weight, importantly.

• Battery score: 3/5

There are many things to like about the 17 Pro that address some of the issues with the 16 Pro and also offer a hint at where Ulefone is likely to go with future rugged designs.

Instead of emulating spare parts from a transformer, the Pro 17 offers a large but not excessively sized phone that is robust and protected from the environment without resorting to shipping container aesthetics.

The MediaTek Helio G99 SoC gives plenty of processing performance, and the 108MP camera sensor delivers excellent photo capture. The only real caveat is the limited battery capacity, making it less than ideal for long adventure holidays away from mains power.

It might cost nearly double the cost of the 16 Pro, but the 17 Pro is a lot more phone for the cash and probably better value on the investment.

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro score card

Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro GT?

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