[Device Reviews and Information] Alberto96:
Review

Introduction

Unlike previous devices from Ulefone, this is the first one powered by a dedicated DAC (or HiFi, choose the word that you prefer) used to increase Sound Quality, just like External Sound Cards for PCs used for Gaming or Professional Use, and offered at a pretty low price unlike other DAC-Powered devices.

This is the Ulefone Vienna

Hardware

This device is powered by a Mediatek MT6753 SOC clocked at 1.3GHz, with a plenty amount of RAM (3GB) and ROM (32GB). It shares the same Rear Camera sensor used by the ASUS ZenFone Zoom (13MP Panasonic MN34150), pretty rare to find, while the Front Camera sensor is the common 5MP OmniVision OV5648. Another interesting hardware component on this device is the Screen, it is made by Sharp and provides an excellent viewing experience, even if I found its brightness a bit low. Follow my next paragraphs to know more.

Unboxing

Packaging comes with many accessories: 1x TPU Cover (transparent), 1x Screen Protector (Plastic-made), 1x SIM/MicroSD tray Eject Tool, 1x Micro-USB Cable (nice design), 1x 5V/1.5A USB Charger, 1x Manual and the Smartphone (of course). No Headset included.

Ulefone choose to use a Plastic chassis on this device, but this doesn’t mean that the device isn’t solid enough. It feels pretty well-made, with extremely rounded angles and sides. This makes the device lightweight and comfortable to use.

It is just 15.4x7.9x0.7cm, absolutely slim and it weights 154g.

On the front side there is the 2.5D Curved Display, pretty common on latest Chinese Smartphones. (i’m sorry for the bad quality of the the front side photos, but both cameras struggles while trying to focus on a black reflective surface)

The upper front side of the device features a Front-Facing Camera (seems to have large lens), an Earpiece, and the Sensors hole that includes Light, Proximity and Gesture Sensors. Unfortunately No Notification LED is here.

On the lower front side of the device there are the Soft-Keys Navigation Buttons (not retro-illuminated) that looks like Android on-screen buttons. A nice idea, but the recents apps button hasn’t been mapped properly, so it works like a standard menu button. This is something that can be fixed with an OTA Update so nothing extremely important.

The back side is pretty clean, the whole back body makes the chassis so there isn’t any back cover. Just like the Nexus 4 or any other device with an unibody Metal Chassis.

The upper rear side of the device features a protunding Camera supported by a Dual-Flash (Single Tone) configuration, and the rounded Fingerprint Scanner.

The lower rear side of the device features an vertical Brand Logo and the Speaker hole with two little hikes to avoid that the Sound gets muted/reduced when you keep your device on your table. Well Done Ulefone!

As you can notice, on the left side there is an extra key, called Smart Key, that has been programmed to be used with Camera or Sound Recorder. (Double-press opens camera, then you can use that key to take photos, while long-press opens Sound Recorder app and starts to record). Pretty rare to find on latest devices, even most of not-chinese ones don’t have it.

Device

Screen

Ulefone choose an high-quality LTPS screen on this device, made by Sharp. This is what makes its screen almost perfect, with excellent contrast and saturation.

Brightness isn’t superb, I have tried other devices with much brighter screens but it doesn’t create any issue while using it under direct sunlight. Also, the Light Sensor doesn’t work pretty well, it doesn’t support smooth light changes.

Viewing Angles are Perfect, and i’m not joking. No one angle has any kind of viewing issue. Absolutely excellent.

Camera

Rear Camera is pretty good, with some little adjustments to the Camera Settings I was able to record some amazing photos, much better than other Chinese Smartphones that I have tried. The noise level tends to be a bit high if you don’t reduce manually the ISO value, this is something that should be improved.

As you can see, HDR makes photos brighter.

Flashlight is pretty powerful, but it couldn’t have been worse due to the Dual-LED configuration.

Indoors, photos have issues with the noise level, but details and color accuracy are fine.

As regards Video Recording, there are no issues at all. 1080p videos (Video Quality – Fine) are recorded with an high level of details, just remember that there is no OIS so you can’t expect stable videos.

V Just check my sample here V

[YOUTUBE]EmAyFnNXM6g[/YOUTUBE]

Front Camera is good enough, it is a common OV5648 that won’t surprise you with its quality, but for daily usage it is just fine. Front Camera (Left) & Rear Camera (Right)

Audio

Speaker’s Sound lacks a bit of Bass, but it is really loud and clean. Maybe it could have been better, but we still have to consider that this is a device that costs less than $199.

I have measured its loudness using my Nexus 4 Microphone, here you’ll see its maximum power. The Nexus is hardware limited, so it shows maximum 79db.

If you want to hear an audio test, download these two audio files.

Maximum Volume (my Nexus 4 wasn’t able to handle its loudness, amazing): https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-2dpW_lpZCPOVhjRnBXTmRUa2s

Medium Volume: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-2dpW_lpZCPYzdieFV3Z0R1VEU

I have recorded this audio file at maximum quality, without compression.

Unfortunately the speaker is positioned on the back, so if you place the device on a table you could experience volume issues, but this doesn’t mean that it is a bad thing. What matters here is the quality.

In-Call Sound Quality isn’t extremely good, it lacks high frequencies and it isn’t too loud too, especially as regards the Loudspeaker. Maybe this is will be improved with the next OTA Updates, but if the Earpiece speaker is poor there is no way to improve it.

As regards the Microphone, there are no issues at all. Everyone was able to hear me perfectly, so I can’t say anything negative about it.

Telephony, Mobile Network & WiFi

Thanks to the 4G Band 20 support (some other Chinese Smartphones don’t have it), I’m almost always and everywhere connected to the 4G Network of my Mobile Network Provider (TIM Italy).

Also 3G Signal Reception is accurate, actually I never managed to get connected to the 2G Network of my Mobile Operator because there was always some 3G Signal available. A good quality Antenna has been used.

4G Network Speed is decent, it highly depends on your Mobile Operator and mine isn’t pretty good. While 3G Network Speed, is just fine.

I’ll add a mobile network speed test soon because my Operator is working pretty bad since the last week, so i’m not able to get a decent speed test to show you its capabilities.

Luckily there is WiFi 5GHz support here, and i’m able to get the same speed that I get with my Desktop PC. (50mbps download, 10mbps upload)

Battery Life

I have measured the real battery capacity using my USB Tester, and as you can see it is almost correct. (declared 3250mAh, real almost 3300mAh)

I’m able to reach more or less 4 hours of screen-on time with everything on (Sync, Location, 4G, WiFi…), but I won’t show any screenshot now because the software isn’t stable enough to get reliable results.

On screen-off it doesn’t drain battery too much, but it highly depends on your background apps so be careful with them.

Software

Ulefone choose to use a completely clean Android 5.1 release and it works pretty fine. Basically it seems a Nexus Device. There is only an Extra third-party Launcher (u-Launcher maybe?) that can be uninstalled without any issue.

Just like other last-gen Mediatek Devices, there are some typical features such as Gestures, Scheduled Power On/Off, etc…

The UI is almost everytime responsive and smooth, with no lags at all. But...there are some little issues. After 7 days of Daily Usage my device started to work pretty bad, System UI was crashing on boot without allowing me to unlock the screen. I had to re-flash the device using SP Flash Tool because somehow the Recovery Mode has been disabled (Ulefone please re-enable it).

[YOUTUBE]h2A0dZVUeCE[/YOUTUBE]

Luckily after a clean install it works fine again, but I’ll let you know if it gets stuck again.

As regards the Fingerprint Scanner management, it can be configured via the Settings apps and configuration is extremely fast.

Ulefone was showing in a video that the Vienna was able to recognized the same finger more than 100 times continuously….well I must admit that this isn’t true. Sometimes I need to try more than 2 times to unlock the screen.

Screen gets unlocked pretty fast, they declare 0.1s-0.5s and...this is true.

[YOUTUBE]sGToDzdHWVs[/YOUTUBE]

The Smart Key is a pretty useful feature that has been introduced by Ulefone, its behaviour can’t be customized but works pretty fine and it is particularly useful when you need to take Photos.

Benchmarks

I have used 3DMark, Antutu Benchmark, Epic Citadel, GeekBench 3, GFXBench, AndroBench, PCMark (Work) and Vellamo (Browser & CPU Tests) to stress the device to the limit. I won’t test Games or Video Playback because there are already some related tests included in these Benchmark suites.

3DMark – GPU Performance isn’t extremely good, OpenGL 3.1 & 3.0 tests require lots of power, and this is where almost every mid-range GPU falls. OpenGL 2.0 tests are pretty good though.

AndroBench – eMMC Performance seems to be pretty high, especially as regards Reading Speed. Writing Speed is higher than most devices though.

Antutu Benchmark – I won’t say a lot about this benchmarks, this isn’t as reliable as others. I’m providing this just for benchmarks lovers.

Epic Citadel – This score shouldn’t be so low, so I can only say that the software needs to be optimized for 3D Performance.

GeekBench – CPU Performance is as good as other CPUs with the same configuration (8x Cortex-A53), enough to handle almost every type of activity.

GFXBench– Well...GFXBench score is low, really low. This benchmark suite is even more heavy than 3DMark, so you can’t expect a better score here.

PCMark – As you can see, only Video Playback score is a bit low. Pretty good.

Vellamo

Browser score is decent, but it could have been better.

The same for the CPU score. Multicore score is nice though.

As you can see the software isn’t extremely optimized when it comes to Performance tests, so we need to wait Ulefone’s updates to see if this can be improved. Also, Android 6.0 is coming so it could bring some nice performance improvements.

Conclusions

It’s hard to say if this is a good device or not, because it has some negative aspects that can’t be ignored. The lack of a Notification LED and the poorly optimized Software can’t be easily compensated by the built-in DAC hardware or by the high-quality screen.

Anyway, this is a good, and cheap, device that offers a nice experience and can be adapted to almost any type of user. It has a great Camera, a great Screen and a blazing-fast fingerprint scanner. I can recommend this device only if you don’t need the Notification LED, otherwise i can only say to go for the Ulefone Future that seems an excellent device.

Pros:

High-Quality Screen

Great Sound Quality (except in-call)

Lightweight

Very Cheap

Cons:

Missing Notification LED

Poor Software optimization

It doesn’t come with Android 6.0 (but update is coming)

Camera Software needs some little improvements to reduce noise

In-Call Quality could have been better

Rating: 8.3

Packaging and Accessories: 8.5

Design and Materials: 8.5

Performance and Heat Dissipation: 8

Screen: 9

Camera: 8.5

Sound: 9.5

Battery Life: 7.5

Software: 7

OEM Support: 8.5

Price: 8

You can find full-res images (I know, Quality isn't excellent) here: http://imgur.com/a/4m2Jk

Official Website: http://ulefone.com/products/vienna/features.html

You can buy it on many online shops.​