[Device Reviews and Information] bandario:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: I'll leave this post here for posterity, but take new information in this thread + everywhere else in context. AGM used a dud fingerprint sensor when they built this device. At this point they are well aware of the issue, but have already lost so much money on this release that warranty returns now either won't happen, or your phone will be destroyed as they ham-fistedly replace it with the exact same sensor and do a half baked job of gluing everything back together. It's not worth the gamble if everything else is working.

AGM took a huge risk with this product. There was barely any profit in it unless they shifted massive volumes, and I believe the huge number of warranty claims that they did honour, early on, has almost bankrupted them. Certainly there is nothing left in the kitty to support this device and they are back to rebranding cheap garbage again to refill the coffers; we all lose. I take my hat off for their initial effort. They really did create something special here and it's a huge shame how this all turned out when it could so easily have gone the other way.

If your fingerprint sensor hasn't failed yet, it's only a matter of time. Start looking for another device.

To pour salt in the wound, the AGM H6 they sent me as a peace offering stopped accepting a charge after like 2 months. Just pathetic really.

I'm really sorry for anyone who bought the G2 based on my early reviews here or elsewhere. It is certainly not a trivial amount of money to have lost, but is an inerrant risk when dealing with any Chinese company.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I pre-ordered the G2 Guardian and received it 4 days ago. I charged it to 100% when I received it and have not since charged it again...4 entire days of pretty heavy usage, still I have 30% battery. Just about to fill the MicroSD up with music. Hopefully by the time it's fully charged again my battery usage metrics will be calibrated and I can work on some proper usage figures for everyone.

Why did I make this purchase/ My use case:

I work in forestry in Northern Australia. It's sweaty as hell, storms develop quickly and whatever I use will get wet multiple times per week through one or the other. Overall I look after my gear with great care, but some things are unavoidable: water, dust, plant matter slowly filling all of my pockets and getting into my gear through whatever orifice is available. Much like Eels, it finds an entrance where it can. I spend much of my week smashing around in the undergrowth. Being able to wash my devices periodically is important, good quality port covers are equally important.

Another must-have for me is a battery that won't let me down. If I manage to hike to the furthest point from my vehicle within a given parcel of land then it's a major problem for me if my battery runs out and I lose the GPS track that I am running, or cannot collect the remainder of my data taking a different path back to my vehicle. My time is wasted, my sweat and exertion are wasted and I've got to climb a bunch of 35+ degree slopes back to the car for no gain. For this reason, the company iphone and ipad are in the bin where they belong. Both devices constantly let me down one way or another, neither of them are designed to do what I do, even in a lifeproof case.

To solve these issues, I ran the Ulefone Power Armor 13 for over a year. It was a great device, I customised the hell out of it but eventually I got tired of carrying a 498gram brick in my pocket. At home without a belt, it would pull my pants down. It was JUST fast enough not to annoy me, and I really enjoyed how deeply I had customised it but I became annoyed with how poor the camera could be sometimes, and with just how heavy it was, but moreso how cumbersome the form factor was and how cheap it looked and felt.

In a flash of brilliance, I replaced the Power Armor 13 with a Galaxy Xcover 6 pro. Paid outright for the device, bought a couple of spare batteries and rubber port covers for the 3.5mm and USB-C ports, and patted myself on the back for being the smartest man alive. The extra speed of the Snapdragon 778G was just what I had been looking for, the retention of an IP68 rating even with a replaceable battery and the moderately rugged construction seemed to be more than enough for my workday, and I could much more easily slip this thing into the pocket of my jeans before heading to the bar on the weekend. No more laughter when producing my phone from my pocket, no more having to explain how I could possibly need a half kilogram phone...I just looked like a normal person, with a normal life.

It lasted 2 months. I got caught in a storm, the Xcover 6 pro was in my backpack. That IP rating is not worth the paper it is written on. Not only did it fail spectacularly, I'm pretty sure it almost caught fire doing so. It got indescribably hot to the point that I knew it was absolutely dead. No amount of time spent in bags of rice would resurrect it, and after a last ditch effort trying to dry it out in direct sunlight I could see that constant exposure to heavy sweat during my work had also managed to penetrate whatever miserable water ingress protection it had. There were literal salt crystals falling out from near the battery terminals: this thing had been getting moisture past the rubber gasket whilst in my pocket for the entire 2 months I'd owned it.

At this point, Samsung can go and boil their bums. I had been a militant supporter of their Galaxy Active lineup, simply unable to understand why anyone would choose their regular lineup when the Active line existed. Once they dropped the Active I had to look elsewhere, but I was over the moon to see that they had done an xcover device that wasn't completely and utterly under powered so I caved. Fool me once... they're dead to me, and so is the possibility of me owning a 'normal' phone. It's just not going to work for me.

After drying my tears I set about scouting out a new rugged phone that would meet all of my needs without pulling my pants down. I have also recently had to start doing koala spotting again, and even though we have a $2400 thermal scope available at my office, there is only 1. I can't carry it with me all the time in case somebody else needs it, and to be perfectly honest I've found it pretty inadequate once the sun rises. Once there's sunlight on the trees it's pretty much useless, and having to peer through a monocular makes it dangerous walking through the bush. The hardware specs of the scope are so low that it is ridiculously clunky to use, and it is endlessly refreshing the sensor. I wasn't happy with it, and I always had to drive back and get it, so the presence of a thermal camera on my everyday phone became appealing. Imagine my joy when I got home to find that pre-orders for the AGM G2 guardian were just about to start. BOLD claims in the promo literature, but I decided to roll the dice.

Initial impressions of the AGM G2 Guardian after 4 days:

I had some serious trepidation about this purchase. I know that AGM have been around for 14 years or so, and I have come really close to buying several of their devices over the years. The AGM X3 was right up my alley, but for $1000USD in 2019, it was a much easier choice to grab a second hand S8 Active for a few hundred bucks.

The purchase experience through AGM's official eBay store felt sketchy. They shipped me an AU power adapter on the day I pre-ordered, marking the device as shipped. Once the adapter was delivered my buyer protection started counting down. Honestly, in spite of their constant assurances I felt like I was about to get scammed especially since I got it for such a comparatively low price as a pre-order.

I was also nervous about the price I had paid for a rugged phone made in Shenzen. Even though AGM have always positioned themselves as the premium offering in this space, often choosing absolute top of the line Snapdragon SOC's rather than poxy mediatek chips, and having a European design team for their entire range it still seemed like an awful lot of money given the competition.

As soon as I held the G2 Guardian in my hands the reason for the additional price tag compared with the competition became obvious. Even before I turned it on this thing felt TIGHT. Not a rattle in sight, and whilst the 400 grams is still very heavy for a phone, it carries the weight well and manages to feel extremely high quality, reliable and a little bit sexy all at the same time. I'm not sure how to describe this, because it's only 98 grams lighter than my Power Armor was, but I barely notice this thing in my pocket. It feels great to hold and even though I acknowledge that I am part of a very small and very weird group of customers...I think it looks cool as hell and the ergonomics are great. Everything is where you want it to be including the fingerprint sensor. Every time I pull it out of my pocket, I get that nugget feeling. It feels built to last and extremely high quality.

Once I powered it up and started going through the setup process I really started smiling. The first thing that really brought home that nugget feeling was the quality of the haptic feedback. I assume a decent quality motor combined with just how solid the body of the device is has given a fairly nice result here.

Overall an absolute 10/10 for satisfaction on the physical characteristics of this device.

Chipset

Qualcomm QCM 6490 industrial processor.

2.7Ghz, 8 cores, 6nm process. 5G, Wifi6/6E. 8 or 12GB ram.

There's not much to say here. This thing absolutely flies, and sips battery whilst it's doing it. It's faster than the competing 778G by a decent margin and has far better multithreaded performance. It also destroys even the best Mediatek Dimensity chipsets in competing rugged phones clocking in at just under 600,000 Antutu score in V9. No, it's not as fast as a snapdragon 8 Gen1, but it also won't get overly hot or need a purpose built animation to see your battery empty whilst playing games or doing demanding processing.

Display

120hz refresh rate (though I have to assume it is adaptive given the battery life and lack of manual setup options) and a very tasty 2408x1080 400ppi results in a fast, flowy and vibrant display. Let me be clear, this absolutely bashes the pants off my previous 2 phones, but I have to assume it wouldn't be in the ballpark of the latest S23 or anything like that in terms of image quality. The 120hz display is a massive bonus here, and a great implementation. I've never seen this thing lag or skip. It's a really rewarding user experience that looks and feels great and is always buttery smooth. AGM have not provided customisation options here. There's no ability to lock it to 60hz or change the resolution. Ordinarily I wouldn't be happy with this, but given the battery life and quality of experience it seems like they've dialed it in exactly where it needs to be.

Cameras

The main camera is a 108mp Samsung lens. Obviously this lens is extremely capable of taking good photos. Plenty of depth and colour, and it is extremely fast. Unfortunately the combination of a lack of image stabilization and a very basic camera app implementation lead to a lot of dud photos unless you get lucky with the natural lighting conditions being absolutely perfect. I find myself having to take 5 or 6 photos of the same scene or subject to guarantee 1 good shot. It is really reliable up-close on stationary objects, and in this use-case it seems to thrive, producing consistently good images.

There is work to do here for AGM. At present, this high-quality and perfectly capable lens is going to waste a lot of the time because the camera app is so basic. You can tell that the hardware is infinitely capable, but it is absolutely screaming for a port of GCAM or a LOT of development on their in-house app. I don't think it even has HDR at present and configuration options are extremely limited.

Front camera is a 32mp unit that provides a really smooth video calling experience, quality is good. Not sure how good it is at selfies because selfies are for children.

There's also a 20MP Sony night-vision camera. This works well, and I believe it is activated by choosing 'infrared detect' in the camera app and probably plays some role in the thermal function I guess (?).

Finally, the last 'normal' camera is a 2MP Macro Camera. This works really well for Macro shots but I have to wonder what kind of insanity led to the inclusion of a macro lens rather than a decent wide-angle sensor in an outdoor focused device. 90% of my photos on my last few phones have been taken with the wide-angle sensor and it is going to take some serious getting used to not having one. Obviously I knew this before purchase, but I miss my wide-angle lenses already.

Thermal Module

Here is the big daddy, and obviously the focal point of this device. A 10mm lens paired with 256x192 thermal image resolution and 25hz video resolution.

AGM have knocked this out of the park. With zero exaggeration, this is the best thermal scope I have ever used. I have used devices with higher thermal detector resolution (384 x 288), but even in devices that cost over $2200AUD, these sensors are paired with absolute garbage processing power. This leaves you with a really clunky user experience. These specialist devices are also often plagued with really terrible battery life, and having to hold it up to your eye is downright dangerous given the understory you are more than likely walking through if you have a use for such a device.

Combining a decent sensor and a 10mm lens with the very respectable hardware at the heart of the G2 Guardian eliminates all of the problems inherent to a standalone thermal monocular. They say the best camera is the one you have with you, and this applies double to thermal scopes. To ALWAYS have this thing available in my pocket is a massive advantage.

Thermal Range (Detection Range VS Recognition Range) and performance

I was pretty dubious of the claims made by AGM here. Well, I was wrong. At night, there is a very comfortable recognition range of around 100 to 200 metres depending on the size of the animal, and a detection range (how far out you can actually identify a heat signature is present) well over 500 metres, again, depending on the size of the object.

The thermal app interface is fast and responsive, and there is an entire galaxy of configuration options including the ability to set up your own custom thermal ribbon colour modes to suit your use. The timelapse function will be awesome for monitoring wildlife, and the analysis tools are crazy good. Both auto-focus and manual focus modes are brilliant, and I find myself wishing they had put a similar amount of effort into the main camera app.

Temperature measurement range is disappointing in the Guardian variant which I believe is only capable of 0C to 150C with accuracy. I believe this was a necessary compromise to allow such an amazing long range thermal camera experience. The G2 Pro variant does not have such impressive long-range thermal capability, but has accurate temperature measurement between -20C to 550C. This was an easy choice for me, it's far more useful for me to be able to detect an animal or heat signature at long range, than to tell the exact temperature of that object up close.

I have had a FLIR sensor previously on the very first CAT phone, and it was not even in the same universe of what the G2 Guardian is capable of. Hands down, this is the best bit of thermal gear I've ever used and I have access to several very expensive standalone units - the implementation on the G2 Guardian is genuinely impressive. They have made the jump from what is a cool gimmick on most phones, to a genuine work or hunting tool. I am blown away here.

The most impressive feature of the thermal experience is how well it works in daylight conditions. Many extremely expensive scopes are completely useless in daylight. As soon as sunlight starts to hit tree trunks, it's time to give up and go home. I'm not exactly sure how AGM have overcome this challenge, and obviously it will always work better at night or in the early morning, but even at 10am in full sun I have been able to ID animals very easily.

Firmware and customization potential

The Android implementation here is completely and utterly bloat free. The only non-google apps AGM have installed is their camera app, their thermal camera app and the AGM service app, where you can input the particulars of your device and purchase date, and submit a help or service request. There is also a third party launcher, but I never touched it - I installed Lynx launcher from my google backup before I even made it to the homescreen...i know what I like at this point.

The remainder of the UI experience is practically untouched, sharing most similarities to the latest Pixel devices including some of the fancier features including the ability to screenshot beyond the current display area of a web site, the juicy larger sized quick settings menu, extra dim mode, bedtime routines etc etc. There are extra settings menus present for the user defined key (though very basic, can't even set a vibration

I have to commend AGM here for providing such a beautiful stock android experience and not going ham with some janky over zealous skin.

Whilst I have not unlocked the bootloader or rooted this device, I have verified that flicking the OEM Unlocking switch in developer options does have the desired result, and that you are able to gain access to the bootloader via ADB reboot bootloader. This is good news for the future, with many devices from mainstream manufacturers now shipping without even the ability to access the bootloader.

It seems like there is potential here, but at present I do not have a reason to proceed any further down this path. Time will tell how well AGM support these devices long term with incremental updates but so far all they have promised is that they will provide regular Android security updates, and that their camera and thermal apps will be developed on an ongoing basis. I would not be surprised if we never see Android 13 or 14 here, but I could be wrong.

It would be a massive roll of the dice to flash a GSI or custom rom here given the amount of device specific, niche hardware. In all likelyhood, unless AGM decide to expend the resources to support this type of development in-house (and why would they?), any attempt to install a non-factory rom will result in the loss of your thermal camera, infrared camera and probably the sick flashlight as well.

At some point in the future I may attempt to root this phone but for now most of the reasons I have for doing so have already been solved in-house.

The battery optimisation and power management is absolutely killer and unobtrusive, giving an outstanding result for daily use. All of the bluetooth codecs you could possibly want are there including APT-X, APT-X HD, LDAC, AAC - so i've no need to force these in via magisk modules.

Activating the amazingly handy 100 lumen flashlight on the top of the phone via hardware key on the side is a default feature...this is one of the big reasons I usually root my phones. If they would add haptic feedback when it's activated, I'm happy and probably won't root at all.

Connectivity

3G and 4G signal reception on this device is better than anything I've owned previously. I was sweating bullets about VoLTE and VoWifi working on this out of the box because I have been completely reliant on wifi calling at home on all my other phones, which generally only manage 1 bar of cellular signal at best.

The great news is that VoLTE and VoWifi did work immediately out of the box, but given that I now have consistently better coverage with the G2 I'm less reliant on it. When it does kick in, it seems to do so seamlessly. All I could really ask for here is clear visible delineation between Wifi calls and HD voice/ VoLTE calls.

Wifi reception is also very good with very little degradation even at considerable distance from my router. Unfortunately I do not have access to 5G or Wifi6 to truly test it. On the previous 5ghz wifi standard it is easily able to hand me the full capacity of my starlink connection. Overall I feel like they really prioritized antenna location and design in this device. All of the other features are cool, but first and foremost this is a GREAT phone.

Tiny touches

AGM G2 Guardian is one of those cases where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I assumed the 3.5watt speaker on the rear would be a gimmick...wow. This little speaker is worth its bulge. It's loud, clear and gives even the simple act of unlocking the device some serious presence. For podcast listening when I'm out in the shed or out in the bush and don't want to risk headphones masking the early warning signs of any slithery surprises it is absolutely fantastic. For music, I own several small bluetooth speakers that do not have this quality or volume. They have tuned the output in such a way that even at max volume there is no distortion, it's just loud and clear. I thought being on the rear of the device would be a disadvantage but they've overcome this with pure power.

The torch is one of my favourite features. I'm a total torch nerd but this is one less thing that I have to worry about having on my person, and the output is more than enough for most simple tasks at night. To have this with me at all times is a huge boon, and it is a million times better than even the brightest LED flash style flashlight on most phones, and emits from the top so is much more usable.

Bluetooth implementation here is INCREDIBLE. Stability of all bluetooth codecs has been fantastic, with no skipping and fantastic range. Even on my tiny earbuds, I am able to walk to the other end of my house with no skips or disconnects. This is about 25 metres. For comparison, my xcover 6 pro would constantly skip just from facing the wrong way in my pocket, and would give me about 10 metres unobstructed in the house. That's some serious power from the AGM, and decent thought put in to location of the antennas.

Best of all, when connecting any bluetooth audio device, a quick popup appears to inform you which codec is active! This is such a great little touch that saves me jumping through 3 layers of developer options to ensure that I am actually using the codec I want when my headphones connect.

A labour of love

In one of their recent long-form videos on youtube, an AGM representative claims the Bill of Materials cost for parts and labour to bring the G2 Guardian to completion is $740USD owing mainly to the expense of the thermal module.

If this is true, this leaves AGM with a very slim profit margin on this device. It seems their motivation here is purely to grow their brand, get more AGM devices into the hands of users in this small segment of the market and really make a great device to be proud of. You can feel it.

If you have ever considered a rugged device, or are sick of destroying your expensive mainstream ones this may well be the halo product you have been waiting for. The attention to detail here is hard to put into words until you've used one for a few days.

Concerns

-Even the large RAM X-Grip can only just hold this device in a vehicle owing to the bulge on the rear. It is secure in there, but only just. If AGM were to release a purpose built vehicle mount for these, I'd absolutely buy one.

-AGM Specs on their website still claim 10W wireless charging even now. It appears that either A) this is a lie B) it uses some non-standard wireless charging standard or C) They are claiming their dock accessory as wireless charging which I suppose would technically be true...but I have not yet received my dock and seems a bit disingenuous

It turns out there is wireless charging present, it's just very difficult getting it to pick up given the shape of the rear and the thickness of the case. Presently charging at 10W after some very careful balancing. I eagerly await the charging dock!

-Thermal module is fairly exposed and picks up every smudge imagineable. This does not impact use, and I do not have any scratches yet. AGM claim hardness of this glass is very high, but I can't think of a way to protect this lens when it is not in use.

-Main camera software needs some help. As detailed previously, you can get great photos out of this hardware combo, but it doesn't happen often enough. Maybe the in-house team can pull something together, but I can't help but think it would be a better outcome to get a port of GCAM running well, and enjoy all of the software processing and HDR trickery that comes with it. I may start having a mess around here myself.

That's about it. 99% of people won't read my wall of text, but for those seriously considering this purchase I hope this goes some way to helping you make your decision.

I have used rugged devices from every major player in this space. This is by far the best experience I've had with any of them. This phone absolutely slaps.

Camera samples attached with some compression from google photos.

Daylight closeup outdoors under cover

View attachment 5883201Daylight outdoors closeup subjectView attachment 5883203

Daylight indoors close-up

View attachment 5883205Daylight sneaking distance, medium size eastern grey kangarooView attachment 5883207Outdoors 9am daylight photography sampleView attachment 5883209

Night. Termite mound in foreground. Cow approx 60m away

View attachment 5883211

Night. Small kangaroo @ 70-75m

View attachment 5883213

View attachment 5883215