Those with a thirst for adventure probably won't be hauling a super-slim regular phone into the mountains. They'll need Swiss Army like features offered by their rugged cousins, such as the Armor 33 Pro – a big-battery, dual-screen beast that's ready to rumble.
Rugged phones are often heavy, chunky bricks that you need a very good reason to heft around. Handset makers tend to answer that call with lots of innovative features. And usually a monster battery too.
Ulefone's Armor 33 Pro is a good example. It measures 185.5 x 85.5 x 34 mm (7.3 x 3.36 x 1.33 in) and tips the scales at 776.5 g (27.4 oz). That's very big and very heavy. Much of the weight is due to the bumper 25,500-mAh battery that's reported good for up to 10 days of heavy usage or 1,380 hours in standby. It can take 66-W wired fast charging, and can even give a little back thanks to 10W reverse charging.
You get a big ol' display too, at 6.95 diagonal inches at 1,080 x 2,460 pixels. This is topped by scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 5, can manage 700 nits of peak brightness, there's a 32-megapixel punch-hole selfiecam, and it sports a snappy 120-Hz refresh rate. But there's also a secondary screen around back – a bit like the smartwatch module of the Oukitel WP300, but with more utility.
This 3.4-inch touchscreen can be used to frame up selfies through the 50-MP main rear camera, or cater for real-time dual-screen translations, host frequently used apps or serve up notifications, control services like a music player without needing to navigate the main screen, and more. This display puts out 600 nits, and has a resolution of 412 x 960 pixels.
The camera array above features a F1.95 50-MP main rocking a relatively large 1/1.3-inch sensor, a 64-MP night-vision camera, and a 50-MP ultra-wide. Video footage can be recorded at 4K resolution and 30 frames per second as well a Full HD at the same frame rate, if preferred.
At the array's center is a 118-dB speaker unit and a 9cc sound cavity to annoy fellow travelers with your excellent taste in music or be a useful audio beacon in emergencies. The RGB halo here can also pulse to the music, activate for notifications, and bring some extra color to calling and charging.
The Android 14 phone features MediaTek Dimensity octa-core processing supported by 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage (plus microSD expansion). It's a capable companion that's waterproof up to 2 m (6.5 ft) for 30 minutes, as well as dust resistant, and is certified to MIL-STD-810H durability standards. There's support for multiple positioning systems, along with 5G and Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4.
The Ulefone Armor 33 Pro is due for global launch from August 18, but is already on sale in the US for US$499 via Amazon. There's more in the video below.
Product page: Armor 33 Pro
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