UMi has been on the international market for a while now and2016 has been a bustling year for theChinese brand, having launched numerous successful smartphones.
When the first teasers of the UMi Max started surfacing, we imagined that UMi wouldrelease a new smartphone with a large display, somewhere around6", as usually brands do in the 'Max' category. However, when the full specifications were revealed it became clear that, despite it's name, the UMi Max is is actually the UMi Super with less RAM and storage.
Design
UMi Max comes with a metal unibody and has a 5.5" display, with Gorilla Glass 3.
In the front panel one will find the Halo Notification that acts as Home Button, and can be personalised with up to 7 colors. For example, the user can set the notification light to be green for Whatsapp messages and blue for Facebook notifications.On the sides you can find the volume rocker, sim slot and a customisable shortcut button.
Operating System
The UMi Max runs a very clean stock variant of Android Marshmallow 6.0. But, do you like tweaking the bits and bytes of your phone? The UMi Max supports Rootjoy out of the box, so you can flash a different ROM and change any setting you want without voiding your warranty or return policy.
Hardware
The Max ispowered by the brand-new Helio P10 Octa-core processor with Cortex-A53 CPU and the ARM Mali-T860 complementing each other perfectly.It comes with16GB eMMC 5.1 flash memory and a spacious 3GB LPDDR3 RAM.
The UMi Max features a high colour-saturation 5.5″ 1080p display covering 95% NTSC gamut made by SHARP,. You also get an ultra fast 360º recognizable FingerPrint sensor from MicroArray.Power is supplied by a 4000 mAh battery made by Sony. It comes with a standard 5V/1A charger.
Camera
The UMi Max comes with a Panasonic 13MP high-speed camera.
It’s veryquick to activate (0.3s according to the company), quick to focus (0.1s) and quick to take the shot with 0s shutter lag. The camera is paired with a dual LED flash. Selfie lovers get a 5MP camera with beauty adjustments. The image quality is what you'd expect from this range of devices - not very sharp, washed out photos.
We're still hoping that2017 is the year that sees a revolution in mobile photography, with finally decent cameras in all price ranges.
Veredict
The UMi Max is overall a very good device. It's display quality is a big plus. However, if you can afford it, we'd choose it's brother UMi Super over it. The added RAM and bigger storage are worth the few extra quid.
This phone is currently being sold for £129, butthere's a few flash sales that push it down to around £100. It's competitorsinclude theXiaomi Redmi 3S, theOukitel K6000 Pro and the Meizu M3 Note, which you can see in the video comparison below.
