REVIEW – When the Oukitel WP36 rugged smartphone first came up for review, the 3.5W speaker with a claim of up to 128db loudness really jumped out at me. We always have music playing somewhere in our house, so that sounded like a great feature. What I did not anticipate was the other features of this rugged smartphone. Let’s dive in!
What is it?
The Oukitel WP36 is a beast of a smartphone. It is a ruggedized phone that is built for durability, battery life, and volume.
What’s included?
- Oukitel WP36 Rugged Smartphone
- USB-C Charger and cable
- SIM Card removal tool
Tech specs
- 3.5W speaker, up to 128dB loudness
- 10600mAh battery, supports up to 60 days of standby
- IP68, IP69K, MIL-STD-810H certified
- MediaTek MT8788 processor
- 16GM (8+8) RAM+128GB ROM (Up to 1TB)
- 6.52 inch FHD+ Display
- 13MP Main Camera + 5MP Selfie
- Side Fingerprint Recognition
- Supports NFC
- Android 13 (Not Google Play Protect certified)
- Support WIFI 6, Peak Speed up to 9.6 Gbps
- 4G LTE Supported
- Bluetooth 5.2
- Two Sim-cards support, Nano+Nano/Nano+eSIM
Design and features
In building this phone, it is evident that the targeted consumer base is not your average user. The benefits of this phone come with a price, namely size and weight. The phone itself clocks just under a pound at 13.8 ounces. I joked with one of the other reviewers that this phone could also double as an exercise weight if you wanted. Looking at the outside construction of the phone, it is well-built and very durable. You do not need to buy an after-market case or anything else to protect this phone since that protection has already been factored into the build. All the ports are protected with rubberized covers. The back of the phone has a little bump-out to protect the lenses and speaker when you put it down. The phone itself has an IP68 rating marked on the back.
Assembly, Installation, Setup
No assembly is required. Before I set things up, I charged it with the provided USB-C charger. It was nice to see an included charger, as some manufacturers are getting stingy about those. The provided fast charger has a max 18W output, which was also nice. When I got it, the phone came with about a 75 percent charge, so topping things off was quick.
Once charged, setup was the standard Android progression. Out of the box, it comes with their installed flavor of Android 13, which was appreciated. Unlock options include a fingerprint reader on the right-hand side of the device, face unlock via the front-facing camera, and standard PIN. All three of those options worked well, and I had no issues setting them up.
Migrating data over to the OUKITEL WP36 rugged smartphone was also seamless. I was able to connect my daily driver phone with a USB-C cable and transfer data over. Having a synced Google account also helps in this regard. It has two SIM slots, so I was able to transfer my SIM card over easily. I haven’t used an eSIM, so your mileage may vary there. I use Verizon so that carrier is obviously supported. I wasn’t able to test other carriers, so check to make sure that your carrier is supported before taking the leap.
Performance
The Oukitel WP36 will not win any speed records or awards for computation power. That being said, I didn’t have any noticeable issues running apps, making calls, or taking photos. The main selling points of this phone are not its computational performance and I imagine some of the choices they made in building this phone were to gain efficiency in battery life. Running apps was never an issue though. Everything ran well. Even Pokemon Go! ran without issue.
I still ran several performance tests on the WP36 to compare it against my Pixel 6a. The Pixel is starting to age a bit itself, but it’s chugging along well, and I thought I would make for a good comparison. The benchmark stats for the WP36 came in at about half of the performance of the Pixel in CPU and memory tests. That being said, there was no issue running anything
In testing the camera, I definitely missed the Pixel interface of my old phone. The interface on the phone worked and I was able to take photos without any issue, but it was lacking a bit of polish. The photos I took seemed to be a little heavy on the red side of the spectrum, but clarity and resolution seemed fine. In the pictures below, the first was taken on the WP36, and the second was taken with the Pixel 6a. If I were more of a photographer, I’m sure I would have more criticisms, but overall it worked fine.
The battery life on the OUKITEL WP36 rugged smartphone is incredible. I picked an app which is the biggest battery hog I know of, Pokemon Go!, and just let it run non-stop. On my Pixel, I’m lucky to get 4-5 hours out of my battery if Pokemon Go! is running. On the Oukitel WP36, I clocked in at over 15 HOURS. I left it running overnight with the screen on the entire time, and it continuously ran the entire time.
After I charged the phone back up I wanted to see how it performed with light to medium use. In that test, the phone clocked in at over 96 hours before the battery ran out. That was without turning on the battery saver or other power-saving tools. I’m unsure if they tweaked the OS or something under the hood, but it was incredible. This would be great to have in an emergency. In very light usage and with battery saver on I’m sure you could easily go several weeks between charges. Charging back up from zero to full took about two and a half hours on a fast charger.
Display quality was great. Outdoors, the brightness of the display was never an issue. In full daylight things showed up well and in a dark room I was able to dial it down to not bother other people in the room.
I made and received several calls on the phone and everything came through clearly. Connecting to Bluetooth on my earbuds and in the car also worked seamlessly. Pretty standard experience with nothing missing.
SMS texting worked well. Contacts and history transferred over well and there was no interruption in service.
What I like about the Oukitel WP36 Rugged Smartphone
- Battery life. There is no need to get nervous about your phone making it through the day. I was constantly surprised to pick it up and see how little the battery had gone down.
- Durability. This phone matches the advertising. It is rugged and built like a tank.
- Volume. The souped up speaker on the back of this phone is LOUD. One word of caution is to dial down the notification volume because it will startle you the first time someone texts or calls you. Near the top volume the sound quality definitely starts to degrade, but for a flat speaker on the back of a smartphone, it’s impressive
What needs to be improved?
- Built in apps. There are several built-in apps on the phone that you can’t remove and seem a little unpolished. I’m not sure of the provenance, so I haven’t used them beyond an initial look-through. I’ll just shuffle them off to the side since I don’t have much use for them.
- Google Play Protect certification. While you can install Google Play Protected apps, the review phone itself does not currently have a Google Play Protect certification.
- 5G support. Again, this might have something to do with battery life and by limiting to 4G LTE they might be gaining some additional benefits. I had no problems running Spotify, Pokemon Go, or other applications that required data, though.
Final thoughts
The OUKITEL WP36 rugged smartphone is impressive. While it might not meet what I’m looking for in an everyday phone, it would be a great phone for the right user and circumstance. My teenage son has already told me he wants it and has started calling it “GigaChad”. I could see this being a great option for someone elderly or who has a hard time remembering to charge their phone. Survivalists or people who are outdoors a lot will love it because it’s very tough and will still have a charge at the end of their trip. While it might not have all the bells and whistles of a high-end flagship device, it definitely has its own charm. That and possible use as a melee weapon in battle.
Price: $145.99
Where to buy: Oukitel
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Oukitel. Oukitel did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
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Especially on a budget device like this, you really ought to highlight the lack of Google Play Protect certification. Julie posted an article about android devices hosting pre-installed malware just two months ago.
Probably not a risk worth taking for a device with a 5 year old chipset (explains the poor scores) and poor screen and camera (even if you do have a rosewood table). Look at the amount of noise (shows up as random colored pixels) in that image, particularly in the black area on the right side of the mask. Also, not surprising that the battery life is better than the 6a–not only is the Pixel two years old, but it also has less than half the stated capacity of the WP36 (4,410 mAh versus the 10,600 for the WP36).
Yeah, I was surprised that it wasn’t Play certified, especially when the Oukitel tablet that was recently reviewed by Julian was certified. I scanned the device and didn’t come up with anything, but that doesn’t necessarily mean nothing’s there.
The true area this shines in is battery life. Since I wrote the review, my son has been using it and can go 5 or 6 days on a single charge. It’s designed for a pretty specific niche, so it definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.