10'

DOOGEE plan to take the “Narrowest Bezel” crown with the DOOGEE DG550 Kitkat phone

Robin MaxwellMay 7, 2014

DOOGEE, the upstart Chinese phone maker with ties at Villareal football club, have their eyes on the “narrowest bezel” prize.

Arriving on the market very soon, the DOOGEE DG550 is another Android 4.4 Kitkat smartphone from this Chinese phone maker. Specifications follow the normal story for DOOGEE devices i.e, they are pretty impressive considering the retail price.

Hardware highlights include a 5.5-inch 1280 x 720 OGS display, 13 mega-pixel rear camera, octacore MT6592 chipset, dual SIM, space for an SD card and removable battery.

Gizchina News of the week

Join GizChina on Telegram

View gallery (4)

Design is what DOOGEE are hoping to use to really catch customers attention though, and they claim the DG550 has the narrowest bezel of any 5.5-inch smatphone on the market today at just 2.2mm.

DOOGEE will will be targeting international customers only with the DOOGEE DG550, resellers are already listing the device for presale at an aggressively low $166!

[ DOOGEE ]

Disclaimer: We may be compensated by some of the companies whose products we talk about, but our articles and reviews are always our honest opinions. For more details, you can check out our editorial guidelines and learn about how we use affiliate links.

About the author

Robin Maxwell
Hi, Robin Maxwell here! Mobile technology is my passions, and while I've been known to dabble with iOS devices I'm a firm Android convert, currently waiting for the Oppo Find 5 to launch!!

I think TCL Hero or Idol have thinner bezels, but not sure….
Andre
May 7, 2014
inew v3? is that you?
Freeje
May 7, 2014
Good enough to replace my Note 2? Maybe not.

joe
May 8, 2014
If it was a 1080p display I would definitely buy it but I’ll wait.
- Mr Cloud
  May 13, 2014
  1080p display is mabye an overkill for 5” device. If it would be 5.5” or 6” device, then I would agree with you. Plus, 1080p eats more battery than 720p screen and performance is weaker, because phone has to cope with much greater number of pixels.
May 8, 2014
Only thing I have a problem with is the 1GB RAM. If it had 2GB and costs extra $20 to $30. I will definitely consider it. Right now, I am having real trouble with my Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 3G which has only 1GB.
- Mr Cloud
  May 13, 2014
  1GB is enough for 95% of time. It seems that Android 4.2. is doing good job with optimizing apps for usage, because i have many +10 tabs opened at same time in Chrome, and several other apps running in the background, and phone isn’t freezing and performance is still very good.
Eddy Bruin
May 8, 2014
It is indeed the Inew V3 design with a larger screen. I would like to see a review of this phone 🙂 My Inew V3 works, but it has some flaws which annoy me soo I might want to take a look at doogee.
- Mr Cloud
  May 8, 2014
  Which flaws annoy you in iNew, I’m curious. I have Doogee DG2014 and phone is excellent with maybe one flaw and that is when someone calls you while phone is charging attached to wall, they will hear you weak. I tested this with several samples, and I recreated this problem.
  - Mr Cloud
    May 8, 2014
    But this is only case when phone is attached with charger to wall. Otherwise, call sound is excellent. Phone has great screen, is fast, has excellent and sturdy design and ok camera. Battery is not that bad, eventually it’s has better battery life than iNew…
  - Eddy Bruin
    May 12, 2014
    Stuff that annoys me about the inew V3:
    – Battery. I knew upfront the battery life was not great. That’s not really my problem. Problem is that you can’t rely on the battery gauge. First and last 16% of the energy drains in a couple of minutes. Battery calibration did not help.
    – Screen goes on and off randomly: I had to put a pattern lock as security otherwise the phone would do unwanted stuff whilst in my pocket. It also happend a couple of times that the phone goes cuckoo because it thinks i’m touching it in the left corner
    – ROM development: New Rom’s from iNew do not immediately solve the biggest annoyances, Kernel is not open source and communication about new Rom’s is scarce.
    -Other users report a lot of problems with GPS. I luckily don’t have such problems. It does however stop me from updating to a new rom for now.
    -Mounting a SD card is not working properly. I don’t need a SD for now so this is the least of my worries.
    – HDR camera: The camera is great. However, the HDR capability makes 2 photos without merging the two to an actual HDR image.
    There you go, that having said. The phone has an awesome design, is fast, all sensors work pretty good. I’ve had 0 problems with wifi, 3G, Bluetooth and calling.
    - Mr Cloud
      May 12, 2014
      – that what you noticed with V3 is not case with DG2014. I have WIFI constantly turned on, screen’s brightness on maximum, received about 20 gmail msgs with one 5 minutes 3:33 call received and battery’s energy drained only 6% in 3 hours. When it drains completely however, it starts charging from about 15% (as phone suggests), but I suppose real battery life is what matters most.
      – screen on dg2014 isn’t going on and off randomly, it stays stable all the time. I had problem with restarting device before, but I realized it was problem due to software (antivirus and various utilities, maybe even viruses), not phone itself, because i’m using phone again with no problems at all for weeks. Touch screen is very reliable so far.
      -really, kernel not open source? does iNew V3 has OTA updates? (i.e. supporting firmware updates directly from phone)
      -GPS is great on DG2014, without any special software or network assistance. I’ve tested it in 4 countries during recent trip to Prague from my country, and GPS itself was stable and precise.
      -mounting SD card to phone is working without problems. I consider this very important, as I’m placing offline maps (few GBs at least) and some other software on it?
      – after last firmware update, camera is much better. It had problems with focus of distant objects. Now everything is sharp, pictures are just darker on pc screen than on phone’s screen where they look great – strange, especially considering my PC’s screen is what I think calibrated and of good quality (IPS, Dell 24” full HD). I think that HDR is working good, but it is slow, ofcourse.
      – I’ve noticed one problem with taking movie clips: during shooting movies, everything is zoomed in, it’s not like with photo camera that you get wide angle, so it is annoying, and practically useless. Doogee made a promise it will solve that in next firmware, cause it is obviously software bug.

Brooklyn701
May 8, 2014
The 13 Mpixel are only interpolated. Hardware sensor is “only” 8 Mpixel
milos
May 8, 2014
kitkat? 720p ips? 130e? good enough for me. 1gb is just fine for kit kat. if i wont to render i will turn on my pc.
Force70
May 8, 2014
Not LTE capable according to the website, why companies build non LTE phones in 2014 is beyond me.
- May 9, 2014
  Building multi-band capable chipsets into cheap Chinese phones intended for sale world wide is not a possible thing at this point, the technology is too prohibitively expensive and too vastly different in each country and provider.
  It’s not as simple as just making sure the frequency is supported with 2G and 3G.
  The LTE standard covers a range of many different bands, each of which is designated by both a frequency and a band number. In North America, 700, 850, 1900, 1700/2100 (AWS) and 2600 MHz (Rogers Communications, Bell Canada) are used (bands 4, 7, 12, 13, 17, 25, 26, 41); 2500 MHz in South America; 800, 900, 1800, 2600 MHz in Europe(bands 3, 7, 20);1800 and 2600 MHz in Asia (bands 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 40); and 1800 MHz and 2300 MHz in Australia and New Zealand (bands 3, 40). As a result, phones from one country may not work in other countries. Users will need a multi-band capable phone for roaming internationally.
  That and outside of Metropolitan area’s, the LTE tower support is minimal, so there is very minimal benefit to having LTE in a cheap phone.
  LTE tower coverage is as follows, and given that europe is the main target for these phones, you can see its kind of pointless.
  1 South Korea 62.0%
  2 Japan 21.3%
  3 Australia 21.1%
  4 United States 19.0%
  5 Sweden 14.0%
  6 Canada 8.0%
  7 United Kingdom 5.0%
  8 Germany 3.0%
  9 Russia 2.0%
  10 Philippines 1.0%
  Read more here 😀
- Mr. Cloud
  May 13, 2014
  Doogee stated they will release LTE phone in autumn. However, LTE isn’t so widespread here in Europe, or prices for it are high, so it doesn’t matter for now….
  - Force70
    May 14, 2014
    Nice to know but for the rest of the modern world where LTE is everywhere it does in fact matter. A non LTE device is a paperweight to me no matter how cheap it is. I would miss my 120mbps download speeds too much without it
    - Techintent
      May 31, 2014
      @disqus_5iyGC4Innx:disqus LOL, you are blowing nothing but hot air. All you paying for with those LTE plan are the carriers marketing pitch!! The carriers them can hardly provide sustain 20mbps download speeds and you talking about 120mbps? Plus, the coverage is so spotty customers can barely get signals. LOL keep paying for inflated marketing prices for something the carriers can’t even produce!! You wonder why they make their disclaimer that locations and traffic might effect the speeds?
      - Force70
        September 18, 2014
        Lol….i can download at well over 100mbps all day no matter where i am. 20 mbps? My upload speeds are higher than 20.You must be living in some little 3rd world country if thats the kind of speeds you get…
        Grant you yes its not cheap but i have a great career and its easy for me to afford.
camilosanchez_123456@hotmail.c
May 14, 2014