Oukitel U11 Plus Review: Phablet on a budget!

The Oukitel U11 Plus is Oukitel’s latest offering in the sub $150 segment. Standing tall like a phablet should, the U11 Plus made its debut in the month of May this year. Priced at $149.99, the U11 Plus is one of the cheapest phablets on the market. It’s been a few weeks since I have been using the U11 Plus. How did it fare in the day to day tasks, let’s find out!

Oukitel U11 Plus Specifications

Oukitel U11 Plus Unboxing

The Oukitel U11 Plus comes in a very elegant dark blue colored box with Oukitel branding on the front. As you open the box, the first thing you see is the U11 Plus sitting on top. Inside the box are the standard accessories, sim ejector pin, USB cable and an AC adapter. There were no headphones included in the unit we received. Other things included in the package is the instruction manual and the warranty card. Also included is a soft clear case for the U11 Plus.

Oukitel U11 Plus Design and Build Quality

The U11 Plus might not look it, but is quite a big phone. The screen stands at 5.7 inches, making it fall in the phablet category. In the front, the selfie shooter sits on the top right corner with the LED flash on its left. Along with the sensors, there’s also a LED notification light that blinks for calls and texts, a feature sometimes much more utilitarian than an ambient display. The bezels on this one are pretty sleek. The rear is textured plastic, much like the rings on our fingerprints, with the centre converging at the fingerprint sensor. The fingerprint sensor is easy to access even with one hand considering the size of the phone. It isn’t the fastest on the market, but gets the job done.

What I loved the most are the buttons. They are made of metal and have a satisfying click when pressed. Plus points to Oukitel for this.

Above the fingerprint sensor lies the rear camera with the LED flash. The phone has a pretty solid build thanks to the metal mid frame. On the top lies the 3.5mm headphone jack and on the bottom, speaker grills, although only one serves the purpose of the speaker with the micro USB port in the center. The USB port is buried deep inside the mid frame. It is for this reason that the USB cable supplied with the phone has a longer connector. So if you lose the cable, you might have a tough time charging your device.

All in all, the phone feels solid, albeit heavy. The build quality is solid. It does not feel like it is made out of cheap materials. The strong mid frame and the minimal use of plastic is very much appreciated.

Oukitel U11 Plus Display

The display on the U11 Plus is a 5.7 inch 1080p panel. And it does justice to the resolution. The screen is visible in outdoor conditions, although it could have been a bit brighter. A pixel density of 377ppi ensures a sharpness in the display. It has good viewing angles and thanks to the size, watching videos is a delight. The colors do seem to be a bit on the warmer side, but you can tweak them via the display settings. Overall, the display does what’s required of it and delivers.

Oukitel U11 Plus Hardware and Performance

The U11 Plus is powered by the MediaTek MTK6570T, an octa core chipset with 4 ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.5GHz and 4 ARM CORTEX-A53 cores clocked at 1.0GHZ. On the GPU front, the chipset has the Mali-T860 MP2 clocked at 520MHz. The U11 has 4GB of RAM, a pretty standard/flagship amount for any smartphone of 2017. So multitasking is not a problem. On the storage front, the smartphone comes with 64GB of onboard storage which is expandable up to 128GB via microSD card.

The phone is not the fastest, but it’s not the slowest either. It’ll get you through any day to day task with ease. Zipping through apps, streaming videos, editing documents are a delight thanks to the large display, which also means that you’ll seldom find yourself using this phone with one hand. The phone runs Android 7.0 Nougat. It scored around 44592 on AnTuTu whereas it scored 2026 on the multi core test and 613 on the single core test on Geekbench 4.

The U11 Plus has the usual suite of connectivity options. I did not experience any call drops and the call quality was clear, fulfilling the basic requirement of any phone. The phone has 4G but no VOLTE. GPS is accurate with fast enough locking. The phone has a loudspeaker on the bottom grill which loud enough and does not break at high volumes.

The U11 Plus is fueled by a 3700mAh battery which gets you through a day of moderate usage easy. It takes about 2-2.5 hours to charge to full and on heavy usage needs a charge on the night.

Oukitel U11 Plus Camera

The rear as well as the front sport the OV AR1335 13MP sensor which is interpolated to 16MP. Both the front and the back feature LED flash, with the back having a dual tone configuration. The rear camera is able to take sharp photos, albeit at the expense of being a little slow on the shutter speed. The camera works well in daylight and falters in low light conditions, something all the phones in the price range and higher suffer from. This is definitely not a camera phone. The photos can sometimes be noisy, but if you get around to using the camera, you can snap some pretty decent pictures. The front camera tells the same story. The rear camera is able to shoot videos in 1080p whereas the front camera has a limited resolution of 720p.

Checkout the gallery to get a better idea of how the phone camera fares.

 

Oukitel U11 Plus Verdict

The Oukitel U11 Plus, priced at around $150 is one of the most pocket friendly phablet out there. It offers a good display coupled with decent performance and a good battery life. If you’re looking for a phone to satisfy your day to day needs but with a good display to engage in work and play, the U11 Plus is the phone for you.