Oukitel K5000 review: give me more power

Oukitel had a great last year with many phones excelling in their categories and price tags. One of their best selling models were the K Series phones, built especially to offer decent quality and impeccable battery performance. However their design wasn’t at par with their hardware and battery performance so the Chinese OEM tried their best to alter that. The new K series looks are way better than before, and this step up is presented with a totally new name branding. The prototype of this work and the last K series model with the old naming pattern is the Oukitel K5000. This smartphone has a decent 5.7 inch full screen 18:9 display along with an awesome 5000mAh battery pack and its success was the starting point for Oukitel to re brand and update the series.

Oukitel K5000 Characteristics

• OS:                  Android OS v7.0
• CPU:               Mediatek MT6750 64-bit octa-core
• GPU:               Arm Mali-T860 MP2
• ROM:              64GB, Support microSD
• RAM:               4GB RAM
• Display:           5.7″ IPS, HD+ 720X1440 pixels, 282PPI
• Front Camera: 13.0MP ( SW 16.0MP ) Samsung S5K3P3
• Back Camera: 16.0MP ( SW 21.0MP )  Sony IMX135 Exmor RS, 1080P video recording
• Network:          GSM / WCDMA / FDD-LTE
• Bands:             2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G: WCDMA:900/1900/2100, 4G: FDD:1800/2100/2600/800/900
• SIM:               2*Nano SIM Cards, Dual standby
• WiFi:                dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n 5GHz
• Bluetooth:        4.0
• Battery:           5000mAh Li-Pol (Non-removable)
• Extras:             GPS, Radio Tuner, Asahi glass, Light Sensor,Geomagnetic Sensor, Gyroscope, Proximity Sensor, Accelerometer
• Size:                73.1 mm x 152.1 mm x 10.8 mm
• Weigh:             217g

Unboxing

The device can be found inside a black hard paper box with the brand name and its main characteristics placed at the back. The package size is 19.50 x 11.40 x 5.70 cm and weighs 470 grams.

Inside you will find:

• 1 X Oukitel K5000
• 1 X Power adapter (European type)
• 1 X USB cable
• 1 X SIM card eject tool
• 1 X Screen protector on the mobile
• 1 X Silicone Case on the mobile
• 1 X Earphone cable USB C – 3.5mm audio
• 1 X Quick guide in various languages

All the accessories are in white colour, resulting in a good package for any phone especially in that price range.

Design

Oukitel tried to find a true “inspiration” for its design prototype and didn’t look far. Samsung Galaxy S8 was one of the phones that owned the 2017 market and some of its impressive looks can be seen in the K5000. The latter is not a clone similar to the bad quality phones that we have seen recently in the market as it keeps a type of true inspiration with some special “details” of its own.

The K5000 has a good quality plastic body with a metallic frame. In front you can see the similarities with Galaxy S8. There’s a 5.7 inch, 18:9 aspect ratio full display that takes most of the front panel leaving small bezels on top and bottom and even smaller on the sides. The Asahi glass on top, really captures the eyesight, offering great daily use or multimedia playback, along with a really acceptable degree of durability in most cases.

The top bezel packs (from the left to right) the camera, the earpiece, the proximity sensor and the flash.Due to the 18:9 ratio and the removal of any physical buttons, K5000 is similar or smaller in dimensions (length and height at 73.1 mm x 152.1 mm) from any other 5,5 inch phone. Its width is larger (10.8 mm) but not as much as someone would expect from a large-battery phone.

The frame is made from aluminium and boasts a black mat color. The right side has two metallic buttons, one for volume control and one for power on-off/lock screen. There is a small rattling but nothing out of the ordinary. The left side has the SIM tray. At the top you can see the two vertical antenna bands. The exact same bands exist in the lower part having between them the USB-C port. There is no 3.5 mm audio jack and you have to use your 3.5 mm headset with the USB-C adapter found in the package. On the right side of the lower part a small hole hides the microphone. The front and back panels do not connect seamlessly but this design helps at the grip.

The back of the phone is plastic in glossy black thus resulting in a great “fingerprint magnet”. The single main camera is positioned in the center of the top side with the LED flash on the right side and the fingerprint sensor just below. It is a simple installation that looks OK I guess but will surely not impress heavy duty users. The disadvantage of gathering them all up close together, is that my finger touches the camera lens when looking for the sensor as you can all understand. It takes some time to learn to search for the sensor from bottom up, but in any case the glass of the camera lens will still have several smudges on it, from your fingers… And since we talk about the fingerprint sensor, you’ll be glad to know that it’s quite fast, unlocking the phone in an instance.

The lower part of the back panel has the brand in silver texture and the web address of the manufacturer, while on the low left side we can find the speaker grille.

No doubt, the main appearance of the device – especially its exterior – looks very nice and is eye catching even with the display off. With the display on you feel that you are holding a phone with a very interesting display. No wonder Oukitel adopted the new design to its new battery phones.

Hardware

The screen is the main selling point of Oukitel K5000 with a 5.7 inch 18:9 display. It has an HD+ resolution (1440 X 720) that covers most of the front panel with 282 ppi. The display is really bright and vivid and has high contrast. It is visible under the midday sun without shadowing.

The resolution could be better but usually battery phones keep it low as to increase the battery life time.

This battery “behemoth” comes equipped with a MediaTek MT6750T chipset. It is an 64bit, 8-core processor with a 28nm process technology. It has 4 Cortex A53 cores working at frequency of 1.5GHz and 4 similar cores working at 1.0Ghz. It is accompanied by a dual core Mali-T860 MP2 GPU working at 650MHz. The processor was introduced in Q2 2016, but it’s still reliable and can be found on many budget phones with no issues. It is accompanied by 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage, but if you’d like a bit more, then you will be happy to know that the storage can be expanded with a microSD card.

The Oukitel K5000 supports dual SIM functionality with two micro-SIMs or a micro-SIM and the aforementioned micorSD card. It supports 4G: FDD-LTE Band 1 (2100MHz), Band 3 (1800MHz), Band 7 (2600MHz), Band 8 (900MHz), Band 20 (800MHz), 3G: WCDMA Band 1 (2100MHz), Band 8 (900MHz) and 2G: GSM Band 2 (1900MHz), Band 3 (1800MHz), Band 5 (850MHz), Band 8 (900MHz). The smartphone has a good sensor pack having Ambient Light Sensor, Geomagnetic Sensor, Gyroscope, Hall Sensor and Proximity Sensor, and comes with full Bluetooth 4.2 compatibility, along with GPS, AGPS and Glonass support for really decent performance.

As you can understand, navigation works fine with satellites being found fast and having a good precision. Compass works flawlessly as well. Wifi is present offering compatibility with 802.11 a/b/g/n, 2.4G/5GHz Dual-band and works also as a WiFi Hotspot. Call quality is excellent and video calls are good without any issues.

Software

The operating system found in the smartphone is based on Android 7.0. This a Nougat ROM with very few modifications, mostly on the icons to look as much possible as the ones used by Samsung Galaxy S8. Oh, Nougat split-screen works properly too.

After setting up the account – a normal procedure for all phones – the user sees a bright screen with Galaxy lookalike icons. The result is pleasant to the eye. Notification bar has the typical options found in Nougat smartphones. More options exist when setting up the bar: Hotspot, Invert colors and Data saver. When the user adds Developer Options in the Notification setup the user can also see Show layout bounds, Profile GPU rendering and Nearby (Google Play services). There are no extras here.

Long pressing the display in the Home screen we let you see the usual page setup with the Wallpapers, Widgets and Settings options. Selecting the Wallpapers we can find a nice selection of images to use. The virtual buttons are 4. Apart from the usual menu, back and home selections, a down arrow symbol on the left is used to remove the row from the screen. This full view is useful when in need of a larger screen and a gesture from the lower bezel up brings back the row.

The device comes with all the typical apps one would find inside a vanilla Android smartphone (no malware or other bloatware apps), along with some special programs added by Oukitel, such as a browser, a File Manager, an FM Radio receiver, Music, Sound Recorder and Wireless Update. Wireless Update looks for OTA updates every 24 hours – and by the way- my own Oukitel K5000 was updated on the first app usage. I hope that Oukitel will support this smartphone with monthly updates, at least for 2018.

Settings has also the typical Nougat options plus selections from Oukitel. The first five in the Wireless & Networks part are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SIM cards, Data Usage and More. Nothing special here.  Next in line and in Device part we can find the Smart Accessibility, Display, Notifications, Sound, Apps, Storage, Battery, Memory, Users and Full screen mode sections. Smart Accessibility has two options: it hides the navigation bar and allows us to use three pointer gesture for screenshots. Disabling or enabling the first option disables or enables the fourth virtual button as mentioned earlier. Full screen mode has option for the applications whether to be shown in full screen or not. The rest of the settings have the usual options.

Personal Part follows with Location, Security, Accounts, Google, Languages & Input and Backup & Reset. Again you can see here the typical Nougat options. Last in line are the System part options: Date & time, Accessibility, Printing, Developer Options (when enabled from the Build Number), Schedule power on & off and About Phone.

In the About Phone we can see that the phone has the November security patch which is a bit old if I may say.

My impressions are good from using the software. It is fast, it can handle a bit of multitasking and is easy to use for new Android users. Gaming was ok. I could easily play Asphalt 8 with low graphic settings. Asphalt 8 needs extra data to download that usually warms every phone. The warm was felt here obviously but not as much as other phones.

Oukitel did not modify the ROM and went for a clear Nougat look. I really can’t complain here after the badly developed ROMs we have seen in the past for small Chinese brands. I really prefer this type of ROM: simple, light and “clean” from bloatware. Well done Oukitel.

Camera

Oukitel K5000 packs a single camera in the back consisting of a 16.0MP Sony IMX135 Exmor RS sensor (interpolated to 21.0MP) with f/2.0 aperture, along with a selfie shooter with a 13.0MP (interpolated to 16.0MP) Samsung S5K3P3 sensor, packed with an f/2.0 aperture!

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The camera application is typical of what one would expect from a Chinese OEM company. It provides Video or Photo options, along with a Panorama mode.

In the Settings section of the Camera app we can find also some typical features, like: Autofocus, Continuous shooting, Digital zoom, Geo tagging, HDR, Touch focus, Face detection, White balance settings, ISO settings, Exposure compensations, self-times, and scene mode.

Well don’t expect a lot from this type of smartphone. Whatever camera you may choose, the result will be adequate, with good photos during bright light and with a stable hand.

There is no video stabilization and the recorded sound could be better. In low light the smartphone is as good it can be for its price range and its hardware category. I used the camera and video a lot, while the selfie cam was used for some video calls. It is a good package and the selfie-cam is way better than anything else found in this price range.

Battery

K5000 is a large-battery phone, you can all understand what this means I guess! It has a Li-Pol, non removable, 5000 mAh battery and here is where the phone excels. You can use the phone for three days and still there will be some percentage next to the battery icon to make you happy. It has more that 10 hours of active screen time and can offer more than an average user could ask for in terms of battery life.

The fast charger comes with 5V/2A support, and it’s able to charge the phone in almost an hour with a bit of a heating up in the back panel. Nothing to worry about however, Oukitel is one of the safest companies when it comes to the performance/safety of their battery cells.

Conclusion

Oukitel tried hard to create a budget battery phone that could support daily usage for most of days of the week and I think they have succeeded in their efforts. The Oukitel K5000 looks as a normal device and not as a mobile battery back, providing really decent grip while in everyday use and I was happy to use it as my main phone for more than 10 days.

Daily usage is smooth. There are not issues, not application-freezing and yes, I have to admit that the gaming performance is ok for such a phone. Nougat inside is also a plus, but there’s no info on when (and if) the Chinese company will update this device with the latest Oreo ROMs from Google. Packing 4GB RAM means that the phone will surely offer decent multi-tasking performance, allowing its owner to use if for 3-4 days (depends on the use) until it finally asks for some energy from its fast charger.

Photos from the main camera are good but most of you will really like the selfie cam as it provides clear images and videos to your social media or skype/viber applications.

The FM radio and the decent GPS locating performance can easily turn this phone into a decent travel companion for students or motorcycle drivers. In case of public transportation 4G and the 64GB of storage can allow the owner to watch movies, listen to music/streaming audio etc. After all when you have a phone with a 5000 mAh battery, you feel safe that you have all the power you need in order to enjoy music, videos, movies, photos and internet browsing for several days 🙂

Oukitel is becoming better with every new smartphone they launch and the K5000 is – no doubt- one of them. I enjoyed its everyday performance, its simple plain UI, that allows for some serious work to be done – if one needs it. And for its price (149,99$ at the time this review was being made) I’m sure we have a winner here.

Seriously now the only thing this company needs is better promotion and things can only go better for them!