The Power Armor 16 Pro has debuted alongside considerably less-hyped first-gen TWS earbuds. They are definitely not the ones that fit into the Armor 15, as they have a distinctly AirPod-clone look to them. Ulefone has equipped them with Bluetooth 5.1, touch controls and (in stark contrast to the claims made for the 16 Pro) an IPX4 ingress-protection rating. The benchmarks aren’t wonderful when compared with other rugged phones we’ve tested, although this is the first Helio G25 platform this reviewer has tested. The button layout is the same that Ulefone and some other rugged phone makers like, where the power button doubles as a fingerprint button on the right, usually activated with the thumb, and the left side of the phone has a custom user definable button. The maximum still image resolution is 3456 x 4608 pixels, and a selection of modes is available through the camera app that includes; Night Mode, Pro Mode, Macro Mode, UHD, Portrait, Gif, Panorama mode, Time Lapse and Intelligent Scanning HDR. The battery is big, making this design good for hiking holidays and extended periods away from charging power.

The Ulefone Armor 16 Pro is one of those curious devices that doesn’t offer a consistent narrative, like those responsible for it kept changing their minds. That’s because Ulefone didn’t fill in these specifications when it created the Android 12 installation, disappointingly. The performance of this design isn’t meant to be special, though we’ll cover the gory details in the performance section. While phone makers want to do different things, if Ulefone had made the 16 Pro at this price and with a slightly better camera and left off the endoscope and a hearing-threatening speaker, this design might have made more sense.

And, in general use, the owner won’t notice the difference between navigating the interface or running most apps. Where it isn’t great is in respect of video, where the capture is capped at 1080p and 30fps. We understand that with only 64GB of storage (128GB with a MicroSD card), there isn’t significant space for huge video files. But recording at 480p resolution, the maximum framerate is still only 30fps. As we’ve said before, the placement of the fingerprint sensor is fine for right-handed people but less ideal for those who are left-handed. Chinese phone makers love MediaTek SoCs, possibly because they’re cheap, and Ulefone is no exception.

What’s interesting is that in many tasks, the eight A53 cores do a fine job and only deliver a score that is within 20% of the better results. As phone cameras go in 2023, this isn’t spectacular, but good enough for holiday snaps and personal portraits. There are also underwater shooting modes for those willing to risk submersion, knowing the limitations on depth and time below water. While the 5.93-inch IPS LCD screen is crisp and the colors well saturated, at 720 x 1440, this display is a slightly odd resolution and is not able to display 1080p video without scaling it down.

An inexpensive rugged phone with some unique options

In short, the power in this phone is more than enough to satisfy those who want a general-purpose Android platform, but it isn’t ideal for gaming, VR, or jobs that require more intense computing. Normally when we test phones, we use applications to tell us about the cameras and their specifications, but this phone yielded almost no information about the camera capabilities. To aid with that, Ulefone makes a protective case that allows the phone to be clipped to a belt. A useful item if that doesn’t cause other issues for you. This is an octa-core CPU with eight Cortex A53 cores, four at 2GHz and another four at 1.5 GHz. That this design has no A75 or even A55 cores hints that it wasn’t built for pure speed, but with the slower 1.5Ghz A53 parts, it has some power efficiency potential. It also doesn’t have the feature set to complete some of the OpenCL and Vulkan tests, and its performance in the OpenGL benchmarks is very poor.

The battery capacity on this design is excellent, with the built-in lithium-ion polymer cell offering 9600mAh, which converts into up to 528 hours (22 days) of standby and up to 52 hours of talk time. The highest video capture is a disappointing 1080p@30fps, and this phone doesn’t support the Widevine L1 video decryption standard, resulting in streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ capping the best resolution available at just 480p. Move over, AGM H5 and H5 Pro, the Ulefone Power Armor 16 Pro has just launched to take your world's-loudest-smartphone crown. The OEM asserts that its Xiaomi 12S Ultra-esque rear-mounted speaker can out-blast its competitors at up to 122dB, in line with its earlier full-specs teaser.The front-facing 8MP camera also uses a Samsung sensor, the S5K4H8, which has correspondingly less impressive optics, and the same limitations on video quality.