At the end of last year, the Chinese company UMI presented its new smartphone – Zero, and a month later a large-scale advertising campaign for this device began in China and beyond. Yes, yes, you can laugh and ask where the unknown office got the money for really large-scale advertising, but UMI managed to carry it out without having huge budgets for that. I will tell you how, and also share my opinion on the UMI Zero smartphone, about which I have long wanted to write, but all hands did not reach.
First, a couple of lines about UMI. The company's office is located in Shenzhen, like most other similar brands. A couple of years ago, UMI simply bought ready-made devices from Chinese factories (in the same Shenzhen), put their logo on them and sold it in China under their own brand, as well as to various small sellers around the world. This situation persisted just at the time of the release of UMI Zero. If I am not mistaken, this is the first smartphone to which the company really 'had a hand', that is, now only the base is purchased – the chipset and components on it, and the assembly is carried out on its own in a small factory. Naturally, quality suffers from this, but for the first time in its short history UMI was able to show something original, which is not a typical design for hundreds of smartphones.
UMI was able to carry out an advertising campaign around the world thanks to cooperation with large Chinese online stores. So, at one time UMI Zero in the amount of 1000 pieces were exhibited on aliexpress for $ 200. Even for a 'Chinese', the price is very attractive at that time and given the characteristics of the Zero. The second point – the company itself and through partners (the same online stores, but smaller) handed out UMI Zero for reviews to journalists from all over the world. That is, it was enough to write to the company, provide a 'proof' of what you write about the equipment, and after two or three months you received a package from Shenzhen with a brand new Zero for review. Of course, not many took advantage of this opportunity, especially in Russia, where very few people write about rare Chinese, but such a move of the company gave some effect and more people learned about UMI Zero.
Leaving the advertising campaign and the peculiarities of UMI as a manufacturer beyond the scope of discussion, Zero turned out to be an interesting smartphone of the middle price category at the price of a state employee, well, or so.
By design, this is a spectacular but not practical device. Spectacular – because the combination of glass on both sides and a metal frame looks cool and beautiful. In addition, the smartphone is completely black – this adds points of 'brutality'.
Alas, from the point of view of practicality, Zero is very bad – the body is damn slippery, even lying on the table the device slides over the surface, let alone holding it in your hands – it is like a bar of soap, striving to slip out. The second point is that the case is very easily soiled, and dust accumulates in the gap between the glass and the frame (there are targets here, do not forget – this is “china-china”).
But, I will repeat once again – UMI Zero looks very cool. This is the level of large manufacturers without a hint of handicraft or the maximum economy and simplicity in design, familiar to smartphones from small Chinese companies.
In terms of characteristics, the smartphone is a strong middle peasant. Screen with a diagonal of 5 'and a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels based on Super AMOLED – matrix. Bright, juicy, as much as the eyes flow out, as in Samsung a couple of years ago. The MediaTek MT6592T platform with an octa-core Cortex-A7 processor and 2GB of RAM provide acceptable performance, especially if you do not install 'custom', they are not so good with them. There is support for two SIM-cards, one slot is combined with a slot for a memory card, that is, you can put either one or the other. The built-in memory of 16 GB is enough for the first time.
Two cameras – the main one with a resolution of 13 megapixels and the front one – 8 megapixels. The quality is slightly below average, perhaps the camera will get better on some firmware, but to be honest, I don't believe in it.
The battery is 2780 mAh – this capacity is generally enough for one day of operation.
What else? During active operation the device heats up like a stove, sometimes it goes into reboot itself, apparently to cool down. So far, one can only dream of stable operation of the device, at least for me it was like this: I use a smartphone for one or two days, then glitches, reboots and factory reset. And all this in relation to the second sample, the first UMI Zero sent to me did not read the SIM card and I had to ask to send another one by sending this one back.
And on this, it would seem, it is worth finishing the story about the device, summing up a short summary – an interesting external, but raw smartphone from a Chinese company, which now costs about 10,000-12,000 rubles when ordering from China or about 14,000-15,000 rubles with buying directly in Russia, if not for one BUT.
A few months after the launch of UMI Zero, the company introduced the ROOTJOY app for it. The essence? You connect your smartphone to a PC, turn on the USB debugging mode and then in a couple of clicks you can 'roll up' one of the many firmwares to the device: from the base branded from UMI to a fresh clean assembly Android 5.0 and MIUI with EMUI. A total of seven different firmware assemblies are available, to install any of them – just select it in the list, download and then click the 'Flash' button in the application.
Thanks to this feature, UMI Zero is now one of the most convenient for flashing smartphones – even a person who has never been involved in this business in his life can easily figure out how to reflash Zero. In the future, if UMI develops the project, the company may well become known precisely as a manufacturer of simple smartphones with the ability to install a variety of firmware on them in two clicks.
