DOOGEE X5 MAX, an affordable smartphone with Android 6

Last time, most of the information about using the phone came from someone else. This time, all my impressions of the new DOOGEE X5 MAX will be entirely my own.
I'm not exactly spoiled by modern phones—in fact, this is the first smartphone I've carried as my main phone.
So I'll show it, take it apart, and share my impressions.

Technically, Android smartphones and tablets differ only in screen size and whether they have a GSM module, although some tablets do have GSM, which makes them even more alike.
I was offered this device to review as a new model, and I thought, why not? I need a new phone anyway, since my Siemens M75 is pretty outdated by now. I figured I'd give it a try: if it suits me, I'll use it; if it doesn't, I'll still use it, but at least I'll have something to think about when deciding what I actually need from a phone.

Specifications.
Color: Black / White
Processor — MTK6580, 4 cores
GPU — Mali-400 MP
Operating system — Android 6.0
Memory — 1 GB RAM, 8 GB flash storage.
Display — 5 inches, 1280x720 resolution
Network type GSM: 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
WCDMA: 850/1900/2100 MHz
Wireless interfaces — Wi-Fi: 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
GPS
Memory card slot — MicroSD, supports up to 32 GB according to the specs.
Audio output/microphone — 3.5 mm jack.
SIM card type — 1 micro-SIM and 1 nano-SIM.
Front camera: 5 MP
Main camera: 5 MP
Battery: 4000 mAh
Dimensions: 141x73x10.4 mm

First, just a couple of words about the packaging.
The phone arrived in a small cardboard box, with the store's stickers stuck right on top for some reason. Why not put them on the side? It looks ugly.


The bottom has a brief list of the phone's features, and there's even a sticker on the side for checking whether the product is genuine. But I can't help wondering: does anyone really counterfeit these? :)


I'm glad the phone was also wrapped in bubble wrap. It would be much harder to damage during shipping.


The package includes:
1. Phone
2. Power adapter (charger)
3. USB-microUSB cable
4. Manual.


The manual is in English, the print is tiny, and it makes almost no sense.
The cable is about 1 meter long and seems decent; at least, the phone charges and connects to a computer without any problems.
The charger is very compact, and its rated current is just 1 A.


Besides the bubble wrap, the phone comes in this sort of pouch made of thick plastic. There's a note at the bottom saying to remove the protective film from the battery contacts before turning it on. I'll get ahead of myself here: I didn't remove the film.


When I first picked up the phone, two thoughts came to mind: it's heavy, and it looks like a brick—in other words, there's nothing elegant about it. The contrast was especially noticeable next to the Vernee Thor.
The phone has a black body with a strip around the edge that looks metallic. In the photo it looks white, but in reality it has a slight purple tint.


From a slightly different angle, you can see the rather wide bezels around the display.


There are three standard buttons on the bottom, as well as a microphone hole.
Unfortunately, the buttons aren't backlit, which would have been really useful.


On the back are a fingerprint sensor, camera, and a small flashlight, grandly called a “flash” :)
By the way, the flashlight has a slightly unusual beam, with a small dark spot in the center.
On the other hand, the fingerprint sensor on this phone works much better than the one on the Vernee Thor. As it happened, I tested both phones at almost the same time and had some complaints about the Thor—or rather, its sensor. Out of curiosity, I tried the same thing on the phone under review: the Thor's sensor registered my fingerprint once every 4–5 tries, while this one worked once every two touches.


1. The MicroUSB port is in an unusual place: on top. I don't have much data to go on, of course, but I think it would be more convenient on the bottom.
2. The speaker holes are on the bottom (or so I thought at first).
3. The right side has the standard volume buttons and power button.
4. The left side is bare.


As I mentioned above, the fingerprint sensor is on the bottom, and I also said that it works quite reliably. But I also realized that while it's convenient in its own way, I personally don't need it. Yes, it's handy to unlock the phone with a touch, but pressing a button is no trouble either. Of course, using the sensor is more secure, but I never set up any passwords or PINs on my previous phone either. That's just my personal opinion, though.


The rear camera has autofocus. I'll show some sample photos taken with it later. There's also a light, but it's really weak; it might help with close-up shots, though it's handy as a tiny flashlight.


At the top of the front panel are the earpiece, camera, and proximity sensor.
The proximity sensor is near a specially shaped cutout in the protective film and triggers at a distance of about 3 cm.


As I mentioned above, the phone is quite heavy, at least for its size.
But strangely enough, when I weighed the Vernee Thor, I was a little surprised: despite weighing only 40 grams less, the phone under review feels significantly heavier. Maybe it's because of its more angular shape, but it seemed to me that the difference was more than 40 grams.
Out of curiosity, I weighed the phone that the DooGee has replaced.

In general, it feels like progress moves in circles, just like fashion. First phones were big (who still remembers NMT?), then they got smaller and smaller. Then came the smartphone era (although, no, the first smartphone was released back in 1992), and screen sizes started growing again: 3.5, 4, 5, 6. What comes next? Where have all the nice little phones gone?


Let's remove the back cover. It was really hard to get off the first time; it was on very tight.


I took off the cover and, to put it mildly, was surprised.
I'd been testing the phone for several days without a SIM card, installing various software and checking things, but it wasn't until I opened it that I noticed the protective film was still on the battery.
When I first turned it on and the phone booted up, I thought it might have been checked and the film removed, so it never even occurred to me to check.


The phone's contacts simply pierced the film on all three battery contacts as if it weren't there at all.
The battery is rated at 4000 mAh, which was one of my criteria for choosing the phone, but I'll test that separately.
It's nice that the battery is removable, although I've seen people argue that a non-removable battery is actually better: with a removable one, you still have to find a replacement for sale, whereas with a non-removable one you can install any battery that fits. Well, there's some truth to that, I won't argue.


There's a sticker under the battery with the phone's make and IMEI on it. Honestly, though, it looks kind of cheap.


The phone has two SIM card slots: the first takes a microSIM, the second a nanoSIM. There's also a microSD card slot. You can only swap the cards with the battery removed.
One advantage is that there are no card trays, so you can easily install two SIM cards and a memory card without them getting in each other's way.
One downside (for me) is that the SIM cards are different sizes.


And then I spotted a surprising inscription on the bottom: 3D stereo sound.
When I was playing around with the phone, I immediately noticed that although there are two speaker grilles, only one speaker plays.
After seeing that inscription, I had a thought: maybe the second speaker simply doesn't work.


Since I'd taken the battery out, I tested its capacity.
The battery contacts are easy to access, so testing its capacity was no trouble at all.


Unfortunately, the capacity fell short of the claimed 4000 mAh, coming in at around 3500 mAh.
To be fair, I made a small mistake during the test. I set the charging current to match the original charger's current, but I should have set the discharge current to 0.5C, or 2000 mA. Instead, I chose 1500 mA.


We've inspected everything we can from the outside; time to get inside.
First, remove the 11 small screws around the perimeter, then use a guitar pick or plastic card to unclip the cover.


The circuit board is a little unusual: it's not a simple rectangle, but has an L-shaped outline.
The assembly is neat, with no complaints; everything looks great.


What the heck, 3D stereo sound? The speaker isn't broken; there's only one speaker.
I did wonder whether the earpiece might be used for the second channel during playback, but no—the sound comes only from the speaker at the bottom.
And honestly, I don't like how it sounds. My old Siemens M75 (and Nokia phones, for that matter) sounds noticeably better, especially considering that the Siemens uses just one speaker—the earpiece.
The sound is odd. Some recordings have their highs cut off; with others, it feels like there's not enough power. There's also one small but annoying issue: the volume control. Even at the lowest setting, the sound is loud enough to bother people nearby. You want to turn it down further, but the only lower setting is no sound at all.


The fingerprint sensor comes off easily, and there’s clearly something hidden underneath it by a metal shield, but I couldn’t make out what it was.


A few separate components.
1. A vibration motor with an unusual form factor
2. A small LED and the camera
3. Presumably the GSM module
4. The phone’s charging circuit (that’s why I usually say power supply rather than charger: the charging circuit is inside the phone)
There are quite a few empty spaces nearby.


In my previous review, I wrote that there was nothing interesting on the inside of the board, and took a photo to prove it. I didn’t remove the board completely, just bent it back.
Everything inside is covered by metal shields, so there isn’t much to see.


When I first picked up the phone, and even later when I carried it around, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had a metal frame around the edges. Maybe it was the way it felt to the touch, or maybe the phone’s extra weight—I don’t know.
But when I opened it up, I noticed that the edges are actually plastic. You can see it where there’s no molding seam.
The impression was so convincing that I even checked it with a tester to see if it conducted electricity. Sadly, it’s plastic, but the metallic effect is excellent.


Before installing the SIM card, I had to trim it down. Luckily, I had an adapter at home—the kind that comes with modern SIM cards. I placed one on top of the other, traced around it with a marker, and cut it with scissors. Took about half a minute.


As part of the battery charging test, I took a thermal image of the phone’s back cover and the power supply after about an hour of charging.
That was partly how I figured out where the phone’s charging circuit was. And judging by the temperature, it was clearly linear rather than switching.
The power supply gets moderately warm; the hottest spot on its case reached 51 degrees.


What did surprise me was the charging speed. Based on the charger specs and the battery capacity, it should have taken about 3.5–4 hours to charge. In reality, the phone charges in 2–2.5 hours. I suspect the battery isn’t being charged all the way.


The phone’s screen is pretty good, with excellent viewing angles and rich colors. The only thing is that the image looks a little brighter when viewed straight on than from any angle.


The home screen and installed apps. I was pleasantly surprised that there were no “Chinese” apps included—those are usually hard to remove and take up storage space. It was also nice that the manufacturer had already installed the Play Store, an app for using the fingerprint sensor, an office suite, and a few other genuinely useful apps.
To get ahead of myself a little, not a single app crashed during the entire test. Surprisingly, everything worked—and worked well.


The settings menu is more convenient than the one on the Vernee Thor, which pleasantly surprised me. There’s an option for working with QR codes, as well as a duplicate option for using the fingerprint sensor.


A little more information about some of the menu items.
Unfortunately, after switching to Russian, some items were still left in English. Maybe they’ll fix this in the next firmware update, but there’s no guarantee.


The first screenshot shows the phone’s scheduling feature, which lets you set it to turn on and off automatically to save battery power. My daughter set her phone to turn off at night. Unfortunately, I can’t do that myself, since I might get a call at night, but it’s definitely a handy feature.
The options for high-contrast text and color inversion have a note I liked: “Experimental feature”—so use them at your own risk :)


The latest firmware version is installed. I check for updates from time to time, but so far, nothing.


Information from CPU-Z.
The phone has a quad-core MediaTek MT6580 processor, with a core frequency that can vary from 420 to 1300 MHz. ARMv7-A architecture (VFPv4, NEON). As far as I know, this processor is slower than the Cortex-A9, but more energy-efficient.


What’s interesting is that in reviews of various TV boxes, the temperature field was usually empty, but here there’s so much information it makes your eyes swim. It feels like the phone measures everything—probably even the owner’s body temperature :)))))
The screenshot with sensor data includes information from the light sensor. 20000 lux is the maximum the phone can display/measure. The minimum is 303 lux.


For some reason, the settings say that 454 MB of 8 GB is in use. After a while, once you’ve installed some apps, it says that about 3 GB of 8 GB is in use, but in reality the user only has 4.64 GB available; the rest is taken up by the system.
The phone is fairly economical with RAM. I haven’t used any extra optimization apps, but even so, it doesn’t use all the available memory.


Since we’re talking about memory, let’s also test its speed.


Unfortunately, the phone doesn’t support OTG, so external USB connectivity is limited to these options.


As usual, I’ll start the performance evaluation with the AnTuTu test, version 5.2.0.


AnTuTu version 6.1.3 gave a higher score, but the sixth version runs a slightly different test, so comparing it with earlier versions isn’t entirely fair.
In any case, I think the performance is quite adequate for everyday use and for games that aren’t too demanding.


Some additional information from AnTuTu. To be honest, I was a little surprised by just how many different sensors a phone can have. I decided not to include the last screenshot of the sensors.


To check the sensors and see how they worked, I used a small app designed specifically for that purpose.
The app detected quite a few sensors—6 out of a possible 9—but testing showed that the magnetic field and orientation sensors didn't work, or at least the app couldn't get any data from them.


As a gaming performance test, 3DMark scored 2017 points—not very much.


Interestingly, the phone did worse in typical apps and tasks, but not as badly as the 3D test might suggest. In everyday use, I didn't notice any lag or freezes.


The reduced amount of RAM was immediately apparent in the Epic Citadel test. Performance was still reasonably good in High Quality mode, but dropped noticeably in Ultra High Quality mode.


Surprisingly, Wi-Fi works really well on this phone. I've had terrible luck with TV boxes, but this was the complete opposite.
The test is the same one I use in my reviews.
1. The phone is on my desk at work, in an almost dead zone with lots of concrete walls. The access point is only 12 meters away, but almost everything loses its signal here. The phone connected without any trouble and even got a decent speed.
2. The same room, but with noticeably less obstruction from the walls.
3. A room next to the one with the router, with an almost direct line of sight. Excellent signal.


Even from about 100 meters away from one of the student dorms, the phone found a ton of access points—and that's with a concrete fence between me and the dorm.


GPS, on the other hand, was a real disappointment.
The phone saw 9–10 satellites in the city and 12 out in the open.
The Vernee Thor saw up to 16–17 satellites in the city; I didn't test it out in the open.


I tried recording a track and was surprised by the result. I was walking straight, of course, but when I looked at the track, my first thought was: I couldn't have drunk that much :)
The phone was in the inside pocket of my windbreaker.


I was even more surprised when I tried the same thing on a trolleybus ride. I was sitting by a south-facing window, holding the phone in my hands, and traveling along Valentynivska Street—but according to GPS, I was somewhere else entirely.


Besides the usual Navitel, I installed another app, Progorod. It was only a demo version, though, and it works a little differently. As far as I could tell, it uses data from GLONASS satellites, but I could be wrong.


And the tracks here are noticeably smoother. Of course, there are a few caveats. For example, on the first track I went straight, crossing the road at only two places, but that’s beside the point—the error is small.
The second track, however, was recorded before the track I showed above, using Navitel. In other words, I was riding the same trolleybus, first using one app and then switching to another. Blyukhera and Valentynivska are the same street.


Since there were some comments last time about the battery life testing, I’ve expanded this section of the review a little.
First, the phone can run until the battery drops to 1%, which I think is a good thing. I could measure the final discharge voltage, of course, but without comparing it with other phones, that wouldn’t mean much.


When the charge drops below 15%, the phone suggests turning on power-saving mode. But in all the tests—and in everyday use, too—I simply ignored this message. If I need a phone, I want it fully functional, not reduced to a pretty screen with calling capabilities.


Here are some typical discharge graphs. In real-world use, the phone easily lasts two days with about an hour of reading, browsing the internet, a couple of hours of calls, and so on.
I should mention that I don’t play games on my phone, although I’m thinking of installing some maps. Since it’s convenient to read on the phone, though, I pass the time on the metro reading The Witcher.

The battery indicator deserves a mention of its own—it seems to have a mind of its own. The graph in the second screenshot is a bit unusual; let me explain.
The section before the gap is just regular phone use, though fairly heavy.
The gap is when I took the battery out to change the memory card. The process took longer than expected, so the phone was left without its battery for about an hour.
The section after the gap is about half an hour of calls and around 40–45 minutes of GPS use with the screen on.
After that, the battery charge dropped to 13%, and I used the phone for almost two more days. During that time, I talked for about an hour, read a book for half an hour, and recorded a track with two different apps (about half an hour of GPS use).


A more detailed graph of battery capacity consumption


The phone does report some completely absurd capacity estimates, though. Going by its numbers, you’d think the battery was at least 10,000 mAh, not 4,000 mAh :)


And, as requested in the previous review, I tested the phone’s runtime while playing video.
Full HD video (10 Mbps stream, 3 GB file, 44 minutes), brightness at 50%, low volume, Wi-Fi on.
Runtime was about 8 hours.
It would have been more accurate, of course, to test with 720p video, since there’s no point watching Full HD on a screen like this. I could also have tested YouTube playback, but Wi-Fi was active during the test, and it even downloaded some app updates. Besides, I chose a stream that wasn’t particularly low-bitrate.


Now we can move on to the last thing I want to show in this review: the cameras—or, more precisely, the main camera, since that's the one used most often when taking photos.
Yes, the camera is clearly not this phone's strong point. That's understandable, really: making a phone with good cameras, GPS, a decent display, and a price of $60 is difficult, and probably close to impossible. Let's be realistic.
I took several comparison shots, as well as some photos on their own in real-world conditions. I compared this phone with the subject of the previous review, the Vernee Thor, whose camera has a noticeably higher resolution than the one in the phone under review.
But since the site may distort the photos (by the way, all the photos are clickable), I uploaded the originals to Yandex Disk.









And now it's time to sum things up—and the conclusions are far from clear-cut.
As usual, let's start with the pros and cons.
Pros
Good build quality, with no play, creaks, or anything like that.
Very good Wi-Fi performance
The fingerprint sensor works reasonably well
Stable software
No unnecessary software included
Good call quality
Acceptable battery life on a single charge

Cons
Music playback through the speaker isn't very good, and the volume control is awkward
Poor GPS sensitivity
No OTG support
The battery has a high capacity, but it doesn't match the advertised figure.
Heavy (though that's subjective, just like the design)
Poor ergonomics: the sharp corners make the phone seem bigger than it really is.
No notification LED

My take. I'll say right away that I used the phone for several weeks, and the only things I really appreciated were how convenient it was for reading books on the subway and using Wi-Fi there, as well as just out on the street. In other words, it's basically like a small tablet. Personally, I found it inconvenient to use as a phone. I'm used to holding the phone against my shoulder while talking (headset fans, brace yourselves), but this one is quite heavy, so I'm constantly afraid it'll fall on my foot and break. Besides, I just can't get used to the touchscreen; I've accidentally turned on speakerphone several times already. The volume control turned out to be very awkward. Apart from not being able to turn the sound down really low, I can't simply lower the volume first and then start a movie (for example), because by default it adjusts the ringtone volume, not the media volume—but that's a minor issue. The sound also seems to have a mind of its own: some tracks have no treble at all, yet I can play a movie and get good sound.
On the plus side, I liked the battery life. My old 10-year-old Siemens M75, with its original battery, also lasts two days on a charge (so much for progress!), and you can actually stretch it to three days, especially with Wi-Fi turned off.
I liked the performance, the lack of delays when launching apps, and the overall smoothness of the interface. I know 2–3 weeks isn't long, but I ran a lot of tests during that time, and nothing has changed on the outside.
I don't use the fingerprint scanner, but it definitely works better than the one on the Vernee Thor.

All in all, I don't want to criticize it, but I can't really praise it either. It's just another phone one of thousands, but it wasn't right for me—or maybe I wasn't right for it. We're just different. I'll keep using it for now and gather more data, but in the meantime I'll look for something better. I'd really like a device more like my beloved Siemens M75, but anything similar is very expensive these days, if it even exists.
I almost forgot to mention the lack of a notification LED. My old Siemens has this feature: the backlight flashes a certain number of times to show how many missed calls or SMS messages there are. The manufacturer cut costs here, even though this is entirely software-based. I wouldn't be surprised if they add it later.

That's all for now. As always, I'll be waiting for your suggestions, feedback, and criticism in the comments.
I'll wrap up my gadget reviews for now. The next reviews will be about amateur radio, which I hope will be more interesting :)

Almost forgot: with coupon HQX5MAX, the price is $59.99

The product was provided by the store for review.