Doogee S96 Pro Rugged Smartphone Review

Doogee S96 Review 

By Calvin Jones 

We’ve all been there. Your phone slips out of your hand and lands on the pavement with a sickening crunch… or falls out of a pocket and tumbles, almost in slow motion, to land in the toilet bowl/a muddy puddle/wet sand.
For many of us, our smartphone has become a pivotal part of our daily lives, lending it a significance that far outweighs the underlying price-tag. Being without your phone, even for a short period, can be more than just inconvenient, it can be borderline traumatic.

Thankfully, the environments most of us use our phones in aren’t that extreme, and with a little care we can keep accidents to a minimum. But there are those who, for work or for leisure, regularly expose their phones to higher levels of risk.

Construction workers, outdoor enthusiasts, tradespeople, surfers, mechanics, fishermen, welders, engineers… There are plenty of professions and pastimes where having a more robust smartphone could be a real boon. That’s where the new breed of rugged smartphones come in.

Rugged smartphones are waterproof, dustproof, scratch-proof, and shockproof. They can take a lot of punishment, shrug it off, and keep going. It’s still very much a niche market, but a growing one. Not long ago, rugged phones tended to be low-spec, utilitarian devices, but recently they’ve evolved to offer more solid performance and a slick, modern Android user experience, all wrapped in practically bulletproof armour.

An example is the S96 Pro, a Rugged Smartphone Flagship released by Chinese manufacturer Doogee in November 2020.

Doogee S96: First Impressions and Build Quality

This chunky device sports a 6.22” LCD IPS display protected by Corning Gorilla Glass (generation unspecified) with a 19:9 aspect ratio, housed in a sturdy polycarbonate and aluminum-alloy chassis. The first thing you notice when you take it out of the box is that it’s built like a tank. It’s much heavier and bulkier than your average smartphone, and while that’s potentially a negative, the sheer heft of the phone makes it feel almost indestructible.

That initial impression is backed up by a suite of industry-standard ratings including an IP68 waterproof/dustproof rating, IP69K high-pressure water jet rating, and a MIL-STD-810G US Military rating that covers everything from pressure; temperature extremes; driving and freezing rain; humidity; vibration; sand, salt, and dust exposure and more. Suffice it to say the S96 Pro will keep going in environments where you might not.

While it shares a lot in terms of overall design with other rugged phones, the S96 Pro’s two-tone look is kind of cool, and the finish feels polished. The metal buttons are tactile, with satisfying and precise feedback, and are positioned perfectly when holding the phone. The side-mounted fingerprint sensor works well, offering accurate and practically instantaneous unlocking and secure access to apps. There’s also a capable face-unlock option.

The back of the phone reveals a pleasing textured metal and polycarbonate chassis punctuated by little flashes of colour (the review unit came with Fire Orange highlights, but the phone is also available with a more muted Army Green or an almost imperceptibly subtle Mineral Black). It is dominated by the grey-metal circular mounting for the quad-camera array. It houses a 48MP main camera, an 8MP ultra-wide, a 2MP macro camera, and one of the stand-out features of the phone: a 20MP night-vision camera.

The cameras are flanked by two banks of four LEDs: the first is a white LED’s for the regular torch/flash, the second are infrared LEDs that light up the night when you enable that night-vision camera.

Doogee claims this is the world’s first infrared night-vision camera in a rugged phone, and I haven’t been able to find any other phone on the market, rugged or otherwise, that offers one. It’s different to the thermal cameras you see on some phones, in that it essentially allows you to see, and take black and white photographs, in complete darkness. While it sounds gimmicky, being able to see in complete darkness is both very cool, and more useful than you might initially think.

S96 Pro: what’s on the inside?

In terms of specs, the Doogee S96 Pro delivers in spades in some areas, but skimps a bit in others, making compromises that, while explainable, could be deal-breakers for some users.

First the good news. The S96 Pro rocks a high-spec Mediatek G90T octo-core gaming processor paired with 8GB of UFS RAM and a generous 128GB of storage. It also supports dual sim cards AND has space for an SD Card to add up to 256GB of additional storage.

Running a near-stock version of Android 10, that combination delivers a smooth and responsive experience with no lag and snappy app performance. The only time I was waiting was when the phone was downloading content over our ropey rural broadband connection. During day to day use, the phone delivered a near-flawless Android user experience.

I’m not much of a gamer, but we all know games are what really put phone hardware to the test. The S96 Pro had no problem running Call of Duty Mobile without any sign of stutter or lag during my admittedly brief period of testing — so all good on that front.

You’ll find the usual array of connectivity options in the S96 Pro too. It’s not a 5G phone, but offers comprehensive coverage of 4G LTE bands, delivering decent 4G performance that should have you covered not just here in Ireland, but also while roaming abroad. It also covers 3G and 2G bands for those out-of-town areas where 4G is still something of a novelty.

On the WiFi front the S96 Pro supports the latest dual-band standards with the usual WiFi Hotspot, WiFi Direct, and WiFi Display options, and offers Bluetooth 5.0, NFC (yes, GooglePay works), and has multi-system navigation support onboard (GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, Beidou and Galileo).

The battery life on the S96 Pro is impressive. A whopping 6,350 mAh cell is capable of giving you a good two days of above-average usage on a single charge. I’d often go to plug it in at night to find the battery still hovering around the 65% mark. The phone also supports 24W wired fast charging and 10W wireless charging, so your S96 Pro is unlikely to run out of juice.

This brings us to perhaps its biggest downside. Doogee has elected to go with a 1520×720 pixel IPS HD display in the S96 Pro, giving the 6.22” screen a middle-of-the-road pixel density of just 270ppi. I was surprised, as the phone’s predecessor, the S95 Pro, had a 1080p HD+ display. I asked Doogee about this, and they said it was an informed design decision to improve performance and battery life given the phone’s intended target market. Which I guess makes sense.

There’s nothing wrong with the display itself. Images are vibrant, text is crisp and readable, and despite seeing some reviews to the contrary, I found it plenty bright enough to use outdoors in bright sunlight. So in practical terms, I couldn’t see that much of a difference compared to an HD+ 1080p display. Still, I would have preferred to see a more capable display given that this is marketed as Doogee’s flagship rugged phone.

Camera Performance

While it’s not going to challenge the best on the market in terms of camera performance, the 48MP main camera on the S96 Pro produces excellent all-round results with plenty of detail and decent colour in good light. Like most smartphone cameras it can struggle with noise as light levels fall, and doesn’t have the software smarts of the market leaders to (literally) smooth the rough edges.

When enabled the AI system does a reasonable job of analysing the scene and setting the camera for best results. Keep an eye on it though, as it has a tendency to over-saturate colours and boost contrast in some scenes, making your images look artificial and overworked. The main sensor also does a good job of capturing video in 4K at 30fps, although there’s no optical image stabilisation, so if you’re shooting handheld footage could be a little jerky.

The 8MP wide-angle camera works well in situations where you want to squeeze more into the frame, but don’t expect miracles in terms of image quality. Likewise, the 2MP macro is grand for the occasional closeup, but again, don’t expect too much.

This brings us to the stand out camera feature that sets this phone apart. Night-vision. It literally lets you see (and photograph) in complete darkness. Turn on night vision mode and you’ll see a black and white image of the scene before you, illuminated by the four infrared LEDs on the back of the phone. Photos taken in this mode are interesting, but the scope is limited. Focus isn’t great in the dark, and I guess shutter speeds are low, so moving subjects blur. Still, it’s a novel feature.

The real utility of the feature isn’t the photography though — it’s allowing you to see/find your way in absolute darkness. Whether it’s finding a dropped key in the car footwell, making your way to bed without disturbing your partner, or finding your way through a cluttered garden shed (see image), it’s surprising how often being able to see in the dark comes in handy. The infrared LED’s on the back of the phone aren’t that powerful, so range is limited, although I guess the sensor will work with external infrared light sources too if that’s something you want to explore.

A teardrop notch at the top of the display houses a highly serviceable 16MP front-facing selfie camera that includes a dedicated portrait mode should you feel like blurring the background for effect.

Overall experience

I’ve been using the S96 Pro as my main device for just over a week, and have to say I’ve been very pleasantly surprised. At first, I was worried about the size and bulk, and I guess if you’ve small hands it may be a bit tricky to handle, but I found it fine. I was also concerned about carrying it around, but in practice, it slipped into a fleece or jacket pocket as easily as a standard 5.5” phone.

What I wasn’t expecting was just how much I’d appreciate having a phone that was impervious to damage. I’m normally quite careful with my tech but hadn’t realised quite how subconsciously preoccupied I was with keeping it safe. Carrying the S96 Pro, knowing it was impervious to water, would bounce happily off the concrete and cope with a fall in the sand at the beach was a liberating experience.

Performance-wise the S96 Pro blew my expectations out of the water, easily on a par with any upper-mid-range phone you’d care to mention. Using Android and the array of day-to-day connectivity, entertainment and productivity apps was a pretty much flawless, stock-Android experience, and it handled more demanding tasks with unexpected aplomb.

What’s really remarkable about the Doogee S96 Pro though is its price. Another plus for that lower resolution screen is that it’s allowed Doogee to bring in this very capable handset at a very affordable price point (significantly lower than the S95 Pro it supersedes). The RRP of the S96 Pro is just US$299, and it’s available from several online retailers with a significant discount on that already competitive price.

Take a look around and I’ll think you’ll struggle to find another phone with a decent octa-core processor, 8GB RAM, 128GB ROM, 48MP quad-camera with 24W fast charging, 10W wireless charging, and NFC at under €300. Add in the peace of mind and confidence that come with the S96 Pro’s rugged credentials and you have a very compelling package for anyone looking for a phone that can take some punishment, without compromising too much on performance.

Specs

• CPU: Helio G90T
• GPU: Arm Mali-G76
• RAM: 8GB
• Storage: 128GB
• Screen size: 6.2-inch
• Resolution: 1520×720
• Weight: 307g
• Dimensions: 167x81x155mm
• Rear camera: 48MP, 20MP, 8MP, 2MP
• Front camera: 16MP
• OS: Android 10
• Battery: 6.35Ah

Author

Calvin Jones is an author and online content specialist based in West Cork Ireland. Alongside his writing projects, he runs Ireland’s Wildlife, helps business clients improve their websites, and reviews the latest tech gadgets.

Follow Calvin on Twitter | View Calvin’s LinkedIn profile

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