The G9x is Umidigi’s latest entry level smartphone. For just $79 you get 4GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a full HD screen, and a 5000mAh battery. On paper that’s a great deal but I’m here to tell you specs don’t maketh smartphones. In this review we’ll see if those great numbers translate into a worthy budget Android phone that’s worth your money.
What’s in the box
Umidigi ships the G9x with a plastic pouch, a screen guard (that’s already applied to the screen and you gotta be careful, cause the screen guard is very thin and bonded to protective film that comes with the phone out of the box. In my case I peeled it off while I was removing the film.)
There’s a charger in the box as well, a USB C cable, the phone manual/warranty card and the sim ejector tool.
Design and build quality
Like most Umidigi smartphones (and most Android phones at this price point) the Umidigi G9x spots a plastic build. It is a good looking smartphone all things considered, I just wish they’d do away with the chin which is pretty much standard on all Umidigi smartphones.
The design is simple, none of that faux textured back stuff you’d see on the Note 100. There’s a camera cutout on the back for what looks like three cameras, but in reality is two cameras and fake bump housing the flash. The bezels are still fairly thick (again customary for Umidigi) and on the G9x you get a teardrop notch which in my opinion makes for a cleaner look.
At 191 grams it is one of the lighter Umidigi smartphones. It’s nice in hand and even though this is a relatively tall phone both the power and volume buttons are well placed, easy to reach and responsive when clicked.
Display quality
You’re getting a HD (720 x 1600) screen which is pretty much the standard for phones at this price point and I’d say it looks fairly good enough on the G9x, even better than the HD screen on the Note 100 with similar specifications.
Colors popped enough, there was none of the grayish whites I experienced with the Note 100 and even though you don’t get the 120hz screen refresh rate of the Note 100 (90hz is what you get) I reckon you wouldn’t miss it on this phone.
Images were also sharp, if you squint hard or take the phone close enough to your eyes you will see individual pixels no doubt but for a phone at this price point the G9x gets a pass in the screen department.
Performance and spec sheet
I’ll start by saying this runs Android 14 Go out of the box which is basically a toned down version of Android for phones with less than capable processing power. Naturally (that meant only one thing), I was gonna load this up with the most performance intensive and demanding games I could download and see if id end up frying the CPU.
I started with Call of Duty and first thing you’ll notice is the app automatically sets the graphics quality to low, but it was working. In fact, I was starting to enjoy myself and even though my palms could literally feel the heat from the overworked chipset on the G9x, I was gaming and it was handling call of duty to a manageable standard. So I needed to bring out the big guns.
Now you could see the G9x suffer. Phone ran hot, took almost 2 hours to complete the initial load up, basically skipped at every frame and you could almost feel the processor begging for its life. But you know what, it didn’t light up in flames… turns out the Unisoc SC9863A1 chipset powering this was not going out without a fight. Paired to 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of internal storage (you can get the G9x with 64GB and save up to 10 Bucks) this chipset and its Android Go operating system survived my onslaught.
It’s certainly not the phone to get for any serious bits of gaming or performance intensive stuff and I did experience some stutter and freezes as time went on but for what it’s worth it held on to its own quite well.
I went on to daily the phone for a few more days. Using its browser was smooth, social media apps worked fine and it managed to handle multitasking well enough. Honestly did not think the G9x would hold up well when it comes to performance given that it runs on Android Go but overall I was pleasantly surprised.
Camera quality
The camera on the G9x was as run of the mill as can get for a budget Android phone.
In low light conditions images were very blurry and quite frankly not good enough. When there was enough light it was barely good. In very well lit conditions picture quality improves significantly to good enough.
The actual camera setup is a 13MP wide camera paired to another 0.3MP camera, not quite sure what that does exactly. As I mentioned earlier the third camera bump is actually for the flash. The selfie cam is a wide 5MP setup and pretty much all I’ve said for the main camera holds true for it – good in bright light, bordering on useless in low light.
There are five shooting modes, portrait, panoramic, night, and pro. Portrait mode basically adds a skin smoothening filter, so not very useful, same case with night mode, it didn’t really make a difference in low light conditions. Panoramic mode on the other hand works well enough but I didn’t even bother with the pro mode.
Video quality like photo quality was okayish in bright scenes but I did notice a lot of shaking in the footage (not that I expect this to come with sophisticated image stabilization) to the extent that it made some clips really bad. The G9x can shoot full HD at 30fps.
Battery life
Despite having a stated 5000mAh battery pack I found the G9x lacking when it came to battery life. On a full charge and with consistent routine use this only went about 12 hours in my experience. If you use it intensively battery life drops dramatically to a few hours.
Matter of fact At one point I saw battery life fall about 10% in the space of 15 mins while I was downloading an app over wifi which is super weird for a so called 5000mAh phone.
The phone ships with a 10W charger that does 0 – 100% in a about an 1:20mins. The G9x doesn’t officially support any fast charging technology.
Extras
One nice bit with Umidigi is they’ve retained the headphone jack so if you’re a grandma or grandad that’s something to tickle your fancy.
You also get a power button mounted fingerprint sensor as well as facial recognition. The fingerprint sensor works say 6 out of 10 times, so not very sensitive but manageable. same cannot be said for the facial recognition and facial unlock system, pretty much hit and miss and unreliable overall.
Should you buy the Umidigi G9x
If you need a basic Android phone for calls, social media, and other routine stuff then the G9x is worth your consideration. It doesn’t particularly stand out anywhere true, but when you factor in the price, it all makes sense. At $74 this is one of the cheapest smartphones you can buy new right now.
And that $74 gets you a smartphone with an okay screen, an old but capable processor, fairly good build quality and a decent camera. Sure the battery life is a little bit suspicious especially given that this is marketed as a 5000mAh phone but you’d hard pressed to find better in that department at this price point.
If you’re in the market for anything other than a serious Android phone, maybe something to use as your second phone then I’d recommend it.
