Nah! You shouldn’t. There are many reasons why I think so, but I’ll outline the main points here. When I’m done, I’ll maybe highlight some of its good parts – see if you’re stubborn enough to take those good parts as justification for making a wrong buying decision.
Let’s get into it what’s bad on the C23 Pro.
The camera
When it comes to budget Android devices, I tend to give a lot of allowance for camera performance because these are budget Android devices after all. Sadly, even with my allowances, the Oukitel C23 Pro doesn’t cut it attal.
Picture quality is below par, and images appear washed out with none of the lovely color saturation you’d find on the Oukitel C21. Portrait mode is nothing to write home about as well, and although the front camera tries, in that it produces somewhat nice selfies, it’s just not enough to salvage the picture quality reputation of the C23 Pro.
Display is abysmal
Huge bezels and an unimpressive teardrop notch surround what’s a 700 x 1080 pixel HD IPS screen on the Oukitel C23 Pro. HD screens are not unheard of on smartphones in this price range but what’s unforgivable is the color quality of this screen.
Whites appear greyish, and blacks appear whitish. There’s no color pop, and worse of all, the pixel density is a mere 269 PPI. It’s simply not good enough, and I wonder if it contributes to the poor photo quality of the phones’ camera.
USB 2.0
I mean, seriously? Even the Umidigi A7S, which before now I’d assumed to be the worst of all budget smartphones, doesn’t come with USB 2.0. I was shocked to see this on the Oukitel C23 Pro. Although you get 5000mAh of battery power (which is removable, by the way) it’s once again, not enough to salvage this huge misstep.
Lacklustre design
I called it chubby in my original review, but frankly, the C23 Pro is the thickest phone I’ve reviewed in a long while. For smartphones, thick is not good, and when you combine this to the chunky bezels on this thing, you get a smartphone with looks only a mother (Oukitel) would like.
Oh, and it’s very heavy too, so make that bad looking and unwieldy to carry about.
I could go on with other petty things like the small fingerprint sensor but let’s pause here. I think you get the gist now. In all fairness, however, the Oukitel 23 Pro has some good parts about it. They include:
The 5000mAh battery
A 5000mAh battery is an impressive start to have on a $108 dollar smartphone, no doubt. In real-world use, I’ve found that the C23 Pro could go a day with moderate to intensive use – keep things simple, and this will last over a day.
The sad thing, however, is that you only get a 10W charger to charge this bulky battery. Good luck with waiting 3 hours to get to 100%.
The specifications
So you get 4GBs of RAM, 64GB of internal storage, and a Mediatek Helio P22 processor, which is an excellent spec configuration for the price. This will handle all the routine Android tasks you throw at it and even go as far as doing some performance heavy-lifting.
It will run Call of Duty. It will also run Brawl Stars. But will it run PUBG with stuttering? Nope.
Verdict
Already said it before, the Oukitel C23 Pro leaves a lot to be desired. And everything’s made worse by the fact that its predecessor, what it’s supposedly an upgrade over, still comes out as a better phone than the C23 Pro.
I’m talking about the Oukitel C21. I’d rather buy that phone (which is not much different in price) or the Umidigi A9 Pro if I wanted something pricier but wayyyy better.
