If you’re in the market for a cheap android phone chances are you’ve come across the Umidigi Note 100. But, is it really worth the buy? Are you actually getting a deal or do you have better options. In this review I answer those questions. I’ll talk about what makes this phone stand out, it’s not so great parts and at the end I’lll help conclude on whether this is a phone worth spending money on.
What’s in the box
You get the phone itself, a 20 watts charging brick with a USB C cable, a manual, sim ejector pin, a phone case, and an already applied screen protector. Although this phone does come with a headphone jack (which some of you like) there’s no wired earphone included in the pack.
Design and build quality
Looks-wise the Note 100 doesn’t have that much going on for it, it’s just basic Budget Android vibes. Yeah the camera bump looks classy enough, and you get this faux textured back but you’re not fooling anyone into believing this is premium Android levels with any of that, lets be clear. The relatively thick bezels, especially the lower bezel which looks like a chin more than anything else makes certain of that.
Build quality is a bit better, even though this is plastic all through they did a good job of making the plastic build feel a bit solid. Phone in hand and you’d be tempted to think this is more premium than it really is if you don’t look and feel closely enough. Case in point is the faux textured back, it’s so well executed that from a distance you might think it’s a brush metal finish. The only thing I would say is I fear this will pick scratches over time, it’s already a massive fingerprint magnet as it is.
One other good thing with the plastic build is this feels pleasantly light in hand for a phone with these dimensions. It weighs just 193.2 grams. To put that in perspective my Apple iPhone 15 Pro weighs 232grams or thereabouts despite being a smaller phone in hand.
The power button and volume keys are appropriately placed and they feel good to click. Umidigi does a nice job of adding an extra ‘express button’ on the side but more on that later.
Display quality
On paper this is a 6.8 inch, HD (720×1600) screen with a pixel density of about 258PPI. Solid specs for budget android and if you add the fact that you’re getting up to 120hz screen refresh rates it almost seems like a steal.
And I would say it is a steal all things considered I just have one small reservation the grayishness of whites on this phone’s screen. For some reason, white on Note 100 appears with a tinge of gray or blue. It’s not much of an inconvenience but when you’re used to the stellar displays of phones like my Pixel, it does stand out. There’s a setting to adjust the overall color tone of the display in the display settings but I never really got what I wanted even after toying with that for a while.
All of the issue with the color overtone can be explained away by saying this is an IPS Screen, not an Amoled, but for what it’s worth, I’ve seen implementations of IPS panels without this issue. Heck, the way cheaper Umidigi G9x doesn’t have this problem.
Anyways, keep that aside and you can call the display on the Note 100 very good. I especially love how smooth it felt while gaming, I’m guessing that’s down to the 120hz refresh rates and even on daily routine usage it looked and felt very sharp and responsive. You’ll love scrolling through social media, watching videos and pretty much every other routine stuff on this phone
Performance and spec sheet
Budget Android is not supposed to do too much heavy lifting but I’ve found that the Note 100 holds it’s own quite well when it comes to handling smartphone heavy tasks.
This ran pretty much all the games I threw at it without breaking a sweat and the list includes heavy weights like Call of Duty. Safe to say you’re not going to have any issues running your favorite daily apps… TikTok works flawlessly, scrolling through the menus was fast and smooth, calling, texting, Browsing, all routine smartphone use cases feel sublime on this phone.
That’s all thanks to its UniSOC T615 chip paired to 8GB of RAM And 256GB of onboard storage. Storage can be expanded with a MicroSD card.
I got this with Android 14 loaded (we’re currently on Android 16) and I don’t think you’re getting any updates from Umidigi. What’s nice however is this comes with almost no bloatware, it’s essentially stock Android.
Camera quality
As it is with most budget Android phones, pictures and videos are usually great if you shoot in well lit settings. So out on a walk in the park, outdoors at work, indoors with heavy flood lighting, you’re gonna get good bordering on amazing photos with the Note 100’s camera.
In poorly lit settings however, the camera quality drops to bad. And that’s what differentiates budget Android from flagship pricey Android, for the latter image quality drops to good enough.
All a long winded way of saying you get what you pay for. You’re not going to get those classic bokeh rich portrait photos that’ll have everyone asking what phone took these but as long as you stay in well lit settings pictures are decent enough – I’d say more than decent enough for your picture/video needs be it social media selfies, routine videos or photos and the likes.
There’s a 50MP camera onboard for more detail if you want that, but I found that the overall quality of the photos it put out was pretty much on par with the primary camera. You also get panorama, portrait mode and all of the usual fancy stuff.
Battery life
This phone comes equipped with a 5000mAh battery and on paper that should be enough for daily use. My experience was that it was indeed enough to go through the day provided you keep things simple.
I dailyed the Note 100 for a week or so and as long as I kept to answering calls, using Android auto, the one or two pictures and videos here and there it lasted till I got back home for a recharge. With any bit of mild to moderate heavy lifting however, battery life drops to under 12 hours on a full charge – and that’s great for a phone at this price point.
You get a 20W charger in the box and this can get the phone’s battery to 100% in about 1;30mins. Can’t seem to find any info anywhere as to whether this actually supports fast charging but when I plugged it to my 40 watts charger charging time dropped to under one hour.
Extras
The only noteworthy extra on this phone is the dedicated express button. Nice touch, Umidigi allows you to map this button to a list of functions in the settings menu.
Miss the days when they shipped their phones with gimmicky stuff like contactless thermometers.
Maybe I should add that this comes with facial recognition in addition to the power button mounted fingerprint sensor. Both the fingerprint sensor and facial recognition work very well and that’s a plus for this smartphone as many times on budget android you get finicky implementations of both those two technologies looking at you Umidigi G9x
Should you buy the Umidigi Note 100
For a budget android phone the Note 100 has a lot going on for it. I was especially surprised by how good it was at gaming performance. The camera quality is pretty much on par with most phones at this price range, and it’s same case for battery life and the build quality – good enough for a $200 phone.
If you love vibrant displays with punchy colors like me, you might be a little bit disappointed with the Note 100 but if you don’t mind that then yeah, it’s a solid buy.
