If you looked at most other big battery phones in the budget – mid-range smartphone market, there was little to like asides from their massive batteries. They almost always debuted below average specifications and always came with poor cameras.
Not the Umidigi Power 3, though. With a 6150mAh battery onboard, this phone is undoubtedly a battery king. And it doesn’t stop at that – it comes with an impressive camera setup, a full HD screen, and what’s an above-average chipset.
Is all that enough reason to get the Power 3? Let’s find out.
Umidigi Power 3 – Design and build quality
Plastic, but still nice
Right off the bat, I’ll go on to tell you that the Umidigi Power 3 spots an all-plastic build, but it’s one that’s executed to perfection. The build is solid with a nice textured feel. It definitely makes the phone handier to grip and more comfortable to hold.
On the back, you’ll find an all too familiar iPhone styled camera bump with some Umidigi tweaks. Paired to the flush back, this falls in line with the overall seamless theme of the phone. It’s not trying to be anything spectacular, and in staying simple, it manages to strike that resonant chord of minimalism.
On the front, you get a 6.53-inch screen with a hole punch at the top left corner. As always, with Umidigi, there are visible bezels and a noticeable chin too, but everything still feels like it was consciously engineered and fitted into place.
The Umidigi A7S is a chunky 10.3mm thick thanks to that massive battery at the back. On the sides of the phone, there’s the usual power button and volume rocker, and everything feels snappy to click.
The phone comes in three colour variations; Space Gray, Midnight Green, and Red.
Umidigi Power 3 – Performance and spec-sheet
The Umidigi Power 3 is powered by a high-end Mediatek Helio P60. It’s an octa-core setup, and on performance tests, it registers a healthy 2 GHz max clock speed. The processor pairs with an ARM Mali-G72MP3 GPU, and everything connects to 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM.
Enough to handle everyday tasks
As a whole, this hardware brick delivers enough to power the Umidigi Power 3 through everyday tasks. It’s also able to do some heavy lifting but to a limit. If you’re planning on running performance-intensive games like Asphalt 8, the Power 3 should have no problem at low to mid settings. Take it up a little bit higher, and you’re bound to experience some lag.
Storage
To store your files, Umidigi has equipped the Power 3 with 64GB of onboard storage. Of course, this is expandable to about 256GB of extra storage via a Micro-SD card slot.
AnTuTu score
On the AnTuTu benchmark, the Power 3 scores a handsome 173,000, that’s better than the Xiaomi Mi 8, the Oppo A11, and the Huawei P Smart.
Umidigi Power 3 – Camera quality
Excellent, like the S5 Pro
If you’re an everyday smartphone user, you’ll love the camera on the Power 3. It’s similar, if not the same, as the 48MP primary, 13MP wide-angle, 5MP depth, and 5MP macro setup you’d find on the Umidigi S5 Pro. And if you read our review of that camera system, you’d see that it was all praises.
On the Power 3, it does pretty much the same thing. Excellent pictures all round, but more especially in daylight conditions and an above-average video recording performance.
At the front, it’s a 16MP front shooter with an F/2.0 aperture. The MediaTek Helio P60 in this phone ships with a special AI image processing module. This combines very well with the camera set up to produce exceptionally crisp portraits with just the right amount of bokeh.
Video quality
The Umidigi Power 3 can shoot HD 1080p videos at 30fps. So no 4K video support here.
Umidigi Power 3 – Display quality and performance
The Umidigi Power 3 ships with a Full HD plus (2340 x 1080 pixels) display and this is one of the places Umidigi really separates itself from the competition. Most other big battery android phones at this price range put out a fair HD (720 pixels) screen that’s not bad but doesn’t offer as much clarity and depth as what you get on the Power 3.
Video quality
It’s an IPS panel, and colours are vibrant as can be. With a pixel density of about 395 PPI, it’s also pleasant to look at. Although, if you do stare deeper and for long enough, the individual pixels begin to show.
The display also holds up in the bright conditions of the outdoors. It’s bright enough for you to see what you’re doing on a sunny summer afternoon.
Umidigi Power 3 – Battery quality
No need to stress on about this; 6150mAh speaks for itself. If you do decide to get this phone, expect north of 11 hours of on-screen time. With mild or moderate usage, the phone can also last about two days without needing a charge.
Fast charging + reverse charging
Umidigi has included an 18W fast charger in box that should be capable of juicing the phone up to 100% in under 2 hours. The phone also comes with reverse 10W charging via the phone’s USB C port. With the reverse charging feature, you can charge other phones and devices using the phone’s battery.
Umidigi Power 3 – Pricing and availability
The Umidigi Power 3 is available online on Jumia and Konga for about 74,000 Naira. Given the spec and features of this phone and I’ll go on to say that this price is a fair deal.
If you’re an international reader, you can also get the Umidigi Power 3 from Aliexpress for a sum of $149 at the time of writing this review.
Umidigi Power 3 – What’s not to like
The Umidigi Power 3 is an all-rounder phone that ticks all the checkboxes that matter in a budget smartphone. You get support for USB C, a decent build quality, excellent cameras, reverse charging, fairly good specs, and much more.
What you don’t get, however (and this applies to most Umidigi smartphones) are routine OTA updates. With time a new android version will be released, of course, with better features and a host of performance upgrades. If you settle for the Umidigi Power 3, you’ll have to stick with Android 10 for pretty the entire time you stay with the phone. For some people, this is not a big deal, but if you’re a tech enthusiast who’s always on the lookout for new features, then this is worth noting.
Should you buy the Umidigi Power 3?
It does everything right
If all you need is a good android phone that comes with one of the best batteries in the market, then the Umidigi Power 3 is a no-brainer. Like I said earlier on, it’s a phone that does everything you’d expect it to do well with some added quirks and features. It’s also very well priced. You’d be hard for choice getting another phone that costs this less with a similar complement of specifications and features.
