So much emphasis has been placed on bezel-less phones this year, you might be wondering how little you’ll have to spend to get your hands on one. And while the iPhone 8, set to be revealed next week, is expected to cost nearly $1,000 at launch, and Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is pretty pricey, too, it’s reassuring to know there are other options. Like this, for example — the Umidigi S2 Pro.
If you’ve never heard of Umidigi before, it’s a Chinese firm that specializes in budget smartphones. The S2 Pro looks exactly like a Galaxy S8 head on — in fact, the resemblance is so uncanny, we wouldn’t be surprised to learn Samsung’s lawyers have taken notice. However, whereas the Buy Now costs upward of $700, the S2 Pro goes for less than half that — $300.
Of course, that’s not the only difference. Umidigi has fitted the S2 Pro with MediaTek’s Helio P25 processor — a far cry from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 featured in most other full-screen flagships. Then again, you do get a whopping 6GB of RAM and an absolutely massive battery, rated at 5,100mAh.
Despite the budget appeal, Umidigi hasn’t skipped on the contents of that big 6-inch display. In the S2 Pro, you’ll find a Sharp LCD panel with a resolution of 2,160 x 1,080. That’s a perfect 18:9 aspect ratio, like what the LG G6 offers. All things considered, those are respectable numbers for a device costing the same as a 64GB Moto G5 Plus.
Around the back, the similarities to the Galaxy S8 pretty much end, with a set of vertically stacked dual cameras and a fingerprint sensor seemingly placed just where it belongs, smack dab in the middle of the chassis. Umidigi says it relies on Sony to provide the image sensors, which is encouraging though hardly a confirmation of the phone’s photography prowess.
Alongside the S2 Pro, the company is also offering a presumably lower-end model called the S2, for just $230. We say “presumably” because all we know about the device is that it doesn’t match the screen resolution of the Pro variant, but shares the same design. Otherwise, details are scant at the moment.
Phones like these are becoming increasingly common. In August, we reviewed Maze’s Alpha 4G — a similarly inexpensive handset that flaunts the design of Xiaomi’s Mi Mix, in a package that costs just over $200. We were pleasantly surprised with the results, and the S2 Pro looks as though it could follow that example. If you’re interested, pre-sale begins on September 18 on Umidigi’s site.
