Smartphone good choice for rugged activities.
For most of my phone-carrying life, I’ve had an iPhone. I do remember a time before the smartphone emerged and took over the market that I had a simple flip phone that allowed me to make calls and send simple text messages to friends (my family hadn’t embraced it yet). Once I made “the switch” to the more advanced technology, I’ve been with the iOS ecosystem. It works for me. That being said, I do see the appeal of being able to customize all aspects of your mobile technology environment with the Android operating system. A lot of my friends have Android-based phones and I’ve used Android tablets in the past. So, it’s not an entirely foreign concept to me. It is with this in mind that I decided to review the V77 Waterproof Smartphone from Futuretech (model XP7700). And while I understand it’s not exactly like comparing apples to apples, I’m going to enter this review as a comparison between my iPhone 6 and the Futuretech V77.
The V77 is about the size of my iPhone 6, but has a little more bulk to it because of its rugged nature. It is waterproof, dustproof, and shakeproof and has a 2800 mAh battery. The viewable screen size is 4.5 inches (480×854). While this isn’t the same HD resolution I have with my iPhone, the images and apps I’ve used with the V77 have been clear and easy to read. The V77 does have a front and rear facing camera that takes photos at 0.3 MP and 5MP lens respectively. The product description has this phone with a MTK6580 1.3 Ghz, Quad Core processor with 512MB of RAM. It has an 8GB hard drive, but unlike other Android phones, doesn’t have an SD card slot. I would suspect this is to protect the waterproof/dustproof nature of the phone. The V77 comes with Android 5.1 Lollipop preinstalled (the current version is 6.0 Marshmallow). While the V77 is unlocked, it can only be used on a GSM network. In the U.S., that means you could use it with AT&T, T-Mobile, Straight Talk networks, but not Verizon, which is an LTE network.
Initial Thoughts
When I first pulled the phone out of its box, I thought it felt good. It’s a hearty feeling smartphone, but isn’t super bulky or heavy for what it is. When it arrived, you have to install the battery and screw the back onto the phone. This ended up being a bit of a headache because one of the screw holes didn’t quite line up right. I really had to press hard for the screw to reach the screw hole. Once I got the back affixed to the phone, I powered it on. As I mentioned, the screen is pretty crisp and clear. The buttons (power and volume) are a bit hard to press and make contact. The touch screen navigation is pretty smooth. I find that swiping across the screen is much easier than tapping. Overall, the first impressions were pretty good for me. It seems like a solid smartphone.
Performance
When it comes to performance, I was a little disappointed with the V77. Even though general responsiveness was ok, once I started testing out different apps and navigating between them, I found the phone really lagged. For someone like me that lives on their phone most days, lag is not something you can really afford to deal with. I’m not sure what’s causing it since there are very few apps aside from the system apps that are on the phone. It’s just the general responsiveness that is really slow. I could be inside an app and decide that I want to go back to the home screen. Tapping on the home button, doesn’t immedaitely take me there. I have to wait – sometimes up to 10 seconds or more – for a reaction from the phone.
Conclusions
In general, I think that the V77 Waterproof Smartphone seems to be a solid secondary phone choice. Because of its performance issues, I don’t think that many regular smartphone users would want to use this as their primary option for mobile device. If you are an active person and spend a lot of time hiking, cycling, or camping, this would be a nice choice for those rugged actitivies so that you could leave your primary phone at home. As a communication device, it works well and seems to be very tough.
BUY FROM AMAZON
