Doogee S Mini Review: specs and features, camera quality test, gaming benchmark, user opinions and photos

Doogee S Mini - compactness with compromises

Inexpensive rugged smartphones are an excellent choice for people leading an active lifestyle. However, such phones are often huge, and their ease of use is very controversial. The hero of today's review is free from this drawback, but the desire to reduce the size of the case led to not the best consequences.

The appearance of the new product turned out to be interesting. If you close your eyes to the huge display frames and the impressive thickness of the candy bar, then only the advantages of the exterior remain in the form of a combination of a beautiful block of two cameras and an additional screen (clock, information about missed notifications and other functionality), a pleasant-to-touch texture of the rear panel, and a side fingerprint sensor. The 4.5-inch IPS panel evokes mixed emotions. On the one hand, a resolution of 1170x480 pixels is enough for good picture clarity with a modest diagonal, on the other hand, you won’t be able to watch a video in HD resolution on YouTube. There is no increased image refresh rate; the brightness reserve of 500 nits is still insufficient to interact with the device in direct sunlight.

The technical characteristics of the gadget are presented by the MediaTek Helio G99 processor, 8GB of RAM and the Mali G57 MC2 video core. You wouldn’t expect to find such a combination in a compact device with protection from dust and moisture according to IP68 standards; its performance is sufficient for smooth operation of Android 13, launching applications takes a split second. With games the situation is more complicated due to throttling, so in the most resource-intensive titles (Genshin Impact, Undecember and others) it is recommended to set minimal graphic presets. Otherwise, after 20-30 minutes the unit will warm up to the point of discomfort in your palms, and freezes and slowdowns will be much more frequent. The volume of permanent memory is 256GB, it can always be increased with MicroSD cards.

You shouldn’t count on the brilliant photographic capabilities of fairly simple main 50 and 2 megapixel photo modules. If the sensors cope with daytime shooting or capturing documents without much effort, they are not very capable for shots in poor lighting. Noises, blurs, and errors in color reproduction appear. There was no place for stereo speakers, so it’s hardly possible to enjoy playing your favorite music. But the developer did not forget about NFC contactless payments. What's really disappointing is the 3000 mAh battery. The user is unlikely to be able to see more than 5-6 hours of screen time. As a result, in pursuit of smaller dimensions, manufacturers sacrificed the autonomy and quality of the IPS screen, which is why it is hardly reasonable to recommend the device to everyone.