The Ulefone Armor Pad 3 Pro is a new tablet designed for demanding environments, featuring a huge battery, two powerful LEDs and a good grip. A cellular connection is also possible.
I have their power armor 18t, bought it cause it was the only rugged phone that had all the tmobile 4g and 5g antenna bands, as well as a headphone jack and sd card slot. It was a total risk as I'd never bought a Chinese phone before, but I think it may be the best phone I've ever had. (Only had Samsung and Sony phones before this)
I took it snorkeling in the ocean several times, came out completely unscathed.
My only complaint is that the thermal camera replaces a wideangle camera on the non-thermal version, which I would have realized if I'd read the specs closer.
It would probably be a gimmick for most people but I use the thermal for my job (electrical inspections) and it is as good as my other IR tools. I found it so handy I picked up another one for my field team.
I also bought an armor pad 2, and although I don't use it as much as I thought I would, it's still great on the occasions that I need it. Again, it comes in real handy on construction job sites, no need to baby it or worry about rain.
Fair enough, I moved to reddthat from lemmy.world recently, thus the lack of history. But it's good to be skeptical of things you read on the Internet, I understand where your head's at lol.
Yes! I had one, from 2016 till 2020. Ulefone vienna (not a rugged phone).
If you like modding like me, then it's probably not a good idea, as they usually have little community support and the mediatek chipset contributes to this even more.
Back then, I think it did probably had some kind of a malware, but with root I removed it (I could also do it with adb commands if I knew back then).
If you want a hardened phone and for some reason you cant find a proper case to protect your device, then such phones may be suitable, otherwise I'd look somewhere else.