Oukitel Rugged Phones Review (Field Tested)

When Oukitel first asked me to review one of their smartphones, I was a bit confused.  I write about camping and backpacking. What do phones have to do with that?  Then I saw the Oukitel rugged phone selection and got excited. Yes, I wanted one of these. It didn’t hurt that my current phone was on its last legs and I needed a new phone anyway. 🙂

I picked the WP19 phone because it has massive battery capacity.  Full disclosure that they sent it to me for free to try.  Here’s my review of it.

 

Quick Verdict:

Oukitel phones have tons of features that make them awesome for outdoorsy people like me. I particularly love the night vision camera and that the phone is completely waterproof (it can even take photos underwater!).

The reverse charging feature lets me use the phone as a powerbank with an OTG cable.   The WP19 model has a 20,000mAh battery, so there’s certainly power to spare! But, since it weighs in at 578g and is MASSIVE, I wish I would have chosen either the WP27 or WP21 model instead.

Check them out at the Oukitel website or Amazon

 

Oukitel Rugged Phones Comparison

The Oukitel website is kind of terrible. There is no way to filter the phones by features or specs, so you’ve got to comb through each product description yourself.

A lot of the product descriptions are also a mess. Some descriptions are actually images instead of text, so I couldn’t even search for text such as “night vision” on the page! That’s simply bad UI.

For example, it took me forever to figure out that all the Oukitel phones support reverse charging and are waterproof.

Here’s a comparison table of the main specs of Oukitel rugged phones.

Model	Battery	Weight	Main camera	Night Vision	Memory	Size (in)
WP17	8300	11.28oz	64MP	20MP	8GB + 128	6.9x3.27x0.59
WP27	8500	11.6oz	64MP	20MP	12GB + 256	7x3.39x0.59
WP21	9800	14oz	64MP	20MP	17GB + 256	6.97x3.3x0.7
WP22	10000	14oz	48MP	20MP	13GB + 256	6.89x3.3x0.75
WP26	10000	14.3oz	48MP	20MP	16GB + 256	6.89x3.27x0.7
WP30 Pro 5G	11000	14.57oz	108MP	20MP	24GB + 512	6.97x3.31x0.75
WP15 5G	15600	17oz	48MP	None	8GB + 128	7x3.34x0.94
WP19	21000	20.1oz	64MP	20MP	8GB + 256	7x3.31x1.14
WP19 Pro	22000	20.88oz	64MP	20MP	24GB + 256	7x3.31x1.14

 

See more details at the Oukitel website or Amazon

 

Which Oukitel Rugged Phone Is Best?

As mentioned, I regret choosing the WP19 model.  Yes, it has a massive battery of 20,000mAh.  However, at 20.1oz, it is simply too heavy and bulky to be practical to carry.  I’d rather carry around a smaller model plus a power bank.  My Nitecore Slim powerbank has 10,000mAh and weighs just 5.3oz.

Instead, I would recommend these models of Oukitel phones:

• WP27: Still heavy but manageable. It has 33W fast charge and 12GB RAM.
• WP22: This one has good speakers and a mini projector! But the main camera is only 48MB.
• WP30 Pro: It’s 413g but has a fantastic 108MB main camera, NFC, 120W fast charge and 24GB ram. There is even a back display!

 

Features Overview

Since I’m not much of a tech person, I’m not going to go over the technical details of Oukitel phones. Instead, I’ll focus on the unique features that make Oukitel phones cool for camping, field work, construction and other “rugged” uses.

 

Waterproof

All Oukitel phones are rated to IP68 waterproofness.  That means it can be completely submerged in water down to 1.5m (almost 5 feet) for 30 minutes.

I’m not sure when I’d actually need to go swimming with my phone, but I was ecstatic to realize that I could also take underwater pictures with my Oukitel phone.  It’s winter now, so I haven’t had time to test out the feature much, but the phone definitely works underwater.  I can’t wait to take pictures of lake creatures. 🙂

 

Drop Proof

Oukitel phones are rated to MIL-STD-810 drop-proofness. This is a military test which ensures that gear is “combat ready .  With the Oukitel phones, this specifically means you can drop them from 1.5 meters without damaging the phone, even on hard surfaces like steel.

I did not test this myself!  My old phone is complete crap and I didn’t want to risk breaking this one.

However, the phone’s casing is so damn tough that I’m confident it would survive drops on hard dirt or even concrete without a problem. I’m not so sure the screen would survive a drop if it hit a sharp object on the way down.  But, again, I didn’t test this.

 

Battery Capacity

Oukitel has some of the largest-capacity batteries of any phones available.  Their smallest phone has 6,300mAh and the largest is 22,000mAh.

To put this in perspective, smartphones with “good” battery life have around 4,000mAh.

The huge battery capacity means you don’t have to worry about your phone dying or bother carrying around a power bank.

 

Standby Time

For the WP19, the advertised standby time is over 2,500 hours.

I actually got to test this out.  The company sent me the phone from China.  It spent about 10 days in transit.  But, when it arrived, there was a big postal worker strike where I live.

The phone was stuck at customs for at least 35 days before I finally got it. But the battery was still at 82%!

 

Usage Time

The Oukitel WP19 advertises 36H of video, 123H of music, or 122H of calling.

While I didn’t fully test this, it does seem legit.

For example, I watched approximately 2.5 hours of streaming video with headphones on a train ride.  The battery went from 92% to 85%.  That’s 2.8% drainage for each hour of video, which would completely drain the battery in 35.7 hours.

Of course, battery usage isn’t that clear-cut.  Like how batteries tend to drain faster as they get closer to empty.  But you’ll definitely get tons of usable time out of the massive Oukitel batteries.

 

Cameras

There are four cameras on my WP19 Oukitel phone:

• 64MB main camera
• 20MB night vision camera
• 2MP macro camera
• 16MP selfie camera

The main camera has some nice features like AI, ultra-wide mode, slow motion video, underwater, panorama mode, selfi panorama…  I’m not a tech person so couldn’t tell you what the sensor info means.

I was slightly disappointed that you can’t do night vision selfies (because, duh, the night vision camera is only on the rear!).  I still tried to do night selfies, but it’s really awkward to do.

Below are some pictures I took with the Oukitel WP19.

 

Reverse Charge

This is what initially got me excited about Oukitel phones.  All of the models support OTG (on-the-go) so can be used as a powerbank to charge other devices.  That means one less thing to bring on my backpacking trips.

Using the phone as a power bank is easy: just connect the two devices with an OTG cable.  The other device will start charging.

My Oukitel phone came with a USB-C to USB-C  OTC cable.  The problem is that pretty much all of the devices I’d need to charge while camping (headlamps, Kindle…) use micro-USB.   So, I had to buy a USB-C to Micro-USB OTG cable.  Not a big deal, but kind of annoying anyway.

 

Other Cool Features

My WP19 had all of these built-in features.  I think all of the other models all have these features.  Do check though! As mentioned, the product descriptions aren’t very clear.

• Baromete
• Proximity sensor
• Accelerometer
• Gyroscope
• Electronic compass
• Coulombmeter

These features mean that the Oukitel phones are able to do things like find a plumb line, measure angles… The phone comes with a “ToolBag” app with some of these.

 

Things I Don’t Like about the Oukitel WP19

Stupidly Heavy and Bulky

The Oukitel WP19 weighs 20.1oz (570 grams).  I put it on a scale and it was actually a bit heavier than this. At 2.9cm, it is also as thick as two smartphones.   This is annoying as hell to carry around and definitely won’t fit comfortably in a jeans pocket.

I joke that it’s actually good that the phone weighs so much because I can’t endlessly scroll online – my hand gets too tired.

The other models of Oukitel phones are better in terms of weight and size.  If I could do it over, I’d get the WP27.

To put this in perspective:

Rugged Phone	Battery mAh	Weight	Size
Samsung XCover6 Pro	4050	8.29oz	6.65x3.15x0.39”
CAT S42	4000	7.76oz	6.24x3x0.47”
CAT S62	4000	8.74oz	6.24x3x0.47”
Oukitel WP27	8500	11.56oz	7x3.4x0.59”
Oukitel WP19	21000	20.1oz	7x3.3x1.14”

Bottom line? You might not mind the weight if you are doing serious field work with this phone.  But, if you want to use it in everyday life, it’s too heavy and bulky.  I’d rather carry a smaller phone and a separate power bank.

 

Side Fingerprint Unlock Glitchy

The Oukitel WP19 and other rugged phones have two ways to unlock: facial recognition and a side fingerprint unlock.

The facial recognition works perfectly, even in low light.  However, the side fingerprint unlock is a bit gliltchy. That’s not too surprising considering how small the button is. You have to get your finger on it perfectly.

I wonder if Oukitel did this on purpose.  Back in 2010 (when they were still a new company), a lot of people complained that the fingerprint unlock was too sensitive and the phone would unlock if you brushed it.

 

“On” Button Gets Stuck

Another annoying thing is that the on button sometimes gets stuck, causing the phone to restart.

 

Okay Quality Speakers

The speaker quality on my WP19 is far from great.  If you want to listen to music without headphones on your phone, you should get the WP22 model.  It has better speakers and also a mini projector.  I didn’t test that one out, but it sounds cool for watching movies outdoors.