enjoyEC V9 test - outdoor smartphone

The smartphone was delivered in a simple cardboard box. On the back of the box also individual technical details were printed. When you open the box, you will first see the enjoyEC V9 packed in a plastic wrap. In addition, were included in the delivery:

• a charger with USB socket
• a USB data or charging cable
• a bag with stickers
• a strap with carbine and compass
• a red in-ear headphone with remote control including microphone
• a small tool for opening the smartphone back
• the 4000mAh battery
• an operating manual in English and Chinese

A screen protector was already on the screen, but not very accurate.

 First impression 

When I first picked up the smartphone it seemed very powerful. Especially the case makes the smartphone look very large with only a 4.5 inch large screen. But also rightly. An outdoor smartphone is currently characterized by a massive housing, which should protect the hardware from any impact as much as possible. The case itself is made of a hard rubber and partly of hard plastic. The back is held by 6 screws, which you have to open first to get to the battery at all, but also to even insert a SIM card or SD card. Due to the massive housing and the numerous function keys of the smartphone, which are mounted both on the left and on the right, a little harder to use. Below the display are 3 capacitive buttons. The charging socket or the audio output, which are located on the lower and upper edge of the housing, are closed with a rubber sealing cap. A notification LED does not have the smartphone. Overall, my first impression is quite positive.

Hardware

The built-in hardware of the V9 is more in the low-budget area. The 4.5 inch display only offers a resolution of 960×540 pixels, and only a 1.2 GHz dual core processor from Mediatek is installed. In terms of RAM, we only get 512MB and the internal memory is also a bit tight at 4GB, but can be expanded with a micro SD card. Without memory expansion you still have about 270MB available.

The enjoyEC V9 is only capable of 2G and 3G. On 4G, so LTE, you have to do without.

Nevertheless, you should not be disappointed with this rather inferior hardware, because the strengths of the enjoyEC V9 are otherwise, namely in the outdoor suitability. What brings me a high end smartphone that crashes into 10 parts immediately after an impact, or that just gives up after a quick dip in the water.

The strengths

I have tested the enjoyEC V9 several times to prove its outdoor suitability. First, I dipped the V9 in a bowl of water to see if the smartphone is actually waterproof. In this case, one should especially make sure that the back is firmly screwed and also the rubber caps are firmly on the individual connections. After a water bath, I could still use the smartphone without any problems. Water has not penetrated water (see video).
In another test, I dropped the smartphone from a standing height to the ground. Even this fall, the smartphone has survived easily.

In the third and final test, I put the switched-on V9 in the freezer for several hours. The V9 was visibly frozen, but it still worked perfectly.

The V9 also has an integrated high-quality GPS chip that supports A-GPS in addition to the conventional GPS standard. As a result, the position determination is carried out even faster and also more precisely. An electronic compass is also integrated so that the V9 can also be used as a 'pedestrian navigation' or for orientation in the forest.

user interface

The operating system was Android 4.4.2. The Android used here is also largely based on Stock Android, so except for me 2 not known apps, no other third-party apps were installed. The V9 can be updated directly via the settings menu. Updates can be received here OTA (Over The Air). Unfortunately there was no current update to a higher Android version.

Except for a crash of Google search, the system was quite stable. Despite the rather meager hardware, I was able to move smoothly through the user interface and apps could be opened quickly. The system is quite well matched to the hardware used here.

Display

Although no HD display was used here, this fact is not too tragic for a display with only 4.5 inches (according to CPU-Z only 4.08 inches). Despite the numerically low resolution of 960×540 pixels, the display looks sharp. Individual pixels are only noticeable when looking at the fonts more closely. According to CPU-Z, the dot density is 239dpi.

The displayed colors of the display are strong and the viewing angle stability is neat.

Camera

The strengths of the smartphone are clearly not in the cameras used here. Although the V9 comes with 2 cameras, namely a rear camera with 8 megapixels and a front camera with 0.3 megapixels, but the shot images are interspersed with a picture noise even in good lighting conditions.

It is interesting, however, that the rear camera has both an LED flash, as well as a car focus. For spontaneous shots, the rear camera of the V9 is certainly sufficient, but who puts much value on a good camera, will not be too happy with the camera used here.

Telephony, WLAN, Bluetooth

The reception with the V9 is good. My interlocutor understood me well, as well as I understood him well. The wireless connection and also the Bluetooth (2.1 only) connection are also stable and there were no crashes.

Accumulator

With 4000mAh the V9 Outdoor Smartphone has a rather big battery. Even after 5 hours Screen On Time, I have not reached 50% yet. Especially with an outdoor smartphone you should expect a large battery.