AGM X1 Review rugged smartphone: not drown, but froze

A rugged smartphone is usually a pain. A rugged smartphone from some little-known Chinese factory is doubly painful. That’s why I have not tested such devices for a long time. However, AGM X1 was a pleasant exception to this rule.

AGM representative contacted me and offered to advertise their products. Frankly speaking, before that I had not heard anything about this manufacturer. It is not surprising, because the brand is brand new.

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At first I was wary of the devices from these guys. Later I looked at the characteristics, I studied the official website (surprisingly well done) and I was interested in their products. Of course, most liked AGM X1 , because the smartphone is rugged on all fronts, but it does not have sadness inside, but quite a decent “iron”:

• Processor from Qualcomm,
• AMOLED-screen with a “human”, that is, Full HD resolution,
• Normal memory ratio,
• Sufficiently large battery.

In general, already on naked “specs” it is visible, that the device rather interesting.

I offered AGM to test AGM X1 and now, I have the smartphone on hands. I tell you what’s what.

AGM X1: Packaging

Just want to say that the smartphone is quite expensive. Now it costs about $ 250. Against the background of their rugged brothers – it’s expensive. However, by studying AGM X1 more deeply, I more and more understood what the manufacturer asks for so much money.

Just look at the box and everything starts to fall into place.

The packaging is made of thick, textured cardboard, with beautiful, high-quality printing, evenly printed fonts, colored, bright instructions inside, well, quite a nice set:

• A Micro USB cable of orange color (for my taste, it would be better to come up with a yellow color)
• Power supply for 5-12 volts and 1.5-2 amps with a European plug
• Wired headset plus a set of interchangeable ear cups
• Protective film on the screen

Literally two suggestions about the headphones from the kit. They were able to please me with a sufficiently high-quality sound. Comparison with the Xiaomi Mi In-Ear Headphones Pro (Hybrid) headset, of course, does not stand, but throw it just do not want to.

In general, unpack these devices – a pleasure. There is an element of surprise, and, positive.

AGM X1: Design

Appearance AGM X1 will shock the fans of thin, light and compact devices. The smartphone is simply huge by the standards of modern mobile devices. There is a feeling that it can be used as an instrument of self-defense, which can also be accidentally exceeded.

Nothing will break, not fly away and not be damaged. The Internet is full of all sorts of tests, which were subjected to our hero: immersion in 3 meters under water, freezing, alkaline filling, burning and so on. Most of them smart phone went perfectly well. And none of the iPhone or OnePlus 3T , which is in the photo below, can not come close to protecting our hero of the action movie. Below and I will share the results of my tests.

The most important thing is to check the density of the plugs before each dive of the smartphone into the water (bathing on the lake, in the bathtub or somewhere else). They are rather taut and can not be closed by inattention. You understand, than it is fraught.

By the way, such a construction has one more unpleasant feature. If your favorite headphones have a thick plug-in insulation, then it simply will not fit completely into the audio output of your smartphone. As a result, you can stay without music. Estimate this point in advance or use Bluetooth-headphones.

Admittedly, among its competitors, AGM X1 is one of the most stylish devices. He does not have kinks in the design, when different mountain-builders try to decorate the body with all sorts of metal edges, perforations, grids and other unnecessary husks, which adds cumbersome, but not a drop of strength.

From the empty elements on the body of our character revealed some strange points not the front panel (top and bottom) and metal inserts with the symbols of the creator.

The latter is a moot point, because these dies look even stylish and give the smartphone some visual interest. Again – without kinks, as in the case of Ulefone Armor 2. That unit looks like they can cut down the Hulk. With a direct hit in the temple, of course.

AGM X1: Fingerprint scanner

Built right into the touch button home. The latter is firm, and therefore more reliable. Unfortunately, the touch pad is deaf enough to touch. In order for the key to react, it is necessary to attach the whole finger to it, at the same time it is desirable to hold it down and even press it down. A slight touch is not recognized.

The fingerprint sensor itself works adequately. It is not too fast, but successfully unlocks the smartphone in 9 out of 10 attempts.

It is stated that the scanner is not simple, but capable of recognizing dirty or wet fingers. This is true, but within reasonable limits. If you have slightly wet fingers, for example, from the rain, and the contact pad itself is dry – then the smartphone will unlock without problems. If you take the device out of the water and try to unlock it with the same wet fingerprint, it will not work.

By the way, it’s for the same reason that you can not shoot underwater.

The touch buttons and the screen are sensitive to water (however, like any capacitive display), respectively, when in contact with the liquid, the device either starts to fool and press everything, or it is simply tightly blocked and does not react to anything.

AGM X1: Display

This is one of the main advantages of a smartphone. First, there is a 5.5-inch, large Super AMOLED matrix. Therefore, we get excellent juiciness of colors, a confident stock of brightness, a powerful contrast and all the other standard buns of “amoles”.

Below in the photo I compare two very close screens: AGM X1 is on the bottom or on the left, and the OnePlus 3T is on top or on the right.

I think no one will doubt the quality of the matrix for the same 1 + 3T. The only point in which OnePlus outflanked its rival is a black display at an extreme angle. In AGM X1, it’s still not perfect.

Secondly, here we have a full Full HD resolution, so the fonts are smooth, there is no grain, the interface of the system looks great. Especially with such a bright, colorful shell of its own production.

There is an oleophobic coating of excellent quality – the finger easily slides on the glass, fingerprints are almost invisible.

AGM X1: Testing

Of course, the first thing I did was put the smartphone in water. The test is very boring, since any modern flagship can dive into liquid, and a monster like AGM X1, even more so.

After watching the promo video , where the device is frozen for 36 hours, I decided to subject the device to the same test. He put it in a container, filled it with water and sent it to the freezer for 10 hours. It is worth noting that the smartphone was turned on, but inside was installed a working SIM-ka, all the plugs were covered very tightly. At the end of the freeze, I wanted to call the phone to make sure that he was not in a cryogenic dream. It did not work out.

After breaking the ice, I saw that the smartphone is off. But in the working day ?!

Opening all the stubs, I saw that there was water inside. Furthermore! From the tray under the SIM card and from the connectors, water flowed literally. How she got there – I do not know, because everything was closed. In any case, you can make a diagnosis – the death of the device.

Water got everywhere. Even under the lenses of both cameras, which is clearly noticeable below.

I do not know what the problem may be. Perhaps in a promo video, a better smartphone is used, and my copy was not sufficiently sealed, or maybe it’s just a good video editing, but that is, that is.

AGM X1: Specifications

• Processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 (model MSM8952) with 8-core cores and a frequency of 1.5 GHz (64-bit, 28 nm)
• Graphics Adreno 405 to 550 MHz
• RAM 4 GB LPDDR3-1866 (after rebooting freely about 2700 MB)
• Data storage 64 GB eMMC (actually available 53.44 GB)
• Support for Micro SD memory cards up to 128 GB is (slot combined with Nano SIM)
• Super AMOLED-display with a diagonal of 5.5 inches and a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (density 401 ppi)
• Front camera 5 megapixel (f / 2.4 aperture, fixed focus)
• Two rear cameras at 13 megapixels (there is no separate information on the sensors, f / 2.2, Full HD video recording)
• 5,400 mAh battery
• OS Android 5.1.1
• Native software shell
• Sensors: accelerometer, light and distance sensor, geomagnetic sensor
• Connectors: Micro USB 2.0 (OTG works), audio output 3.5 mm
• Overall dimensions: 163.5 x 78.7 x 11.88 mm
• Weight 210 grams
• Protection from moisture and dust according to IP68
• Available colors: black and blue

Wireless features:

• 2G, 3G, 4G (LTE Cat. 7, bands: 1, 3, 7, 20)
• Support for Micro and Nano SIM cards
• Wi-Fi (802.11 ac, 2.4 and 5 GHz), Bluetooth 4.0 BLE, NFC
• Navigation: GPS, Glonass

Somehow it so happened that few people heard of the 617th Snapdragon, and in fact the chipset itself is very worthy and it makes sense to tell about it in more detail.

The system on the chip is built on the basis of 28-nanometer process technology, contains 8 cores Cortex A53 with a frequency at the peak of 1.5 GHz.

The “stone” was presented in September 2015, so he is already a year and a half.   The term is quite significant, however, given its capabilities, there is a certain margin of safety for the processor. In terms of performance, Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 is just below the 625th chipset, which in turn shows excellent results and is now very popular with manufacturers.

If so, the Snapdragon 625 is the initial level of mid-range processors from Qualcomm, while the 617th “snap” is the top “stone” among the junior solutions of the chip maker.

The manufacturer did not stint on memory and shoved here 4 gigabytes of operational and 64 GB of internal memory. This ratio is enough for a head for almost everything that only a smartphone can require. Do not forget about the possibility to install a Micro SD card instead of one of the SIM-cards (Nano).

Our hero did not disappoint either over the networks: first, there is a dual-band Wi-Fi, secondly, support of all 4G frequencies, including the critical 20-th band (800 MHz), thirdly, in the presence of NFC- Module, so that with the arrival of Android Pay, you can start shopping and pay with this hefty for your purchases wherever possible. Here the cashiers will be surprised …

He asked at the forum, users answered that he was working. Hence the conclusion – in my device this chip for some reason does not work.

AGM X1: Performance

I tried to run on the device a couple of demanding 3D-toys. The first is World of Tanks Blitz. On average, the graphics titles consistently produced 25-30 frames per second. If you raise the bar of graphics to a high level, then the frequency will drop to about 20-22 FPS. All the same, the result is satisfactory.

Asphalt Extreme started on the device with the optimal settings, but I, of course, switched the graphics to an improved view. The game goes smoothly, even flies, so there is no problem.

However, it seems that the smartphone is still not a game. More precisely, it does not suit those who want to get a perfectly smooth and maximally detailed picture on their mobile assistant. However, you can play all modern 3D toys on the AGM. Why not?

With Full HD video playback, there are no problems. With 4K-rollers, the situation is more complicated – they can also be easily launched using a third-party player, but there are barely noticeable lags. Perfectionists, of course, will be annoying. There are no others.

At the end of the section the results are “synthetics”, and we’ll talk about the performance of the system right now.

Glitches and stability of system

AGM X1 has a full bouquet of all kinds of childhood diseases. Firstly, periodically the system starts to poke up for nothing. And these are not light, hardly noticeable friezes, but confident, distinct brakes. They show themselves everywhere: both when scrolling through the main screens, when opening applications, and inside them. And it does not matter what software you are dealing with: it can be a standard dialer, and a third-party application. However, 80 percent of the time is no problem, everything works smoothly.

Secondly, for three weeks of using the smartphone in total hanging tightly about 6 or 7 times. Why? It was not possible to find out. Simply, the system fell into a stupor and was only helped by a forced reboot through a long hold on the power button.

Thirdly, three times the smartphone refused to connect to the computer at all. Let me remind you that I use iMac 27 ” and I have no problems with connecting 99% of devices. But our AGM X1 periodically did not like something. It was treated again with a simple reboot of the device.

All this “beauty” was observed in my firmware version L1253.6.02.01.EU. This version was installed immediately after unpacking and for over a month there has been no update. I hope the developers have not forgotten about the software and are going to finish it.

If that, the version of the system is not certified by Google, which means that AGM did not test this firmware in the laboratories of the search giant for compliance with all the necessary requirements of Android. Also keep this in mind.

AGM X1: Software

First a fly in the ointment, then we’ll talk about the good. The smartphone is based on Android 5.1. Do not say that this is very critical for the end user. All applications are perfectly set and work on the device. And still I would like the manufacturer to tighten up and update the system at least to Marshmallow. Still, the smartphone makes sense to buy now, in 2017, and the announcement of a new, eighth OS is already around the corner.

Now about the rest, fortunately, about the pleasant.

The real Android here is traced in places, because the manufacturer partially concealed its own shell. However, do not worry, because the “launcher” was very enjoyable to use, bright and stylish. The latter is especially not typical for not too large Chinese companies, and here on you and immediately in the bull’s-eye.

Particularly come across particularly stylish elements. For example, you can make the lock screen and the volume shutter translucent. Looks great!

From the additional functionality the manufacturer added gestures on the locked screen, all sorts of additional touch buttons and stuff. I did not use any of this in view of lack of habit and slightly implementation curve. And in addition, all the additional settings menu in English.

It is gratifying that there is no pre-installed Chinese garbage in the system. There is only one unique utility with hieroglyphs in the name, opening it, its purpose becomes clear. This is a kind of software toolkit: level, ruler, vernier calipers and so on. Everything is done stylishly, it works well, so that the program can be safely taken into service.

Quality of photos and videos

Now it is fashionable to install several cameras at once in smartphones. One in front, the other from behind is the last century. But just three sensors at once, it’s just possible to attract a potential buyer. AGM X1 followed a fashion trend and that’s what happened.

Front-camera

In front we got a 5-megapixel module with a fixed focus. The aperture of the lens is f / 2.4, and the resolution of recording video is 1920 x 1080 pixels at 30 frames per second. There is a mode of decorating the face. Where without it?

Photos from the “front” are quite good. There is quite a noticeable “soap”, but everything looks decent on the phone screen.

Main Camera

Nowhere is it revealed what specific modules are used in our device. There is evidence that the rear camera here is dual and 13 megapixels. All.

In fact, only one photomodule works here – the one that is below. If you   Seal the upper chamber with an insulating tape, then you will get exactly the same pictures if you “shot two cameras at once”.

I do not think that such a “cunning” is good. Yes, the AGM developers added any software chips that allegedly (!) Beautiful bokeh, but why make a non-working dummy?

To be frank, I still did not understand what to do to blur the background. In the special Dual mode, which for some reason did not appear for some reason, there are several additional profiles that do not actually work. I think this can be stopped.

Nevertheless, the images from the main, one single 13-megapixel camera are quite good. Below average in quality and market, but not frank disappointment. In general, with the case and good lighting, you can shoot a decent enough frame. On the screen of the smartphone, it will look great. Perhaps, and on the computer will not disappoint.

Separately I want to praise the interface of the photo application. The creators did not abandon the ugly viewfinder Android and decided to beat the look of the viewfinder in their own way. It turned out, for my taste, very even decent.

Video recording

The front sensor allows you to shoot Full HD video at a rate of 30 frames per second, but my inner perfectionist begs never to do it, because the quality of the content leaves much to be desired.

The main camera does the same for the characteristics of the video, but much better. True, the frame rate for some reason drops to 25 fps. In any case, the level is sufficient to remove the incident, send video on TV and get a fee for an interesting story. We look at my example.

AGM X1: Sound quality

The external speaker on the smartphone is located on the back cover. Despite the security of the device, the sound from the speaker is loud – much higher than average. And with all that, it’s quite high quality. Not revelation, of course, and not stereo (there is only one speaker), but very worthy.

Through headphones, the sound is decent enough – at the level of the market for modern mobile devices and nothing more. As a player, you can and should be used. Keep in mind the fact that not all headphones can be connected to our hero – the audio port is heavily recessed into the case, so a wide plug will simply not reach the connector.

AGM X1: Battery life

The non-removable battery is 5,400 mAh. By the standards of a conventional smartphone, this is quite a lot, by the standards of a rugged “coffin” with a thickness of 11.88 mm – nothing outstanding.

However, under normal operation as the main device, with two SIM-cards, constant background transmission of data (notification, synchronization), with all the included wireless networks, the smartphone easily keeps afloat for a couple of days or two. The screen glow time is approximately 5 hours. In my opinion, this is a very worthy result.

The power consumption is quite smooth, judging by the schedule, then we are dealing with a good battery that will not turn into a pumpkin in 3-4 months.

AGM X1: Conclusion

At the time of going on sale for a smartphone, they asked for $ 300. Of course, this is very expensive, but so do all Chinese manufacturers. Roll out the device to the market, a month later they lower the price for the first time, after another months they arrange a sale, after which the price stabilizes and can be taken.

So it happened with our hero. Buy AGM X1 now can be for $ 250. There are separate online shops (the authorized list is on the official website of the company), which so far arrange such profitable sales. And this is a sure sign that you need to buy a smartphone right now.

The price of $ 250 can not stand any comparison with alternative Chinese competitors. However, if you look into it, AGM X1 does not have them. Believe me, the products of the same Blackview or other brands are much worse in quality.

AGM X1 has a decent specs, an excellent screen with an oleophobic coating and is quite accurate for this category of gadget design. The scope of delivery, attention to detail also deserve special praise. And that’s why we are dealing with such a price tag.

There are glitches firmware. We need to do something with them and as soon as possible. Will remove them, you will get an almost perfect rugged smartphone.

In the end, about moisture protection. It is and it is not a fake. However, to expose the smartphone to all those tests, which the manufacturer claims to us (freezing for the same 36 hours) is impossible in any case. The chance to get a brick, as happened in my case, is very large.

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Source: agmmobile