Unihertz Ticktock 5G Rugged Mobile Phone GBAtemp review
Hardware
Product Information:
- Official Store: https://www.unihertz.com/products/ticktock
Remember when PDA's were a thing? Personal Digital Assistants were capable of keeping your calendar, notes, and emails safely stored away from your pesky little tiny-screened dot-matrix cellular phone? No <cough> me neither! Why would I reminisce about that old junk when almost any mobile phone gives you all those features and more in one svelt yet easily viewable touch screen device? The Ticktock from Unihertz has the form factor and weight of a 30-year old PDA, but under the hood, it's certainly got a lot more going for it!
With lineage from the Jelly, Atom and Titan smartphones before it, the Ticktock is Unihertz's biggest phone Kickstarter yet with more features and more battery than ever before. But don't worry if they will hit their goal. The hit and exceeded The $100,000 HK goal with over 600 backers delivering $1,432,771 HK to get the project into people's hands!
Delivered in highly unassuming plain white packaging, the Ticktock is an absolute chonk of a device, thanks to the all-encompassing burly outer bumpers which make it entirely worthy of the "Rugged" strapline appended to its namesake. rocking in at a solid 308 grams it's a wrist breaker, even in comparison to my daily driver: the 228g iPhone 12 Pro Max. With a 6.52 screen and sporting overall dimensions of 176 x 85.6 x 14.9 mm this phone is gigantically oversized and dramatically styled to remind you just how outdoorsy it can be.
Technical Specifications:
- Dimensions: 176*85.6*14.9 mm
- Weight: 308g (with battery)
- Color: Black
- SIM: Dual Nano SIM card
- Main Screen Size: 6.5" 1080*2340 resolution
- Sub Screen Size: 1.3" 360*360 resolution
- GSM: Band 2/3/5/8
- WCDMA：1,2,4,5,6,8,19
- LTE-FDD: B1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/13/
- 17/18/19/20/25/26/28A/28B/66
- LTE-TDD: B34/38/39/40/41
- CDMA2000: BC0/BC1
- 5G NR: N1/2/3/5/7/8/12/20/25
- /28/38/40/41/66/77/78
- OS: Android 11
- CPU: Dimensity 700/Octa Core
- Memory: 8 GB + 128 GB, UFS 2.1
- Micro SD Card: Yes
- Camera: 48MP AF, 8MP FF selfie
- Loudspeaker: Yes
- WLAN: WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Hotspot
- Bluetooth: V5.1
- GPS: GPS+ BeiDou + GLONASS + Galileo
- NFC: Yes
- Infrared Port: Yes
- Radio: FM radio
- USB: USB Type C
- Sensors: Fingerprint (Combined with Power button), G-sensor, Gyroscope, Proximity, Ambient Light Sensor, Compass, Baroceptor
- Battery: 6000mAh Non-removable
- Fast charging: 30W
- Water-resistant: IP68 (max depth of 1.5 meters up to 30 minutes, under IEC standard 60529)
- Dust-resistant: IP68
- Shockproof: Yes
The first things I noticed, and I'm sure you will have too: this device is hexagonal in shape. Each end has an obscenely large bezel, and a subtle yet visibly styled ridge to it that effectively means you cannot stand the device on end, it always slants to one side or the other. It's an odd design choice to make the device unable to stand up properly as I'm sure many of us prop our phones up to read articles, video chat modes, or any number of other applications that require your phone to be used in portrait mode. As a result, you find yourself holding the phone as usual, but switching to landscape more often than I am accustomed to when sitting at a desk.
The bezel is horrid, and as a result, the bottom of the screen gains a weird "flat tyre" look when the UI brings up any black header or footer bars. The sheers girth of the bezel adds a lot of unused space around the screen, which puts me in mind of the early Android/Apple tablet computers that started out with an inch of bezel around them so people thought they were getting a huge tablet, but the 9" diagonal housed a 7" screen. I'm not a huge fan of this look because it accentuates the weird hexagon apexes too.
Going around the Unihertz Ticktock we have a volume rocker and power button on the right-hand side which notably incorporates a fingerprint scanner for handy biosecurity. After a rather lengthy fingerprint scanning session, the power button is ready to use, though afterwards I still had a few "not recognised" errors occasionally, so falling back to the PIN was a relatively frequent occurrence.
At the top we have an IR emitter, which seems odd at first but handily it is bundled with ZazaRemote software meaning you could potentially clone your TV remotes to the device and use it as a one-4-all solution. In my personal experience: the set-up process forced my TV into LG's Instop mode and I simply couldn't get out without entirely factory resetting my TV. So I'm personally a little sour about that feature, but it may work out just fine for you on TVs, streaming boxes, or any device that uses IR!
On the left-hand side, we have the dual nano sim slot with a micro SD expansion slot and two programmable buttons. Both buttons can be set up to invoke apps or shortcut functions (such as wifi on or off, or take a screenshot) on a single tap, double tap or pressing and holding the buttons down. This is quite useful when you need something quick, a super handy task, something you have memorised as to which button combination it requires to make it happen. It's a short learning curve, but it takes a few tries to get right, as I consistently turned on the torch rather than taking a screenshot during benchmarking.
At the bottom, we have a lowly speaker hole and the USB-C charger port that has a dust cover sealing it tight. Call quality is great considering how small and insignificant the speaker looks, and using the device to call family and friends was a sinch with some really good quality audio throughout. The USB-C charger supports 30W fast charging through the supplied charger and cable, though I was disappointed to see a lack of wireless charging in a device that could have benefitted from this feature. The dust cover also keeps out water ingress and retains that IP68 waterproofing rating which means you could submerge the Ticktock for up to 30 minutes at a depth of 1.5 meters.
On the rear of the device, you meet the circular subscreen sunken into the textured rear surface and what appear to be dual cameras, but don't be fooled, only one of those lenses is operable. The one under the LED flash is the one that's functional. That camera works well, whereas the one on the opposite side is merely for aesthetic symmetry, which is kind of pointless but serves to make the phone look a little more flashy than it really is. I would mention as well that the Unihertz Ticktock does come with a case and screen protector supplied, which satiated my need to keep everything nicely protected from day one, and given the unique shape of the device, I'm glad I didn't have to try to locate one myself.
The screen is a whopping 6.5" diagonal, with a small round notch in the top centre to accommodate the 8MP selfie camera. Just north of the camera is a chevron-shaped speaker for you to hear calls out of, and notably in the space between the two and slightly to the left you can see a cut-out in the screen protector that exposes the light and proximity sensors.
The sub-screen is effectively a 1.3" watch face with a few swipeable features, such as music controls, a selfie mirror for using the primary camera, and a compass/level. The latter is just part of the rugged phone's built-in arsenal of tradesman-style tools which includes a Noise test, Bubble Level, Plumb bob, Picture Hanging tool, GPS Speedometer and Pressure meter. While this is the second phone I have reviewed that incorporates a rear screen, I still don't exactly see this as being a paradigm shift, or anything essential that every phone should have on it. It's a bit of a marmite feature, where I personally don't think it's required at all. And while it's certainly a nice-looking rugged device, I don't think it adds anything of value to the features list.
The 48MP camera delivers superb image quality for both photos and video. It offers you a curated selection of modes including Timelapse, Video, Normal (photo), Pro (Photo), and Slow motion, with the standard ability to configure flash settings, capture rate and output format. There is also a paired-back amount of options when it comes to editing those snaps to lessen any complications.
Selecting those initial modes is a little odd in that you cannot simply swipe across from Timelapse through to Slow motion, instead, you are forced to click along each (or every other) mode for the mode at the other end of the list to slowly scroll into view. Typically this means it takes two slightly drawn-out clicks to get into your preferred mode instead of a swipe and a click, which would have been far more intuitive in my opinion. Oddly, the editing options allow you to swiftly swipe through them, it is just the camera modes that don't.
Sound booms incredibly vibrantly out of the rear projecting loudspeaker. I was suitably impressed with the non-tinny sound that came from the device, even without any dedicated sub-woofer, and for movie playback via VLC or whatever you want to use the Ticktock is fantastic as a media device!
The juxtaposition of this is that to use the built-in FM radio feature you need to have a cabled pair of headphones connected to use as an aerial, but the phone doesn't have a 3.5mm socket, so you have to use the supplied USB-C to 3.5mm adaptor. While great in theory, using this accessory means you cannot charge and listen at the same time; but in reality, who listens to non-web radio these days anyway?
Another interesting feature that comes bundled in, is that of the NFC card duplication app. Technically it clones NFC-enabled cards to your phone meaning you no longer have to carry around a whole wallet's worth of keycards anymore, but I wondered how far that functionality would extend. YES, I attempted to clone an Amiibo to it, and NO, it didn't work. Sadly the NFC standard is different in those little toys-to-life figures, so no duplication of those on this device.
Checking out some technicals of this device I decided to run it through the usual benchmarking and analysis. While CPU-Z and Ampere confirmed the inner workings, Geekbench eventually spat out a 539 single-core score and a 1642 multi-core score for this 8-core, 2.00 GHz mobile, which plants this phone firmly underneath the Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC, which is now a 2-year-old, sub $200 phone, versus this $369.99 oddity. Sure this has a lot of outdoorsy features but how many of you would honestly use it that often in the woods, rather than just as a daily driver? That is the Ticktock's defining USP: it's rugged, tough, and long-lasting, but it does not have a lot of grunt under the hood, which is sadly the trend for "rugged" devices.
For gaming on this device, I would suggest, that the Ticktock is limited to low-end app store games and primarily 2D emulation, light 3D gaming via PSX emulation, and, at a push, some heavily optimised 3D gaming with very basic games on emulators such as Dolphin or AetherSX2. The Legend of Zelda Windwaker, for example, ran at almost 29FPS but was jittery and with frequent slowdowns to 21FPS in OpenGL. In Vulkan, it was pretty much 21FPS max with extremely stuttery and slow audio, which is even more unplayable.
If you're a 24/7 outdoors kind of person, this phone is definitely for you. If you're going camping or abroad on holiday you can be sure that the quad-satellite GPS and built-in compass will keep you on track, the 6000mAh battery keeps you juiced up for a heck of a long time, and the audio/visual quality is perfect for keeping you entertained along the way. However, if you're more of a city dweller with a penchant for decent games, heavier than normal apps and minimal space in your pocket then you may want to venture into thinner, lighter, more powerful devices for less of your hard-earned cash.
Product Links
If the Unihertz TickTock strikes you fancy, you can take a look at the official store page linked below and even get $10 off if you decide to purchase one (until October 31, 2022).
Verdict
- 5G-enabled and waterproof
- Excellent battery life
- Fantastic loudspeaker
- Great everyday performance
- Sub screen and IR have potential
- Large and unshapely
- Quite heavy to carry about
- No wireless charging
- Mediatek Dimensty 700 is weak
- Android 11 not Android 12
