REVIEW: HOTWAV Cyber 9 Pro – Budget Rugged Android Smartphone [8GB RAM]

. This is a relatively affordable rugged, android smartphone that sells for around 170 bucks and, like other rugged handsets its going to be waterproof drop proof. So its going to be more resistant to the elements along with a pretty large 7500 milliamp hour capacity battery and its powered by the mediatek helio p60 has 8 gigabytes of ram and 128 gigs of built in storage, further expandable via a micro sd card, which are All pretty competitive in terms of specs even comes with nfc, so you can use it for mobile payment has a triple camera array on the back, which comprises of a 48 megapixel primary lens from samsung, but the other two lenses are not quite as useful as something Like a wide angle lens, which i would usually prefer still, we have a dedicated micro lens for capturing close up shots, thats, five megapixels and then a third sensor, thats dedicated just for the bokeh blur effect front facing camera, is rated at 16 megapixels and then again The helio p60 its going to be clocked at 2 gigahertz its a 12 nanometer chipset. Last but not least, the phone is running on android 11, but it has been customized with their skin on top of it, which well take a closer look at later on. In this video, so this particular company hotwave, we havent really seen in the past so theyre, not quite as well known as, for instance, doogee umidigi, some of the brands like that.

But they are competing in the same space and theyre based in shenzhen china, and also trying to again bring out pretty affordable value, oriented phones and we have just an inner compartment that will have a qr code to learn more about the phone and then finally, the Cyber 9 pro is stamped proudly on top, which, by the way, can be peeled off. There is a pre applied factory screen protector, which is a nice little extra ive already set this up and started to use it. Since this is our review, but just showing you guys what came in the box theres also a standard, sim, ejector pin usb power, adapter usb type c charging and data cable, along with a type c to 3.5 millimeter aux adapter, because unfortunately there is no headphone jack. Like most smartphones, these days, all right so taking a closer look at the design of the cyber 9 pro overall, it is definitely echoing design elements from other rugged phones and kind of gaming phones as well, which have these purposeful lines. But overall i think it does look quite good and has these obvious bumpers on the edges that is making it resistant to shock. If you do accidentally drop the phone, but it is a hd plus resolution panel, which is a little bit higher than 720p. Instead of full 1080., the ppi is not going to be the sharpest in the world, but that combined with the overall large battery does mean that you are able to use this phone for a pretty long time before it runs out of juice.

The rear here also houses a lanyard, strap the loudspeaker, which, unfortunately, i think would have been better place on the side, its not a stereo unit, and then these two accents here – theyre, not really leds, but still makes it look pretty interesting. Soft touch rubber texture that prevents fingerprints, pretty easy to grip, and the stripe here also houses. The triple camera array, along with the dual tone, led flash the side here: houses aluminum rails. That also is advertising the rugged nature here of the phone, along with the first customizable key. There is a slot for microsd and sim card, its a dual sim phone supporting nano slots and then, on the other edge, we have access to a volume, rocker power key which are all made out of metal, pretty tactile and responsive. And finally, there is the side mounted fingerprint scanner. The placement is pretty comfortable and easy to reach. However, this fingerprint scanner is rather thin because of the smaller surface area. Sometimes i had to press once or twice to get it to unlock, but overall it still works. Just for reference were going to compare it with some of the other recent rugged phones that weve reviewed, including zeekers p10, roughly similar dimensions. But the zeiker is a bit more expensive because it does have slightly more powerful internals with a cpu and also a night vision. Camera, but again this one here is only 170 bucks. So keep that in mind.

One of its closest competitors would be the yumadigi bison pro series, which also sells for around 200., so it doesnt feel too far off compared to those other phones in terms of form factor and thats, the demo of the fingerprint scanner. So it takes a second to unlock and again because its a bit thin, it can be a little bit picky in terms of the positioning. If you are kind of putting it off a bit, it will kind of tend to not as easily register, but overall it still works does the trick you can also use face, unlock as well definitely been customized by hot wave. So all the accents here in fact are green, but you do have access to the essentials, including turning on or off wireless networks. There is also a dark mode. Nfc battery saving mode can all be triggered as well as even a screen recording tool can be accessed in the notification shade now down below. Here we can see that there are the standard google apps pre installed. Otherwise, there are a handful of some utility tools which come preloaded. There is a tool bag app, but considering the rugged nature of the phone, i think it still is making sense. So you have access to things like a compass, theres, also a sound meter that uses the microphone to know. Tell you how loud your environment is also things like a height measure, which is using the camera to do some approximation and taking a look at some of these other utility tools very quickly.

Theres. The voice recorder, which has a pretty cool kind of animated style, of showing how loud the surroundings are, when you are recording audio and also things like the calculator, also has been slightly customized compared to stock in terms of its layout. But overall you can see that the helio p60, coupled with the 8 gigabytes of ram and again the 720p display, meaning that the processor gpu doesnt, have to push around as much pixels ensures a very fluid experience. So, jumping back and forth between open applications is very fast and snappy, so for a phone of the price performance is very good. I have to say now. One thing this launcher, though, is emitting, would be a drawer for all of your apps, but you can always download nova launcher something else if you prefer bring that back, but right now, every app that you install will be pushed over to the home page and show Up as a new icon, even if you long press and go into home settings, there is no way to bring that drawer back. So one thing to keep in mind. What we do have, though, is like a pixel phone on the left side. You can have access to your news. Feed things like articles that youre interested in will be populated on the edge lets jump into the camera and take a quick look at the performance there. So as aforementioned the primary sensor, 40 megapixels from samsung is pretty capable in terms of it, does have a lot of resolution and detail.

You can definitely get some pretty good looking shots, especially in outdoor environments. You can see the hdr even kick in the skies. Textures are preserved very well and, despite all of these tree branches, even if were zooming all the way in we can still see a lot of intricate detail, sometimes takes a moment for it to snap into focus. But there can be moments of slight over sharpening at times as part of the software that theyre using, but its no denying that for again, 48 megapixels youre getting a lot of detail. The only critique, i would say is the second and third lenses i dont find to be the most useful in the world. For instance, i would have preferred instead of a micro lens. They chose a wide angle instead, but it is what it is. The camera interface at least, does give you a lot of options in terms of customization, so under advanced settings were able to change things here, including geo tagging, continuous burst, shot mode, anti flicker under the more section here, including thats, where hdr is located. In addition to accessing the aforementioned macro lens, which, interestingly again, it sits as its own menu item instead of in the primary lens, if we zoom in it doesnt automatically adjust over to micro, so you have to hit on that key, but indeed, under this particular mode, We can get a lot closer to our object that were looking at and it will still remain quite sharp.

Take, for instance, this shot of a penny that i took. I was pretty pleased with the result. Its a fixed focus lens, but it just is allowing you to get a lot closer than what would be typically possible using the primary sensor and heres a few more examples of that micro lens in action. You can even see the dust particles on the edge, so there are definitely times where it can be fun to try out. You can even change the aspect ratio to capture images at the 18 by 9 aspect ratio, which is taking advantage of the taller displays on our phones. These days, when it comes to video recording, you can record up to full hd, but unfortunately, 4k is not supported in the settings out of the box. So all in all, i would say its really, not bad as far as the especially primary camera is concerned. In relatively brightly lit spaces, youll get some better than average results. Considering the price point of this phone now through that process, we are also able to tell that the fully laminated display, overall, its a pretty decent quality in terms of brightness im, not having too much issues considering this is a rugged phone. Maybe it can get a little bit brighter, but still if you are in moderate sunlight, it still remains visible enough. Colors are pretty saturated and vibrant, as well as giving us fairly wide and generous viewing angles again, its not going to be pin sharp, especially on a 6.

3 inch panel, but in most cases looking at images and videos. Things are still enjoyable enough demo of what its like using it to watch back a video on youtube and how the speakers sound like Music Applause, so Applause, Music, Music Applause. So the experience is not shabby, especially in terms of loading, speed and reception quality for the antenna does seem to be quite strong. I was consistently getting almost full bars of wi fi, as well as when i tried to use cellular with t mobile here in the seattle region. No issues in terms of loading times at the very least speakers were also loud enough id say. Although again, placement could be a bit better, but you can always use wireless headphones to improve the experience. Generally speaking, the helio p60, i think, is perfectly capable its a very good contender, with qualcomm snapdragon chips in the 600 to 700 series line, and we expect similar levels of overall fluidity and day to day usage and thats the case here. And that means certainly for loading back web pages. You wont find any issues even more complex ones like the verge or new york times with more ads videos and elements on the page. Yes, youll probably have to wait a split second longer, but afterwards everything will load here. Just fine scrolling at the very least, does feel pretty fast and responsive, and i can pinch in and out everything works as you would expect again.

The eight gigabytes of ram also helps things to tick along pretty well, and you can even open up lets, say 10 tabs in the browser, jump back and forth between them, and things are still largely retained in the systems memory now in terms of additional settings, it Is fairly stock looking, but the icons you can see here are slightly changed again right now we are using gesture navigation, but i can bring back physical keys if i prefer. Additional gestures that you can use include three fingers to capture a screenshot. Smart motion like flipping over the phone to mute and reject a call duraspeed, is a function in most mediatek powered phones that will try and boost the performance if youre in games and theres also a glove mode that will increase the sensitivity of the display and that 128 gigs of built in storage on the base model, i think, is also plentiful for most folks. Overall battery life has been excellent. I could easily use this thing for a couple of days before i needed to really recharge it even longer, if youre, just using it in standby and just taking an occasional call, which speaking of the call quality, thankfully, is also quite good. The built in microphones do have a bit of noise isolation to them, even if youre outdoors caller said they could still hear me just fine. The one caveat, though, is, if you are in the us. I will mention that because of atn ts pretty dumb policies, they are essentially not allowing you to use any phone thats not on their supported list of devices anymore, so this device.

It will work perfectly with t mobile in the us and then obviously its a quad band gsm phone, so in other carriers around the world, just pop in your sim card and youre ready to go finally adjust the performance when it comes to gaming and for that Ill first load up kind of a slightly more lighter game stack and as a whole. Again. The p60 chipset is not shabby at all its far better than many of the other entry level chips from mediatek years ago and again mediatek in general. Although they used to have a lot of flack, theyve been just getting more and more competitive, especially for lighter games and titles, with slightly less animations and then again, you can play back more heavy 3d style animation games as well things like pubg asphalt. You can definitely install and play on here, however, just keep in mind that youll want to likely lower some of the graphic settings to get you a smoother experience, and you have to wait a little bit longer in terms of the loading speeds just because of the Slightly more limited gpu compared to flagships, but all in all, really not bad, and you can still get some decent gameplay on here. Theres, no issues in terms of installing any current titles from the play store, especially with the plenty of memory that we have on board. So thats more or less it as far as our hands on review of the hot wave cyber 9 pro design.

That looks pretty good. In my opinion, even though it doesnt have any led lights which would have made it, i think, even more flashy, but for a entry level model in their current lineup. I think this is a very solid choice. As far as performance is concerned, they do have slightly more higher end phones as well, including actually, the cyber 7 pro which, despite the smaller name ironically, has more powerful internals, including the dimension 700, so thats a 5g enabled chipset. If youre looking for a 5g phone, it doesnt necessarily bring anything we havent seen before to the table, but overall the aggressively low price would be one of the main considerations. Here.