IIIF150 B2 Ultra Short Review: Amazing Rugged Phone

vemuda.com - What’s going on guys, thanks for visiting this site. So if you’re unfamiliar with rugged smartphones, I’m about to show you one of the most ridiculous ones available right now. This is the brand new B2 Ultra, its a practically indestructible Android phone powered by a battery that’s 3 times the size of the one that’s in your current phone and it has all specs & features you’d normally want like a 200mp camera and high refresh rate display along with a few extra things that make this phone even more unique.

1. Unboxing

Now before we get into all that, I want to tell you the unboxing experience because it’s unlike most other smartphones nowadays too in that you actually get a whole bunch of accessories and stuff inside.

Source: iiif150.com

Sliding off the lid of this really cool package the first thing you see if the phone itself alongside a small packet of stuff. There’s a warranty card and instruction manual if you need it. Digging a little deeper you also get both a wall plug and USB C cable for charging, and super nice ones at that.

The charger is a 65w GaN USB C plug and the cable is a thick braided nylon with metal USB-C ends, a very high quality and tough cable to match the rugged-ness of the phone.

So here is the B2 Ultra of course and one more thing, you also actually get a tempered glass screen protector and a couple cleaning wipes to help you install it so really great full suite of essential accessories here all included in the box.

So with all that stuff out of the way, here is the B2 Ultra and again if you’re unfamiliar with these rugged smartphones, this thing might look a bit overwhelming but it’s design and form factor serve a pretty important purpose: durability.

2. Design

From the front you can see that the B2 Ultra is a fairly large 6.8 inch smartphone, thats the screen size corner to corner and obviously the display is framed by some thicker black borders all around.

Much of that thickness though is actually the tough & rugged rubber edges of the phone itself, its sort of the equivalent of a rugged case but this is all phone and the extra thick corners are there to fully protect the device in the event of a drop.

3. Frame

In fact, the whole frame of the phone is a combination of rubber and metal - the side rails are thick metal material with some divots for added grip and there’s even a 12cm or about 4 and a half inch printed and marked ruler for measurements on each side.

The back of the phone is really interesting, its a Gorilla Glass housing over this futuristic cirtuiboard looking design, and you’ll notice 2 big circles, one is the rear camera setup of course, the other is a 1-inch fully customizable display.

4. Customizable Display

And this is something I’ve really never seen before. It’s not touch screen but instead you sort of wave your hand in front of it and it flips through different clocks and other screen modes that you can change up.

There’s maybe a dozen different clocks and other information screens you can switch between, you’ll see notifications and even phone calls, aside from all the rugged features its probably one of the other more unique aspects of the B2 Ultra.

5. Ports

Taking a quick look around, on the let side you’ve got your SIM and SD card tray and this is actually easily removable, you can just pull it out with your fingernail basically and this is great for quickly swapping SIMs or exchanging SD cards but it’s still fully water and dust resistant.

Below that is a customizable shortcut key that you can set up to do a myriad of things. On the right, familiar volume buttons and your power button / fingerprint sensor. That was easy to set up, seems perfectly fast, no issues with waking or unlocking the phone at all.

At the bottom you’ve got your USB C port for charging, the bottom speaker there and a pass through hole at the corner that you can use to string up a wrist strap if you take this phone on a more extreme adventure like underwater for example. There’s your selfie camera front and center below the earpiece and around back a 200mp camera setup that I’ll talk more about in a second.

6. Durability

Now obviously, this being a rugged phone, it also has more extreme durability ratings. It’s IP68 water and dust resistant, it’s also IP69K certified which provides protection against high temperatures and high pressure water environments - so theoretically it could survive as deep as 6m of water for 24 minutes.

And its 810G military certified, which means it can handle shocks, drops, vibration, heat, cold, humidity, and so much more - there’s 29 different durability tests it goes through just to get that certification alone and you could toss it nearly 2m up on hard pavement and it would be fine.

7. Outdoor Adventures

And that’s the big idea with a rugged phone like this. It’s made for outdoor adventures in all environments, hiking, biking, rock climbing, swimming, camping, even construction work or other harsh outdoor environments. It’s built to last through just about any situation.

8. Design

Of course, the B2 Ultra is still a phone, and fortunately its other specs are just as solid as its build. The big 6.8 inch display is a full HD 2460 by 1080 resolution IPS TFT panel packing in 405 pixels per inch.

On a screen this big, that resolution is perfectly fine and even up close your videos, text and everything else is going to look plenty sharp. It’s also a 120hz high refresh rate display, an adaptive one so you can set it to the full 120hz if you want, 60, 90 or let the phone change the refresh rate automatically to maximize performance. But with that 120hz enabled, you get that fast and fluid feel that mimics what you’d experience on even a flagship phone.

The LCD panel itself is also quite good for what it is, you’ll get about 520 nits of peak brightness and a vivid color profile that does make everything on screen look punchy and saturated. I’ve seen dimmer, duller displays on more expensive phones than this so I can’t really complain.

And both the front display and rear are covered in Gorilla Glass 5 which helps limit glare and increase durability. I think for the viewing experience as a whole, this is a solid set of specs for a phone like this.

9. Speaker

Also, while this phone unfortunately doesn’t have a dual speaker setup for out loud listing, the single bottom speaker is probably the loudest one I’ve ever heard. Seriously.

10. Performance

Powering this phone is a decent set of internals led by the MediaTek Helio G99 processor, a 1 year old mid-tier 8-core chipset paired to 12GB of RAM which is just crazy, even thousand dollar Samsung flagships don;’t get that anymore, and 256GB of onboard storage with that option to pop in an SD card.

Here are the Geekbench numbers for those of you who like to keep score, now one other thing I really like about this phone is you get that absolutely bare-bones Android experience that I think also boosts performance just a little bit. It ships with Android 13 and outside of like 2 or 3 unfamiliar apps and an octangle icon pack, there’s no other bloatware, skins, themes or other garbage pre-installed on this phone.

So what you get is the clean & simple Google experience if you want, or the option to fully customize the OS to your liking without anything standing in your way. And this phone honestly is powered by a tried & true mid-level processor with just an obscene amount of RAM, so it feels fast and responsive even for being a sub-$300 device.

You guys know I’ve tried similar budget devices from Motorola, Poco, even Samsung and performance in this price range is sometimes an issue but I think the B2 Ultra punches a little higher than its price point.

The other thing powering this phone is a massive battery, and that was probably obvious just based on the phones thickness, but actually this is the thinnest phone with a 15,000mah battery built in.

If you think about it, that’s three times the battery size as a Samsung A series device but this phone is not even twice as thick. Its’ comparable to a phone plus a battery pack or a phone plus an Ottterbox case, but with all that power you can expect at least 3 full days of use on a single charge under normal usage and probably even more than that if you don’t use your phone a ton. That means you could have a weekend camping trip without every plugging this phone in.

And when you do, you’ve got 65w fast charging support so you could go from 0 to 100% in just a couple of hours. Big batteries are one of the stand-out features for rugged smartphones, and this one packs a massive one in a relatively slim formfactor all things considered.

10. Camera

Finally, the rear camera setup on this phone is also pretty unique. The main lens is a 200mp shooter, there’s a secondary 64mp lens that has some added functionality I’ll talk about in a second, 3LED flashlights and 2 infrared lights, and the selfie camera is a pretty respectable 32mp lens itself.

Now inside the camera app you’ll of course see a lot of the basic stuff, but this phone also has additional camera features specific to its rugged distinction. So underwater mode for example where you can use the physical hardware buttons to snap pics and videos under water since the phone is very water resistant.

There’s a dedicated night vision camera which is pretty cool too, and a great combination of regular shooting modes like night mode, portrait, slow mo and pro controls as well some additional settings.

As far as the real world results, the couple of sample pics I did take with this phone just out of the box were pretty good. Lots of detail, decent punchy colors, it’s still a budget camera setup for sure but the regular camera features combined with the additional rugged-focus add-ons give you a lot to work with in some very unique situations.

11. Conclusion

All in all, the B2 Ultra is really a pretty interesting rugged smartphone with a handful of features you wouldn’t otherwise see on any other device that I know of. The 15,000mah battery alone is pretty ridiculous, the random rear display is a quirky little add-on, obviously the drop and water resistance ratings make this phone incredibly durability and that’s probably the primary reason someone would consider it, but the rest of the specs - especially just general performance and the android experience - finish off a relatively well-rounded mid-range phone that could be a pretty enticing option for well under $300 bucks.

But what do you guys think about these rugged smartphones? What would you use it for? Let me know in the comments down below, I’d love to hear your thoughts of course.

Hopefully you guys did enjoy this post, and I’ll see you guys later.