My experiences after using UMI Iron for a year (Updated)

klotz

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Full year update at the end of this post

I got my Iron about half a year ago and I would like to summaraize my experiences now. At first I'd like to say that in general the device is not bad. In fact for the price of 180€ it's amazing. But you alway get what you pay for. So there  are many drawbacks when it comes to build quality.

My phone came with a pretty severe hardware defect that renders the headphone jack useless. Heavy noise distortion makes listening to music impossible. Luckily that's the only HW problem for me. Other users reported various other things here.

Then There is the camera issue. Cheap lenses just negate the excellent Sony sensor and the sloppy camera app does the rest to dissatisfy me with every picture  I take. They are often unfocused, underexposed when using flash and always grainy and unsaturated.


Next up the display. I wondered how they managed it to get a full HD display into the phone for the low price the Iron costs. I got my answer during time. I tried to save my phone from falling on the ground so I grabbed it like a ninja mid-air and pressed my thumb a little bit too hard on the display glass. Well, since then I have a spot, thats notably brighter than the rest of the screen. Another problem are lots of dead pixels on the bottom of the screen around rhe navigation symbols. First there was around three but the number grows bigger the longer I use the phone. This is caused by the way too thin glass that's supposed to protect the LCD. Just compare Iron's glass to any premium brand phone. You will feel the difference by even gently pressing on it.


Worst thing is total lack of support by UMI. Even though there were a couple of SW updates, they never fixed any reported problem. Sometimes the update felt like they changed nothing but the version number. Except for advertising new models you would never see any official posting by an employee in these (official) forums. Instead they send ahead moderators without any affiliation to their company so they can't be blame for any false promise they make. For example: They promised that spare parts would be available online from autumn 2015 but I still can't find any besides protective cases from random sellers on aliexpress. There were users reporting broken batteries, displays and buttons but UMI just left them alone.


UMI seems to not have any quality control process at all. They don't even seem to test their devices. I can not understand how the Iron can have all those mentioned defects.

Well, don't get me wrong. I use my Iron every day and overall I like it. I love the Octacore processor and 3 GB of RAM are amazing. I just think UMI has to learn a lot about quality expectations of the western market if they plan to survive the coming years. I for myself will not buy another UMI product anywhere soon as long as they just earn money without caring for customers.

Update: After one year of usage the USB port suddenly broke. I accidently ordered a spare board for Iron Pro (which was the only one available on Aliexpresss btw), which fits and works except for the usb type c connector. So I'm lost now. I soldered a QI-adapter directly to the battery but that's an ugly hack and I hate it. Charging takes 6 to 8 hours this way. Thanks UMI for nothing. Thanks for letting your customers down and thanks for bad quality of the part that gets stressed physically the most. I have to live with this half brick for another two months until I can afford a new phone which will be a premium brand again. Bye UMI and bye chinese phones. It was kind of an experience for life.

rhen

I agree with most of the things you said.
Your screen should be a defected one. My Iron arrived the last week of august and never had problem with it. I don't have any bad pixels.

creeek

Thanks for this, I was going to buy one of these, as the price is even lower! I may still do. I obviously dont learnt, as I have a UMI Zero, for which support is just about non-existent. I camera initially being superb, quickly collected dust inside the lens.
I am surprised UMI let you post this, but nice to see they have!!

lazarx7

Well, nice review. I like my umi iron too and I do not have any problems with screen. The only thing that bothers me, actually, is the audio channels flip))). But! My next phone won't be any Umi phone because of lacking support. I tend to lenevo now. Cheap and nice!)

Drakhart

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In my case, I even had to disassemble the device in order to repair the Micro SD slot (it wasn't detecting the card) and the power button (it was moving like jelly, being shorter in height that the volume rocker). Since then, I've been struggling with the screws being loose every now and then, even when I screw them up to the end.

More things: the Micro USB port is flimsy as hell and not even best quality cables (Aukey or RAVPower) stay into place, speaker sound is distorted at nearly max volume, vibration motor sounds like loose, the aluminum back cover never fitted well into the plastic top and bottom... Very bad construction overall, though the design is nice.

All of that on top of the aforementioned issues: cheap lenses, the main camera not being Sony (I hope no one doubts this at this time: both sensors are OmniVision), front flash not getting white balance right, bad audio quality through earphone jack, lack of software support, total absence of that CyanogenMod ROM displayed on every UMI webpage...

Overall it would be a nice mobile for its price tag if there weren't better built devices from more serious manufacturers for the same or even lower price (ie: Xiaomi Redmi Note 2/3 or Meizu M2/M2 Note), so I'm not in any way pleased with the purchase: my main buying points for the UMI Iron were build quality and stock Android potentially being easier to update, but these are the points where UMI has failed the most.

Summing up: I think they scammed me and many others and no, I won't be buying any other UMI device nor recommend anyone to do so, ever.


PS: Oh, yeah, I forgot they didn't want to clarify that the phone hasn't gyroscopic and magnetic sensors up until most units were already shipped. I guess they did so to avoid a mass pre-order cancellation. Nice, UMI.

loco026

Drakhart replied at 2016-1-3 18:57
Edited by Drakhart at 2016-1-3 19:06 \n\n
In my case, I even had to disassemble the device in order ...

friend can tell me how to fix the issue of sd card, then when trying to insert a sim card trimmed my sd stopped working

dgumola

Umi will u do something?? U lost a lot of costumers... I want buy phone for my  wife. But now i need buy one for me cuz iron charging 3days.

Drakhart

loco026, there's a good explanation on how to solve the SD card issue in this thread: http://community.umidigi.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=821

In my case I just needed to bend the "broken" pin upwards, no need to solder it.

klotz

I updated the OT with my experience after a full year.