Unihertz Tank2 (by 8849) Rugged Smartphone Review: Bright Camping Lights and a Projector

The resolution is 1280 x 720 pixels which is sensible for a smartphone projector, but let’s check the actual image quality. Before that know that if you put the Unihertz Tank2 on a flat surface, it’s not going to properly project the image on a wall, so you will have to put something underneath it so that the phone sits at an angle. You can see how I did it in the short video I added and I also played a 4K Youtube video which highlights a couple of things.

First, the image quality is well, acceptable I suppose considering that the projector is embedded into a medium-priced smartphone. I am not going to compare it with dedicated projector since it would not be fair. The point is that if you’re camping and want to watch a movie or a YouTube video along with other people, the Unihertz Tank2 will allow you to do just that, so no complaints there.

The second aspect is that there is no way to manually adjust the focus or the keystones. So you will need to find the sweet spot by trying out various distances from the footage until the video looks just right. That’s for the focus because for the keystones to be better adjusted, you will have to keep the smartphone elevated and at the edge of a flat surface.

The Camping Lights

Unlike the first Tank smartphone that has a single large camping light, the Unihertz Tank2 has two camping lights, one covering the top half of the rear panel and which displays a cold white light, while the other covers the bottom half of the rear panel and it can reproduce a warmer tone light.

You can enable the top light by holding the side button (the red one), but to see the true potential of the camping lights, you need to go to Tools and select Camping Lamp. Here, you can select both the Cold and the Warm lamp to be enabled by the aforementioned button, as well as set a duration after which they’ll turn off automatically.

Some important modes are the SOS and the Explosion Flash which can be a life saver if you’re in immediate danger. Further down, it’s possible to adjust the Brightness of the LEDs from Full bright to Half and Slight bright. Be aware that these lights are very powerful, so don’t point them directly at your eye since it can damage your sight. That’s also true for the projector.

How loud is the speaker?

Even if the speaker is positioned on the rear panel and points in a similar manner as the speaker from the newer AGM smartphone, it does have some space before it reaches the table, so the sound is not muffled and distorted. It’s not on the level of my iPhone 12, but the sound quality is fairly acceptable and it’s possible to listen to some videos even if it’s a bit louder in the area (don’t be that person that listens to music in public on the speaker..). The speaker itself is not very loud, but when I triggered the alarm, it did seem to be much louder than when I was listening to music (maybe it was just the higher frequency).

The Call Quality and Connectivity

While I understand why some phones, mainly the Samsung ones focus only on the voice the closest to the microphone, it also made it almost impossible to have a conference call when multiple people are present. But the good news is that the Unihertz Tank2 performs a lot better in this regard. Even in a conversation between two people, I could hear the other person clearly and my voice was also well reproduced even in a more noisy environment.

So, it seems that the manufacturer did not forget the phone part of the smartphone, which is excellent. As for the connectivity, the Unihertz Tank2 is not a 5G phone, so it can only go up to 4G; in terms of WiFi, it does support the 802.11ac standard, meaning that you can connect it to the 5GHz networks. Is the support for WiFi 6 mandatory now? Not really since most people just barely have passed to the WiFi 5 standard, but I guess it wouldn’t have hurt.

The Battery Life

The Unihertz Tank2 is equipped with a 15,500mAh battery which is a step down from the 22,000mAh of its predecessor, but the manufacturer still insists that we should get up to 35 hours of continuous video playback and up to 100 hours of continuous calls (you do you). And in stand-by, it should reach up to a month and a half which is quite the feat. I can only tell that with WiFi enabled, running some benchmarks, calling people from time to time and watching videos (with the brightness set to 60%) have drained about 30% of battery in two days. So, the phone will go from 100 to 0% in about 6 days and I suppose I could squeeze it up to a week since I don’t run benchmarks all day long, it was just for this test.

How quickly does it charge? Well, the Unihertz Tank2 is one of those very rare smartphones (not just among the rugged niche, but on the global scale) which still offers a power brick inside the package. And it’s a 66W PD charger which will fully recharge the smartphone in about 5 hours. It’s actually fairly quick because don’t forget we’re dealing with a very large battery. There is no wireless charging involved and I suppose it makes sense considering the price tag and all the features that it already offers.

The Conclusion

I think that the rugged smartphone niche is home for some of the most creative devices and you can’t really tell the same about any other electronic device niche, especially not the regular smartphones market which got bland and boring. The Unihertz Tank2 (by 8849) is pushing some boundaries, and not just in terms of size and weight, but also in terms of features. No, it has no thermal camera, but it does have a working projector, it has two powerful camping lights and a suite of tools that will be really helpful in a construction site. There are a few software kinks that need ironed out, but at the end of day, we do get a properly rugged smartphone, a huge screen and fairly powerful hardware for apps and games. Pair that with the aforementioned exotic features and we have a very appealing rugged smartphone on our hands.

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