IIIF150 Air1 Ultra Review – A Rugged Phone Like You Never Seen Before

IIIF150 pace of technological innovation has never stopped with the introduction of the IIIF150 Air1 Ultra the rugged budget phone. This phone combines providing extreme use conditions with a very durable body, and a regular device like any Android phone, so the Air1 Ultra has a number of outstanding specifications represented by a 5000mAh battery supporting 33W Fast Charging and run by MediaTek’s Helio G99 octa-core chipset built with TMSC’s 6nm process tech and with base memory configuration is 256 GB + 8GB. The camera set on this phone includes a 64MP Camera, and a SONY 20MP night vision camera. On the front of the phone, you have a 6.8-inch display with a 120Hz refresh rate taking up most of the real estate. And like every rugged phone, is IP68 and IP69K rated with MIL-STD-819G certified and corning gorilla glass and runs Android 12 OS. All of this I will talk about more in this review, so without wasting time let’s move on to the article.

IIIF150 Air1 Ultra Features

• Rugged Design & Premium Build
• Colorful RGB Lighting
• Android 12 OS
• MediaTek Helio G99 Octa-Core
• 8GB RAM + 256GB ROM
• 6.8″ FHD+ 120Hz IPS Display, Corning Gorilla Glass
• Triple Camera 64MP Main + 20MP Night vision + 32 Front
• 5000mAh Battery, 33W Fast Charging
• IP68, IP69K & MIL-STD-810G
• Dual 4G Network, NFC, GPS
• Infrared Thermometer

Design & Build Quality

The IIIF150 Air1 Ultra is one of the most stylish rugged smartphones on the market that is built to survive no matter what you use or work, it’s extremely durable and not easy to break as tests prove. The smartphone has a practical design with comfortably fits in the hand and does not try to slip out, and the finish is extremely thorough. All of the parts have been superbly put together as a result, the phone appears tough, all the elements fit perfectly, the materials feel reliable, and everything is fine in this regard. Despite its plastic and rubber, it feels super solid when you hold it in your hands. The edges, ports, buttons, and all the other exterior components have a precise finish, which further boosts the feel-good factor.

The design of the Air1 Ultra is beautiful with some touches that make it look more eye-catching and more premium. it features a large screen on the front of 6.8 inches and high-quality plastic on the back with a thin frame hat that gives a kind thickness of 9.55mm. If you ask me about the quality of the manufacturing, there is nothing to complain about it, because IIIF150 is always working to provide high-quality products to users all over the world at affordable prices. So, The design and build of the IIIF150 Air1 Ultra are very satisfying.

On The Front

In front of the device, you have a full screen of 6.8 inches that takes 83% of the body, according to the company, it has 1.1mm Corning Gorilla Glass, both on the exterior cover screen and on the exterior cover camera. The bezels around the screen are neat, but with prominent edges. The notch for the front camera is a punch hole with a 32MP camera in the middle of the top for taking selfies and video chats, which we will talk more about soon.

On The Back

But the back is radically different from any phone I’ve seen before with a premier look and came in three colors Black, White, and Silver and is made of high-quality plastic, and reinforced with four thick cushions in the corners to handle the toughest collisions and for comfort when carried and also to prevent the screen from scratching. In the middle of the top, what catches your attention is an island with an RGB light and dual cameras, an Infrared Thermometer sensor, and in-middle flashlights. Also embossed the IIIF150 logo at the bottom.

Ports And Buttons

The volume button and power button are integrated with a side-mounted fingerprint scanner which is surprisingly good at this price, and there is a SIM card slot that holds two nano-SIM cards or a single nano-SIM card with a MicroSD card and has a customizable button, you can make a trigger to activate certain functions in the system settings. All buttons are made of durable metal, which gives them more solidity. In terms of ports, the Air1 Ultra is equipped with a USB Type-C port, But it doesn’t have any dust plugs for its ports, which shows its dustproof capability. If you notice the 3.5mm audio jack is missing, that means either you have to use wireless headphones or a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter.

IIIF150 Air1 Ultra – Waterproof

The IIIF150 Air1 Ultra is covered by high-quality synthetic rubber and rated with IP68 and IP69K, which means it is dust-resistant scratch-resistant shock and drop-resistant, and water-resistant up to 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes. Moreover, it can withstand high pressure and high-temperature washing test, and withstand 100 bar (1450 psi) high water pressure and 80°C high water temperature. In addition, it also has MIL-STD-810G certification, a military standard certification that ensures the integrity of the device is maintained in almost any situation.

IIIF150 Air1 Ultra – Display Quality

Now, let’s move on to why I fell in love with this phone. The display on the IIIF150 Air1 Ultra is one of the best that you get with almost every other budget rugged phone nowadays, with a 6.8-inch IPS with FHD+ resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate with an aspect ratio of 19:9, and a modest screen resolution of 1080*2460. There was a time when these specs were only found on flagship phones and it’s exciting to see them trickle down to the mid-range segment, this display is definitely one of the strongest suits of the phone. Even though the display is an LCD panel, the bezels around the display are pretty thin and come with excellent viewing angles, crisp content, and accurate color reproduction. The display’s contrast makes for an immersive viewing experience with deep blacks and vivid colors.  

The first thing that caught my eye was the colors on this display, which look more vibrant than you’d expect from a rugged phone. Even the black levels are pretty good for the price, and that very well explains why the screen has a good contrast ratio and vibrant colors, and the content on the screen doesn’t look very sharp. But that’s what you get for the price.

What is more noteworthy is the 120Hz high refresh function. The high refresh rate can make you feel smooth at any moment when you move the screen, open SNS like Twitter and Facebook, and even play games at a high frame rate. Of course, The 120 Hz refresh rate works well most of the time but left it at the AUTO setting for the best performance and battery life. You can always force 120Hz if you want to.

Yes, I know that we all wanted an AMOLED display and it is a bit disappointing. However, the aforementioned panel is great for improved resolutions and the picture quality is very sharp maybe that can help you forget the high contrast of AMOLED. Although the viewing angles are still pretty decent and no darkening of the screen was visible even at almost 90-degree angles. While on a sunny day, the screen does not fade and remains readable, Of course, this does not apply to direct sunlight.

This type of screen is the best you can get on a mid-range phone and provides good color reproduction with no picture distortion and blue light protection for comfortable reading. In short, It has by far the best display I’ve seen in a budget phone, and I find it perfectly adequate for web browsing and content consumption, you will get the best value for what you pay, a large and high-quality screen suitable for media consumption, whether you are watching the video, playing games or browsing the social media.

IIIF150 Air1 Ultra – Cameras

So far, the overall rating of the IIIF150 Air1 Ultra rugged phone is more than great, And this work continues through a dual camera system with a 64MP sensor chip and a 20MP Night Vision Camera. To be capable of capturing the details, colors, or ranges to produce high-quality images. This is with some great features most notably, the Night Vision mode, which takes night photography to the next level compared to its competitors, allowing you to take great pictures even in extremely low light.

With this camera setup, the Air1 Ultra manages to capture pictures with decent image quality, at least in daylight. The images look bright, vibrant, and quite detailed for the price. Speaking of low light, photos from the primary lens taken at night appear to be pretty soft and grainy. There’s a lot of noise in the pictures and the colors appear quite washed out as well.

The Air1 Ultra will manage to capture pictures with decent image quality, at least in daylight. But, Low-light environments bring out the limitations of this camera. Plus, the main camera sensor helps you capture gorgeous memory for any moment with clear and sharp images. Also, offer plenty of Photo Modes.

Video Recording

The Air1 Ultra can record videos at up to 1080p resolutions at 30fps with the rear and front. The quality of the videos is good at this resolution, but there is no stabilization.

Front Camera

Thankfully, the IIIF150 Air1 Ultra adopted a 32MP Sensor chip front camera to make decent selfies. The skin tone and details are good, just the exaggerated contrast and excessive noise in darker points compromise the quality a little. Night selfies lose sharpness but are still good enough to share on social media. Portrait mode separates the planes well and has few errors in a blur.

Infrared Night Vision Camera

The night vision mode of this phone is one of its main strengths. It features a 20MP AF Night Vision 3.0 sensor, which can help you see everything at night. You just need to click on the icon to enter night vision mode and you will see all the differences. When taking pictures in the dark, and in extremely dimly lit environments, the image quality is very good. And in the deepest darkness, it seems to pick up some kind of lens flare-type effect. Also, distances play an important role to get accurate details. I am amazed that the camera worked so well, one of the most useful features. If you’ve got this camera for hunting, camping, or general wildlife spotting, it might be the best pick.

IIIF150 Air1 Ultra – Overall Performance

One of the main selling points of this new phone is the performance, both in daily usage and in gaming the IIIF150 Air1 Ultra can handle anything thrown at it with ease, It is equipped with the Mediatek Helio G99 chipset under the hood which is the latest 4G chipset and most-advanced SoC in the company’s mid-range Helio G-series lineup yet, with 6nm advanced TSMC Technology, and it has an ARM architecture with a total of 8 cores and a maximum frequency of 2.2Ghz, this CPU is a huge upgrade from the previous generation by up to 20% increase in performance and power efficiency, the Mali-G57 MC2 GPU is also high performing, it provides high frame rate and smooth gaming experience, these new chips a lot of issues from previous generations such as overheating and battery consumption and provide an overall better experience.

Gamers would enjoy playing their favorite titles with the Mali-G57 MC2 GPU and MediaTek HyperEngine 2.0 Lite. The IIIF150 Air1 Ultra also keeps the thermals in check with a cooling surface area of over 2*1mm magnesium-titanium alloy. So, it sits right at the edge of the mid-range and high-end segments and we found it in mid-range phones like the Oppo Reno 8T, Realme 10, POCO M5; or even Infinix Note 12 Pro.

The capable chip is paired with 8GB of RAM LPDDR4X, for storing your data, the handset comes with 256GB UFS 2.2 storage, which can be expanded further up to 1TB via a microSD card. This combination is a powerhouse when we talk about mid-range smartphones, particularly for system responsiveness.

During day-to-day use, The chipset was able to handle the basic activity. With the fast 90Hz display, browsing through the interface and scrolling through social media feeds are smooth, I didn’t experience any issues while scrolling through apps or browsing the web. Taking pictures is quick and loading videos from streaming services is seamless.

Gaming performance is solid, if not spectacularly satisfactory for the price. A few favorites like Call of Duty Mobile and Genshin Impact with little to no hiccups at medium settings, Call of Duty was the only title that generated more heat than the rest, but not up to an unbearable point. The handset can also run New PUBG State Mobile at Smooth+ Ultra and HD+ High settings. and you can easily able to achieve an average fps of 40 with zero lags and stutters at Smooth graphics whereas the game ran at an average fps of 30 at HD settings without any hiccups.

For benchmark tests using Geekbench 5 get a 547 in the single-core score, while the multi-core performance came out at 1920. while on AnTuTu v9 scored 3,56,430 points. These benchmark results are one of the best in the rugged segment and push the SoC beyond what’s likely with real-world usage, which in the IIIF150 Air1 Ultra case is much more than just passable for most use cases.

Software

One of the standout features of the IIIF150 Air1 Ultra is that it will be an adopter of Android 12 for a better user interface, privacy dashboard, and some interesting customization additions with UI that has better gesture navigation controls, a dark theme, and contains most of the features that come with the system, the most important of which is the presence of all Google services, Making the smartphone experience smoother and more personalized. Also, I like the large icons, animations, and overall responsiveness of the GUI.

As I always say, the stock Android system is best for these devices, with a simple and smooth launcher for better performance, especially since it does not contain pre-installed apps or games, I really hate this because of the large number of ads, Thanks here it is different. However, it has a toolkit app which is the torch, compass, noise detection, protractor, and more but does not burden the device and is without pop-up ads, bloatware, or third-party apps.

Playing Content

Playing the content on YouTube, was very smooth. You can play videos at a maximum of 1080p at 60 FPS without any problems or lag, And this is the highest quality you can get. My major issue however is the lack of Widevine L1 certification which restricts the video resolution on most streaming services to a mere 480p. While this does not become an immediate deal breaker, if you like watching your content on your smartphone, this might be an issue. This level may be difficult to find in many Chinese smartphones without exaggeration.

Sound Quality

IIIF150 also did an excellent job with the speakers. The sound is great for watching movies or listening to music, with rich and detailed sound. So, Air1 Ultra brings ultimate enjoyment of a sense of technology so that you can enjoy the epic theater-level movie at home with ease without distortion whips you into extreme excitement and thrill when gaming, listening to grand symphonies and watching movies.

Also, The speaker in the IIIF150 Air1 Ultra comes with RGB light around cameras and it can create different lighting effects when playing music. It’s a small addition, but it works well and is most evident at night. The RGB light features four different lighting modes that can be changed from settings to give the phone a new look in seconds and these consist of LeftFlow, RightFlow, Diffuse, and Echo.

Connectivity & Call Quality

IIIF150 Air1 Ultra is a dual-SIM smartphone equipped with a SIM slot that accommodates two 4G nano-sim cards and a MicroSD card that support all bandwidth offerings of 4G and 3G and so on, so it expected that you will get wide coverage and good signal quality for making the phone calls and accessing the Internet easily.

To connect to WiFi networks, It supports dual bandwidths of 2.4GHz and 5GHz providing low latency and faster transmission speed, resulting in greater efficiency, reliability, and security. of course, there is Bluetooth 5.0. That’s not all, there are also some basic sensors for a smartphone, including a gyroscope, accelerometers, and even an electronic compass. It’s worth mentioning that IIIF150 added the Multi-function NFC according to the feedback of users so that it’s easy to use Google pay as well as contactless cards.

IIIF150 Air1 Ultra Infrared Thermometer

The infrared temperature sensor in the Air1 Ultra is real and is located inside the rear camera compartment, and it can be used by pointing the sensor toward the forehead of a person or any hot surface and it will show you the body temperature, which is not the same accuracy as a dedicated infrared thermometer. It’s not a medical device, however, the temperature readings it shows are very close to the medical device and give you a rough idea of a person’s temperature.

Battery And Charging Time

As a rugged phone, the battery in the IIIF150 Air1 Ultra is no less important than the rest of the requirements. Thanks to the 5000mAh battery it is enough to handle the daily demands and it will easily last for at least one day. This means you can go on the weekend on a camping or fishing trip without having to worry about charging your phone each period. Of course, the time is less when playing games or using 4G, and with moderate use, it will stay with you for a whole day on one charge it mostly takes about 60 minutes to fully charge 5000mAh using Type-C with 33W fast charging. However, I can say that the battery was satisfying.

For a regular user, the battery will easily last for a whole working day, depending on your usages such as the times you open the screen, and the type of applications you run, also it suffices for more than 8-10 hours of screen-on time or watching videos. however, its performance was good and this is mostly because it is equipped with stock Android 12 and doesn’t have many pre-installed programs, even the interface is simple without any complications or processes in the background and this is what limits battery drain.

Final verdict

If I had to choose one of the best stylish rugged phones in 2022-2023, IIIF150 Air1 Ultra would be one of the candidates, makes a good impression, and has got a rendition of the rugged phone design. And there is no doubt that the Air1 Ultra holds all the ingredients to be a leading rugged smartphone in this price category.

And what really distinguishes it from any other phone is its large 6.8-inch FHD 120Hz Display ensures an enjoyable viewing and good use of the latest Android 12 features and most importantly the battery that will last all day that you will not need to charge while you are on a safari or camping with friends, or just finding a gadget for your daily work, it will be a reliable companion, especially with the build quality and durability, and the best protection certificates for a smartphone against water, dust, and even shocks, And the most important in my opinion the 64MP cameras, with good performance making it to perform for all tasks. in addition to the quality infrared night vision camera that will be a great help for those who work or deal in dark environments. And there are many attractive features, and most importantly, it is affordable.

Despite the many features that we mentioned, the IIIF150 Air1 Ultra looks like a fairly balanced device and positioned itself as one of the top contenders for the title of the best affordable rugged phone on the market, with features perfect for anyone who needs a rugged phone at this time.

IIIF150 Air1 Ultra Price And Where To Buy

Usually, better performance means a higher price, but not in the case of IIIF150 Air1 Ultra. The smartphone is now only priced at $250 on Aliexpress Store and you can use code B4I4CE8XT0YJ to get a $15 discount. So, don’t miss the chance to snatch up at one, And to view its price or buy it, you can access the offer by clicking on the store icon.

What’s in the Box?

• IIIF150 Air1 Ultra Rugged Smartphone
• USB Type-C cable
• 30W Charger
• Card PIN
• Anti-explosion film
• Packing Box
• Manual
• Warranty Card