Umidigi launched its latest rugged smartphone from the Bison series, and this series is undoubtedly one of the best-rugged budget smartphones that offer us value for the price, Now Umidigi Bison 2 and its big brother Bison 2 Pro have been launched. which comes with the same specifications with a difference in design and storage capacity.

This is an upgrade with great specifications in terms of MediaTek Helio P95 Quad-core processor, up to 8GB RAM and up to 256GB storage, Android 12, 48MP AI triple camera or even a large battery capacity with Fast Charge, and most importantly a durable design with IP68 and IP69K protection, regardless of these specifications, how well it performs and whether it is worth an upgrade, all this and more in this review.

Umidigi Bison 2 And Bison 2 Pro Review - New Flagship Rugged Smartphones Series

Umidigi Bison 2 Features

  • Stock Android 12
  • MediaTek Helio P95 CPU
  • IMG PowerVR GM 9446 GPU
  • 6GB RAM + 128GB Storage (BISON 2 Pro 8GB+256GB)
  • 6.5″ FHD+ DotDisplay
  • 48MP AI Triple Camera, 24MP Front camera
  • 6150mAh Battery, 18W Fast Charge
  • 4G Network, NFC, Bluetooth 5.0
  • IP68, IP69K & MIL-STD-810G
Umidigi Bison 2 And Bison 2 Pro Review - New Flagship Rugged Smartphones Series

Design And Build Quality

The design in the Umidigi Bison 2 is beautiful, elegant, and modern, it features a large screen on the front of 6.5 inches, and on the back, a high-quality Composite Panel with a length of 172.2mm and a width of 83.9mm with a solid metal frame and with rubber cushions to suck the impact and give a kind of thickness of 12.9mm a wonderful feeling when held in your hand, despite its weight of 280g may be heavy for some, But it’s normal in a durable phone. If you ask me about the quality of the manufacturing, there is nothing to complain about it, because Umidigi is always working to provide high-quality products to users all over the world at an affordable price.

Now design in the Umidigi Bison 2 Pro is the same as Bison 2 in all things, the only difference on the back has a high-quality synthetic rubber layer, Which gives it an appearance of solid and durable.

Umidigi Bison 2 And Bison 2 Pro Review - New Flagship Rugged Smartphones Series

On The Front

In front of the device is a full screen measuring 6.5 inches with very thin bezels on the sides, and at the bottom, there is a very narrow chin, in addition to the DotDisplay from the top that contains a 24MP camera in the middle of the top for taking selfies and video chats, which we will talk about a lot soon.

Umidigi Bison 2 And Bison 2 Pro Review - New Flagship Rugged Smartphones Series

On The Back

At the back, you have a flat and clean panel with a premier look. What will catch your attention is the Triple camera and flash in the upper left corner with a protrusion, so you have to protect it with a cover, and there are three small points (Perimeter & mic). Also, there is the “BISON logo” on the bottom side and the speaker. And what makes it more durable, is in the corners, there are cushions for extra protection and comfort when holding the phone.

Umidigi Bison 2 And Bison 2 Pro Review - New Flagship Rugged Smartphones Series

For Umidigi Bison 2 Pro, it’s the same solid design that we are used to in the BISON series and the same as Bison 2 in all things, the only difference on the back has a high-quality synthetic rubber layer, Which gives it an appearance of solid and durable and in the middle of the back is the name “BISON” with a unique symbol that is expressed, Also just below it is a lanyard hook, and cushions in the corners.

Ports And Buttons

As for the ports, the phone comes with a USB Type-C port from the bottom with another microphone, while there is a 3.5 mm headphone jack at the top. The buttons are, as usual, the power button with a built-in fingerprint sensor, the volume button, and the dual SIM with the memory slot. It should be noted that there are two customizable shortcut buttons on the sides in orange color.

Waterproof

The Umidigi Bison 2 and Bison 2 Pro are 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.

  • Umidigi Bison 2 And Bison 2 Pro Review - New Flagship Rugged Smartphones Series

Umidigi Bison 2 – Display Quality

Even in 2022, if you’re talking about budget smartphones, it will most likely be an LCD IPS screen, and that’s what the Umidigi offers on both phones, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad because it’s a big 6.5 inches FHD+ display with 20:9 aspects ratio and a good resolution of 1080*2400px and a density of 405 PPI, gives you bright, sharp colors and wide viewing angles which are more than great for consuming visual content on YouTube or otherwise. in addition to 120Hz touch sensitivity rate, to enhance the gaming experience that is based on the rapid response to touch.

Umidigi Bison

In short, with the Umidigi Bison 2 or 2 Pro, I will not say that its the best screen, but in this category, you will get the best value for what you pay, a high-quality screen suitable for media consumption, whether you are watching the video, playing games or browsing the social media.

Umidigi Bison 2 Pro & Bison 2 – Cameras

One of the main points of the Umidigi Bison Series 2 Pro is the cameras. In terms of their specifications, there is nothing to worry about, but the last word remains in the actual performance. On the back, you get a Triple-camera setup that features a 48MP primary camera, F/1.8, FOV 81°, For the rest of the cameras, you have a 16MP ultra-wide-angle lens with F/ 2.2, FOV 117°, and a 5MP macro lens with 2.5cm macro distance and F/ 2.4, FOV 88°.

Umidigi Bison 2 And Bison 2 Pro Review - New Flagship Rugged Smartphones Series

So far, the technical specifications are good, so let’s move on to the realistic performance, photography under good lighting, the cameras can take really good pictures and capture a lot of details with beautiful color saturation, so I liked the cameras.

In the front of selfies or video chats, you get a 24MP F/ 2.0 camera with an impressive algorithm, and several modes to choose from.

Umidigi Bison 2 And Bison 2 Pro Review - New Flagship Rugged Smartphones Series

You can record videos on the Rear camera at 4K, 1080P, 720P, 480P, and 30fps. But, from the front at 1080p, 720p, 480p, 30fps.

Umidigi Bison 2 Series Performance

If we talk about performance, Umidigi Bison 2 & Umidigi Bison 2 Pro offer great performance in most of their basic and entertainment uses such as browsing the web, watching videos on YouTube, using social media applications, and even playing games, as everything worked efficiently and without facing any problems with stopping applications or high degrees.

Well, Its time to expose Umidigi Bison 2 to some tasks that need more effort and there is nothing better than playing games with high settings, the conditions here differ according to the application, game, or any type of program that need large resources, and because the processor used is MediaTek Helio P95 a 2.2 GHz 8-core processor that uses 4x 2.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A75 + 4x 2 GHz ARM Cortex-A55 architecture. It was announced on 2/28/2020. It is made using 12nm technology, so it has good specifications, with a TDP of 5, up to 150 Mbps, thanks to the built-in modem. MediaTek Helio P95 performs better than MediaTek Helio G88 processor in benchmark tests, which puts it on par with Qualcomm Snapdragon 675. Smartphones that use the chip include Oppo A93 and Oppo Reno 4F.

Everything was smooth even in high-quality graphics games like PUBG or COD Mobile or other requirements games, however, if you play on medium settings, You will enjoy smooth gameplay, decent frame rate, play these games, and even video decoding.

Furthermore, IMG PowerVR GM 9446 adopted, improves image processing capabilities and greatly enhances the overall performance. So, performance was good in games, but it depends on the type of game and its requirements, although it did not constitute an obstacle in games such as CoD mobile and PUBG.

Memory

Most of the applications run very quickly and thanks to the 256GB storage capacity type UFS 2.1 on Umidigi Bison 2 Pro or 128GB on Bison 2, helps accelerate downloading and launching apps earlier and it would be suitable for installing any application you need, with the ability to expand via a Micro SD card to 512GB.

And for multitasking, browsing between applications was smooth because it is equipped with an 8 RAM LPDDR4X dual-channel on Umidigi Bison 2 Pro or 6GB on Bison 2, which is more than enough for most of the tasks that you can do with a smartphone such as keeping many applications or large games running in the background. In Short, for multitasking, this smartphone will give you a positive experience.

umidigi-bison-gt2-pro-5g-review

Software

One of the standout features of the Umidigi Bison 2 is that it will be an early adopter of Android 12, while another rugged phone only has android 11 or even android 10, but android 12 has 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.

As I always say, the stock Android system is the best, 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 some toolkit apps but does not burden the device and is without pop-up ads.

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. Next, let’s take a look at the DMR information and Widevine security. I can tell you I’m a little disappointed with this because it’s only Level 3, so you won’t be able to get HD on Netflix or other streaming services. and this level maybe not be found on all Chinese smartphones without exaggeration. However, you can still enjoy Netflix and all other streaming services in 480p resolution.

Connectivity

Umidigi Bison 2 is a dual-SIM smartphone equipped with a SIM slot that accommodates two 4G nano-sim cards that support all bandwidth offerings of 4G and 3G and so on, so its expected that you will get wide coverage and good signal quality for making the phone calls and accessing the Internet easily, In addition to having a MicroSD card on the same socket.

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. Also, has NFC so you can make mobile payments ( Supports Google Pay ).

Umidigi Bison 2 Battery And Charging Time

Umidigi Bison 2 series has a built-in 6150mAh non-removable Li-Po battery that allows 8-10 hours of continuous use for surfing the Internet, Google, YouTube, and following social media, 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 2 hours to fully charge 6150mAh using Type-C with no support for wireless charging, but there is fast charging supports 18W is not very fast but better than the basic 10W. 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 usage such as the times you open the screen, and the type of applications you run, also it suffices for more than 9h consecutive of watching videos. however, its performance was good and this is mostly because it is equipped with stock Android 12 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 you ask me if the Umidigi Bison 2 Series smartphone is worth buying or you can recommend, my answer is definitely yes, and this is due to the experience that it will give you that it is a budget smartphone and the price does not exceed $200, So it’s one of the best budget Rugged smartphones in 2022 with a stylish design and decent specifications in terms of the CPU, cameras, and even the battery is acceptable. All this does not mean that it’s flawless because cannot watch Netflix in HD resolution.

Umidigi Bison 2 Series Price And Where To Buy

The Umidigi Bison 2 Series Smartphones are currently available on the AliExpress Store for a very good price So, don’t miss out on this great deal. And to view its price or buy it, you can access the offer by clicking on the store icon.

umidigi-bison-x10-review

Packaging Accessories

  • Umidigi Bison 2 or Bison 2 Pro Smartphone
  • Power Adapter
  • Type-C Cable
  • Screen Protector (pre-applied)
  • Quick Start Guide

Umidigi Bison 2 & Bison 2 Pro Specifications

UMIDIGI BISON 2UMIDIGI BISON 2 PRO
ColorHack BlackHack Black
Body MaterialComposite PanelIndustrial Rubber
Operating systemAndroid 12Android 12
UnlockSide-mounted fingerprint sensor + AI Face UnlockSide-mounted fingerprint sensor + AI Face Unlock
CPUMediaTek MT6779V/CU (MediaTek Helio P90), 2xArm Cortex-A75 + 6x Arm Cortex-A55, up to 2.2GHzMediaTek MT6779V/CU (MediaTek Helio P90), 2xArm Cortex-A75 + 6x Arm Cortex-A55, up to 2.2GHz
GPUIMG PowerVR GM 9446IMG PowerVR GM 9446
RAM6GB LPDDR4X dual channel8GB LPDDR4X dual channel
ROM128GB UFS2.1256GB UFS2.1
Storage ExtendUp to 512GBUp to 512GB
Battery6150mAh6150mAh
Quick ChargeSupport 18W Fast Charge (5/7/9V-2A), PE AgreementSupport 18W Fast Charge (5/7/9V-2A), PE Agreement
Wireless ChargeNoNo
Display
Display Size6.5″ FHD+(measured diagonally)6.5″ FHD+(measured diagonally)
Aspect Ratio20:9, 60Hz20:9, 60Hz
TypeCapacitive touchCapacitive touch
TouchCapacitive multi-touchCapacitive multi-touch
ResolutionFHD+ 1080*2400FHD+ 1080*2400
PPI405405
TSR120Hz120Hz
Screen-to-body Ratio85%85%
Camera
Rear Camera48MP AI triple camera
48MP primary camera, F/ 1.8, FOV 81°
16MP ultra wide-angle camera, F/ 2.2, FOV 117°
5MP macro camera, 2.5cm macro distance, F/ 2.4, FOV 88°
Features: Ultra wide-angle mode, Steady handheld night photography, Macro mode, Portrait mode, Panorama mode, HDR, AI Beautify, Ultra wide-angle edge distortion correction, Dual LED flash, Face recognition.
Rear camera video features: 4K, 1080p, 720p, 480p video recording, 30fps
48MP AI triple camera
48MP primary camera, F/ 1.8, FOV 81°
16MP ultra wide-angle camera, F/ 2.2, FOV 117°
5MP macro camera, 2.5cm macro distance, F/ 2.4, FOV 88°
Features: Ultra wide-angle mode, Steady handheld night photography, Macro mode, Portrait mode, Panorama mode, HDR, AI Beautify, Ultra wide-angle edge distortion correction, Dual LED flash, Face recognition.
Rear camera video features: 4K, 1080p, 720p, 480p video recording, 30fps
Front Camera24MP front camera FF, F/ 2.0
Features: AI Beautify, Face recognition, Selfie countdown
Front camera video features: 1080p, 720p, 480p video recording, 30fps
24MP front camera FF, F/ 2.0
Features: AI Beautify, Face recognition, Selfie countdown
Front camera video features: 1080p, 720p, 480p video recording, 30fps
Connection
Band4G:LTE-FDD: B1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/13/17/18/19/20/25/26/28/66LTE-TDD: B34/38/39/40/41
3G:
WCDMA: B1/2/4/5/6/8/19CDMA: BC0/BC1
2G:
GSM: B2 /B3 /B5 /B8
4G:LTE-FDD: B1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/13/17/18/19/20/25/26/28/66LTE-TDD: B34/38/39/40/41
3G:
WCDMA: B1/2/4/5/6/8/19CDMA: BC0/BC1
2G:
GSM: B2 /B3 /B5 /B8
SIM/TF Card4G Dual SIM
3-choose-2 SIM slot, One functions as a SIM card slot or a Micro-SD card slot, the other as a SIM card slot
Support dual Nano-SIM card and Micro-SD expansion memory card
4G Dual SIM
3-choose-2 SIM slot, One functions as a SIM card slot or a Micro-SD card slot, the other as a SIM card slot
Support dual Nano-SIM card and Micro-SD expansion memory card
WIFIWi-Fi 2.4G&5G ( IEEE802.11 a/b/g/n/ac)Wi-Fi 2.4G&5G ( IEEE802.11 a/b/g/n/ac)
BluetoothBluetooth 5.0Bluetooth 5.0
PositioningGPS+Glonass+Beidou+GalileoGPS+Glonass+Beidou+Galileo
NFCYesYes
SensorSide-Mounted Fingerprint Sensor, Barometer, Infrared Thermometer Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Electronic CompassSide-Mounted Fingerprint Sensor, Barometer, Infrared Thermometer Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Electronic Compass
Gaming Vibration MotorRotor motorRotor motor
Support format
Audio File FormatPCM, AAC / AAC + / eAAC +, MP3, AMR – NB and WB, APE, WAVPCM, AAC / AAC + / eAAC +, MP3, AMR – NB and WB, APE, WAV
Video File FormatSupports H.264 (Baseline / Main / High profile), MPEG4 (Simple profile / ASP) and other video formatsSupports H.264 (Baseline / Main / High profile), MPEG4 (Simple profile / ASP) and other video formats
FM RadioYes, Headset-FreeYes, Headset-Free
3.5mm Audio JackYesYes
MicrophoneDual microphonesDual microphones
USBType-CType-C
OTGYesYes
OK Google on Locked ScreenNoNo
Dimensions172.2mm x 83.9mm x 12.9mm172.2mm x 83.9mm x 12.9mm
Weightabout 280gabout 280g
Other Features
Notification LEDYesYes
Independent Customizable Button2 independent customizable buttons
(Push-to-Talk & Underwater Camera)
2 independent customizable buttons
(Push-to-Talk & Underwater Camera)
CertificationIP68、IP69K、MIL-STD-810GGMS/ FCC/ CE/ MIC/ ICIP68、IP69K、MIL-STD-810G
GMS/ FCC/ CE/ MIC/ IC
LanguageMulti-LanguageMulti-Language