The Doogee Shoot 2 is a nice looking phone. It is well built and sturdy and feels solid in my hand. It seems thicker than the Meizu phones I reviewed earlier this year, but it is not as flexible or as slim.
The phone measures 5.61 inches (142.6mm) by 2.86 inches (72.6mm) and is 0.37 inches (99.5mm) thick. It weighs 6.08 ounces (174g) and is available in silver, gold, or black.
Inside the compact packaging is the phone, power adapter, user manual, and a micro USB cable.
The Shoot 2 looks like it will pack a punch. It is running Android 7.0 with a quad core A7 1.3GHz-1.5GHz MT6580A processor, and this model has 1GB RAM and 8GB ROM.
Unusually, for a new phone, there is no external SIM slot. I needed to remove the back of the phone by wedging my fingernail in the slot at the bottom right-hand side of the screen. I did not want to use a knife in case I scratched the brushed aluminium case.
The back was firmly wedged in place. I broke two fingernails before I managed to get the case off and insert the SIM (there is space for two micro SIMs in the phone). Taking the back off the phone also gives access to the external memory slot.
The initial set up took many more steps than the Meizu phones I reviewed, but the UI has a nice look and feel — apart from the search bar at the top of the home screen.
I could not find a way to either remove this or change the search default to Yahoo or Bing. I want a customisable screen, so I was tempted to install the Arrow launcher, which would give me much more home screen options.
The 5.0 inch IPS screen is clear and bright with a 1280×720-pixel resolution. Night-time viewing is comfortable and soft due to the adaptive brightness feature.
One of the built-in apps I wanted to use is fingerprint control, which would unlock the phone within 0.15 seconds, according to Doogee.
It took four or five attempts for me to save a fingerprint, which would work successfully to unlock the phone. A minor irritation, but I resent having to touch the check mark after entering the correct PIN.
Windows Phone does not need the extra touch of OK or the check mark after the PIN has been entered. As far as I remember, the Meizu phones did not need this, so it annoyed me that the phone needed this extra touch.
The Shoot 2 has a compact 3360mAh Li-polymer battery. However, I found that I needed to charge the battery every day, even when no apps were running. I enabled intelligent power-saving standby and battery saver, but it did not seem to help.
With 94-percent battery and no apps running, I had only eight hours of use remaining. This is not good enough for my usage pattern, nor, I suspect, for road warrior mobile working.
The Shoot 2 has some nice gesture features. You can wave your hand across the phone to unlock the phone, and you can put the device close to your ear to answer a call or call a contact. You can also switch from hands-free to handset mode by bringing the phone to your ear.
Other gestures enable you to change FM radio stations, change to the next page, or skip to the next video by waving your hands at the top of the screen. Gestures also work to control apps such as the camera, browser, and clock.
There is an emergency rescue feature on the device that will send your emergency contacts a pre-configured text message if you press and hold the volume keys for three seconds.
Security features include encryption and certificate installation. Administrators can also lock access to any of the apps on the phone.
(Image: Doogee)
Another nice touch is the Smart Lock feature, which recognises when your phone is in your pocket or at home and will stay unlocked. It will also unlock when it recognises your face or is connected to a specific Bluetooth device
The Shoot 2 has a 5MP front-facing camera and two rear-facing 5MP cameras.
It also has a five-piece lens, f/2.8+2.8 aperture, flash, and an 88-degree wide angle lens. Most other phones I have reviewed have 2MP front-facing cameras, meaning that the quality of selfie shots are not as good as images taken with the rear camera.
Images can be manipulated to whiten the face, blur acne, and change the colour of skin tone by using foundation. You can also add lipstick in a range of colours to make the lips appear larger and brighter. Other image manipulation features let you slim the face, brighten teeth, and widen and brighten eyes.
When three or four apps, such as Facebook, Twitter, Messenger, and Outlook, are running concurrently, the phone stutters. I often saw an error message that the system UI had failed to respond.
If more than two apps are running and the screen locks, the touch input is slow. Entering my PIN resulted in a delay of about a second before the dots appeared, and then I could touch the check mark to unlock the phone.
I do think that this phone has some good enterprise ready security features which organisations would approve of, but it also has image manipulation tools that would not be acceptable in many workplaces. And the performance is nowhere near as fast as I would like.
However, for an entry-level phone at less than $90, this is perfectly adequate for the casual user who loves taking photos.
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