Doogee entered the Philippines last year with the near bezel-less Mix smartphone. It had smooth performance but the cameras were its weakness.
Now, the Doogee Mix 2 tries a different design with an 18:9 display and quad cameras while retaining the former’s Helio P25 chip and 6GB RAM. Does this make the device perform better? Let’s find out.
The shiny back of the Doogee Mix 2.
The Doogee Mix 2 is surrounded by chamfered metal on all sides while both the front and back are both made up of shiny glass with subtly curved edges.
Other mid-range smartphones are now designed with slim and curvy builds, this one seems muscular. It’s heavy and feels robust.
Perhaps the disadvantage of the phone’s design is its smudge-prone glass. It has to be wiped every now and then. There is a free phone case included in the package though.
Screenshots
The screen is one aspect where the Doogee Mix 2 shines. It’s a 5.99-inch panel with 18:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1080 x 2160 pixels.
Colors look vibrant, brightness is decent and responsiveness is on point. The narrow bezels and rounded corners are welcome additional features too.
Thankfully, Doogee cut down on the cartoonish look of the phone’s user interface. It’s still running on Doogee OS but it looks more like stock Android Nougat.
Benchmark scores
The Doogee Mix 2 has smooth performance in simple tasks like opening apps, browsing websites and scrolling down Facebook news feed.
It scores an average of 66,000 points on Antutu Benchmark v6.2.7 and takes 18.51 seconds to calculate one million digits of Pi using Real Pi Benchmark by GeorgieLabs.
The phone’s gaming performance is decent. It can run Tekken, Pokemon Go and Mobile Legends on high graphics quality with just a few dropped frames. However, Rules of Survival is jittery when the graphics quality is set to Ultra. It needs to be a step down to be enjoyable.
Yes, the Doogee Mix 2 has quad cameras – two on the front and two on the back.
Doogee Mix 2 Sample Picture (Rear camera)
Doogee Mix 2 Sample Picture (Rear Camera)
Its rear cameras can take decent pictures of landscapes, food and people in good lighting conditions. However, its bokeh effect is a simple circular blur around a chosen point. It also struggles in scenes that need dynamic range as well as in low light with shots bordering on being unusable.
Normal selfie
Wide Angle Selfie
On the other hand, its dual selfie camera performs better and makes use of the secondary camera effectively. Instead of a bokeh effect, its use is in taking wide angle selfies. The only downside is you need to be in a well-lit environment since it has no front LED flash.
The Doogee Mix 2 is a dual SIM smartphone with 4G LTE connectivity. Using mobile data to browse the internet is speedy but signal reception isn’t top notch.
It uses the reversible USB Type-C port. This comes with a sacrifice though as there is no 3.5mm audio jack to be found.
Doogee included several adaptors to offset the new technology. There is a 3.5mm audio jack to USB Type-C adaptor and another one for microUSB 2.0 to USB Type-C.
In terms of battery life, the Doogee Mix 2 seems to perform better than its peers. It scored 10 hours and 16 minutes on PCMark’s Battery Test which means it can easily last the entire day with moderate use.
Charging the device requires a little more than 2 hours using the bundled charger.
Doogee Mix and Doogee Mix 2
I’m having second thoughts in recommending the Doogee Mix 2 since I know that majority of smartphone users use their devices to take pictures and this one might disappoint.
The strengths of the device is in its display, battery life and performance. It’s now available online on Lazada Philippines.
