The K5000 is a decent budget device that performs well & has a stock feel For Under $200.
As smartphone brands go, OUKITEL is one smaller brand in a sea of brands just like it coming out of China, but one thing it does tend to have going for it is the wider selection of devices that come with larger batteries. China is the world’s largest smartphone market, and as such users are likely interacting with their phones on a constant basis, so larger batteries are needed to help reduce the amount of time needed to plug in the device. One of OUKITEL’s latest offerings is the K5000, which as the name suggests, comes with a 5,000mAh battery to keep it powered on throughout the day and then some. That large of a battery capacity is bigger than most major smartphones tend to carry, which is sure to be useful, but let’s take a closer look at the OUKITEL K5000 and see if it has more to offer than the big battery inside.
Specs
OUKITEL isn’t known for using the most high-end hardware specifications in its devices. In fact, most of if not all of the time the hardware is more mid-range. For instance, instead of coming powered by a Qualcomm CPU the K5000 is powered by a MediaTek MT6750T octa-core processor, paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The RAM is actually a decent amount and that should help with the multi-tasking and gaming aspects of the device.
As stated above the K5000 comes with a 5,000mAh battery, and it has a 5.7-inch display with an HD resolution of 1,440 x 720. For the cameras, it has a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera with an LED flash module next to it, and a fingerprint sensor just below the camera. On the front it has a 13-megapixel camera up top alongside the ambient light sensors and a front-facing LED flash. It runs on Android 7.0 Nougat and supports external memory up to 64GB with a microSD card, and it uses USB Type-C for charging and data transfer.
In The Box
Inside the packaging you get a few extras here. With the phone you get the charging cable and wall adapter, along with a pre-applied screen protector and a clear silicone case. Since it uses USB Type-C and there’s no 3.5mm audio port, OUKITEL added in a USB C to 3.5mm adapter so you can plug in a pair of wired headphones that use a standard 3.5mm jack.
Hardware & Design
The K5000 doesn’t completely look like every other phone OUKITEL has released before it, but it doesn’t come with an exciting design either. While the design doesn’t look or feel like it’s low quality, it doesn’t look or feel premium. This is partly due to its thickness as most premium phones are fairly slim, and it’s partly due to the materials being used, such as the plastic backing. All that aside it does have a unibody design which is a nice design trait, and the metal frame is a nice touch as well. Speaking of the metal frame, OUKITEL has used chamfered edges on both the front and back edges of the device all around the phone.
On the bottom of the device you’ll find a USB Type-C charging port, and this is the only port on the device which means there’s no native port for plugging in 3.5mm headphones. The good news is that OUKITEL does give you a USB C to 3.5mm adapter so you can still use them. On the right side of the frame you have the power button and the volume up and down buttons while on the left side of the frame you have the SIM card slot, which is also where you can slide in a microSD card if you need more storage space and want to utilize the expandable storage option. There’s no physical home button here, so the front face is mostly display (though it does have some noticeable bezels up top and on the bottom) with the front camera and LED flash in the top bezel, and over on the back of the device you have the rear camera, LED flash, and then the fingerprint sensor right below that.
Performance
Day in and day out the performance on the K5000 is pretty solid. It’s a device that is meant to last all day long and then some and so the battery is definitely the main focus, but performance isn’t necessarily taking a backseat. With an octa-core processor it has plenty of computing power to make things go, and it’s got 4GB of RAM which is pretty standard and even present on some flagships from last year. To better test the performance of the K5000 we tried using it while having multiple apps open at once and having them stay open in the background, and this seemed to work just fine without any noticeable lag or stuttering. In addition to this we opened up and played some 3D games with fairly high-end graphics. For this purpose we played Arena of Valor, the new MOBA from Tencent, which features some pretty high-quality graphics and fast-paced gameplay with lots of action. For the most part the phone held up well without any issues, though it did lag a little bit from time to time when going through the game’s menus. During gameplay though, everything was pretty smooth and that’s the important part. Even better is that the gameplay seemed to stay fluid even after turning up the graphics options to the max settings. That said, those who would use this phone for mobile gaming shouldn’t have any problems as it seems to do just fine, something you would definitely not expect from a phone at this price just a few years ago.
Display
Despite not being a Full HD display, and despite being a 5.7-inch display with only 720p resolution, the screen actually looks more crisp and sharp in quality than I would have imagined. It’s not going to be sharper or more clear than something with a Full HD or Quad HD screen, but you probably won’t be able to tell very easily that it’s not Full HD and that’s an important thing to remember if screen quality is a factor that you consider when picking a device.
The colors on the display seem to be reproduced nicely and the display does get plenty bright even without turning the brightness all the way up. This helps in direct sunlight, of course, though given the weather and climate around this time of year for where I’m located this wasn’t much of an issue for me personally. Clarity and brightness aside, the display didn’t just look decent but it also seemed to perform well and do its job without any problems. This may be a budget phone but the digitizer didn’t act up at any point during use and every time I interacted with the screen everything worked fine. This is another big thing to make note of because often times the less expensive phones will have lower quality digitizers and these can be inconsistent on how well they work.
Fingerprint Sensor
Usually with less expensive phones there is at least one issue, and for the K5000 one glaring problem was with the fingerprint sensor. While many of the devices that we’ve reviewed in the past from Chinese smartphone vendors have had decent fingerprint sensors, OUKITEL included, the sensor on this particular device didn’t work too well. The main issue is that I had trouble getting the sensor to recognize my fingerprint during the setup process. Initially it would recognize my finger all the way up to the last time the system asks you to press your finger down on the display. I couldn’t get this to work, but after backing out of the setup process, and attempting to use the fingerprint sensor it did end up working. The issue after this point is that the sensor wouldn’t work very well. It had trouble recognizing my finger more often than not and I’d end up having to use the PIN that I configured to unlock the device anyway. What this comes down to is that the fingerprint sensor just didn’t operate ass well as I’d hoped or thought it would, which was kind of surprising considering the last OUKITEL phone with a fingerprint sensor that we reviewed had no issues at all.
Phone Calls & Network
Like with most Chinese smartphones that aren’t designed for the U.S. network, or any networks really outside of China, this device does not work in the U.S. for cellular connectivity. This means it would only be usable when connected to some sort of a Wi-Fi connection. All that aside, in regards to the network frequencies that the K5000 does support, they’re listed below.
2G: 850/900/1800/1900
3G: 900/2100
4G: Bands 1, 3, 7, 8, 20
Sound
Like many phones these days the OUKITEL K5000 only has one speaker, and while it isn’t a top of the line speaker it doesn’t actually sound too bad either. It’s not really in an awkward place to where it gets covered up by your hands, and it gets plenty loud enough for things like video, music, and games. Granted, those that are passionate about high-quality audio might not care for the speaker, but those that aren’t so focused on it likely won’t find that the audio quality on the K5000 is a problem.
Battery Life
If there’s one area that OUKITEL’s phones don’t typically have any problems with it’s the battery life. In this particular case, that’s because the K5000 has a 5,000mAh battery which is much more than most smartphones have these days. Throughout the time of use with the K5000 it has lasted typically a couple of days with fairly heavy use. This isn’t to say that I was able to get two days of screen on time with it, but just general use of playing some games here and there, browsing through emails and social feeds, and watching the occasional video. For screen on time the K5000 lasted for about nine hours, which is by no means an easy for task for any phone, so those looking for something with great battery life will certainly find it in the K5000. It also took on average about two to two and a half hours to charge the K5000 back up to full battery life, so that’s also worth keeping in mind if you want to toss it on the charger. The device uses a USB Type-C port, so that helps with charging up this massive battery pretty quickly which was nice to see.
Benchmarks
As a low-end phone with low-end specs, the K5000 didn’t score exceedingly high in any of the benchmark tests. It did however do ok for a phone in its category and scored about what we expected and as compared with other similar devices. To benchmark the phone’s capabilities, we ran it through AnTuTu, Geekbench 4, and 3DMark. If you’re interested in seeing the scores from those tests you can view them in the gallery down below.
Software
Usually with the devices that come from many of these Chinese brands, like OUKITEL, there are more than a few different software touches that you won’t find elsewhere, but that isn’t really the case with the K5000. There are a couple of things in the software that you won’t find in stock Android phones, like the Full Screen mode option in settings. With this option what you can do is toggle on and off which apps are able to make use of the device’s full screen view. This is useful if you only want to allow certain apps to use full screen, otherwise you could probably get by without ever touching this option. Another thing that’s different in this software is the Smart Accessibility option in settings. Inside this menu you’ll find two different toggles. One for allowing you to hide the navigation bar, and one for allowing you to tap the screen with three fingers and then swipe down with them at the same time for taking a screenshot. In regards to the nav bar toggle, with this on you can tap a little arrow just to the left of the nav buttons and it will get rid of them.
You can easily bring the buttons back by swiping up from the bottom edge of the screen. This is a great option to have toggled on when using pretty much anything, especially when browsing as you can easily hide the nav bar and continue to scroll through things like your social feed, and if you need to back out then you can get back to the bar with a simple interaction. Aside from these two aspects of the software things are extremely basic. The user interface looks and feels exactly like a stock UI based on the Android Open Source Project. Looking at it and scrolling through the settings menu, or waking the screen from a sleep state, it looks just like a Nexus phone. Just about the only thing that’s different are the icons which aren’t the stock icons for a stock Android device, as these look more like the icons that Samsung is using on its most recent phones.
Camera
Just as with the software the camera is pretty basic in terms of features and quality. While the pictures are ok for a camera that comes on a smartphone which costs less than $200, it’s not a stellar camera by any means, though to its credit I half expected it to be worse than it really is. When it comes to options, the camera software has two basic modes which are the standard camera mode and a panorama mode, and then of course it has video capture. That’s it. Beyond these few modes, you’ll find options like an HDR button for getting some images with more contrast, as well as a selection of different color filters that can be applied to the viewfinder before you snap your shots, such as mono, negative, sepia and others. In terms of the actual camera quality, the images come out ok in somewhat lower light situations. That said they are a bit grainy, and I did find that some of the images didn’t focus as much on the subject that was supposed to be focused on. In better lighting the camera does perform a little bit better so as long as you’re using the camera mostly in these types of settings you shouldn’t be disappointed with how the images come out. Color reproduction is ok, and you get a decent amount of detail in the pictures. Overall the camera isn’t the best but it’s not too bad either.
The Good
Build quality feels solid even though it doesn’t look or feel premium
Really long battery life
Camera wasn’t bad
Performance was decent
Stock software UI makes it feel familiar to other phones and easy to use for someone who is used to stock devices
Front-facing camera flash
Fingerprint sensor
USB Type-C
Decent display quality
The Bad
Fingerprint sensor didn’t work very well
Doesn’t work in the U.S.
Single speaker with mediocre audio quality
Wrap Up
Overall, the OUKITEL K5000 is up to par with other phones from the same brand, and other phones within the same price range. If you’re looking for a cheap device that isn’t going to set you back too much or skimp on too many features then this isn’t a bad device as it offers what most average users would need from a smartphone.
Should you buy the OUKITEL K5000?
That all depends on what you need from a device. Since it doesn’t work in the U.S. we can’t really recommend it for a phone that you’d need to use on a day to day basis, unless you only plan to use it while connected to Wi-Fi and not really for phone calls. That said, it does work in some regions outside the U.S. and of course, in China, so if you plan to use it for a device in countries that support the same network frequencies that the phone supports, this is a decent option as it won’t cost a whole lot and it works well in most respects.
Buy The OUKITEL K5000