Doogee DK10 review: thin and light AMOLED 5G phone in a rugged package

Doogee is back with another rugged smartphone, and like we have seen a couple of times already this year, this phone supports dual 5G, but also includes WiFi 6 as well as some flagship-type specs with regard to the 50 megapixel camera and AMOLED screen.

First up, let's dive into the specs:

As you can see, 5G is finally becoming mainstream on rugged phones. I've put the full bands it supports in a table below. Although the MSRP is listed as $519, as of writing, the official page has it knocked down to $469 when you apply the DK10OFF coupon.

Another thing I wanted to note is that this phone uses LPDDR4X rather than the newer LPDDR5 memory, however after doing some researching online, it appears that although LPDDR5 is vastly more power efficient (and about 1.5X faster), you only start to see those benefits when lower amounts of RAM (like 2, and 4 GB) are used.

The colors offered on the purchase page are "Kevlar Black", and "Emerald Green". As you may have seen in the specs, part of the materials this phone is made up from also include "Faux Leather" I looked on mine and it really does not have any Faux leather, but after reviewing the product page, I can see that this spec is likely limited to the Emerald Green variant, with the Faux Leeather on the back. Ours is the Kevlar Black variant which comes with the more slippery plastic back.

I feel like Doogee have finally upped the ante by including a 120Hz AMOLED display, and as we have come to expect in their rugged lineup, they do not skimp on the rest either. There's ample RAM and storage, and that storage can even be expanded with an SD card on this model.

Day 1

I was pleasantly surprised at how thin and light it is, and although the product page says it weighs 304g, I weighed mine at 309g; that makes it only 38g heavier than my Samsung S23 Ultra with Silicone case at 271g. However, it is also quite a bit taller at just over 18cm vs 16.3cm.

In the box

• DOOGEE DK10 Rugged Phone
• Type-C Cable
• 120W Charger
• Anti-explosion Film (Pre-applied)
• Packing Box
• User Manual
• Warranty Card

Like all the other rugged phones I've tested, I was allowed to throw this thing around, but I was more worried about the damage I could do to my own floors. Dropping it from about a meter at a nearby work site (top hero pic) did not result in any damage to the phone, which is the minimum expectation you should have for it anyway. There were also no scuff marks that I could see after dropping it a few times, which is good news for the materials the company used, although a screen protector was shipped in the box, it was not preinstalled.

I made a few calls on it, and the call quality was excellent, but that's the minimum you should expect from any phone. The speakers were also loud enough when I switched the phone to hands-free speaker mode.

Design

Doogee again does not disclose the materials the phone is made from on its website, but my contact told me that metal, plastic, and tpu was used. The display is not only protected by Gorilla Glass, but also includes a small hump at the top and bottom of the display at around 1mm height, this should protect the glass somewhat, when laid down flat on its display.

On the rear, you will find the camera array which consists of a two 50 MP cameras, along with an whopping 64 MP Night Vision camera, and a 16 MP Telephoto camera. On the top of the camera array are a couple of LED flashes and to on the bottom, the the infrared night vision lighting. The back has a plastic feel to it, and is completely smooth. It feels alright in the hand, if not a bit top heavy, the sides are mostly smooth except for the buttons and corners, but it gives a feeling of a good grip when holding the phone, my only complaint is that the buttons actually feel too small and thin. There's a lot going on at the sides which you'll see in the below pics.

On the right side of the phone, you will find two volume buttons and a power key that doubles as a fingerprint sensor. The keys are almost flush with the side which made it hard to use the fingerprint sensor and volume buttons (while taking screenshots). They are also completely smooth, and thanks to the style of the indented groove down the side, it makes it a little more difficult to detect by feel.

On the left, you'll find the SIM card tray which is protected against water ingress by a rubber seal around the SIM tray. Although I had to use a tool to pry it free from the bezel. Below that is the Easy Key, which has a textured finish. I will talk about that a bit later.

On the bottom, you'll find a rubber tab access for the USB Type C charger port for the included 1 m USB Type C-to-USB Type C cable and 120W Fast charger. There's no headphone jack here, so you would be limited to wired (USB Type C) or Bluetooth v5.1 connectivity.

The top side of the DK10 is where you will find the microphone, which is an odd placement if you ask me.

On the front of the device above the display, you'll find the 50 MP front-facing camera, and above that and to the right of the speaker grill you will find a notification LED, which is great news, as rugged phones normally do not include one for some reason. In addition, despite including an AMOLED display on the DK10, an Always-on Display option is absent, although it does show up in search, but when tapping on the result it takes you to Display settings, where it is nowhere to be found.

The DK10 boasts a 6.67-inch screen. When it comes to its size, this thing is quite slim for a rugged phone, and because of its 12.7mm thin body, it includes a familiar camera "hump". Even so, the weight feels like it is distributed evenly across the phone.

Display

The 6.67" AMOLED display has a 1,080 x 2,400 screen resolution, with a 394 PPI pixel density, a 20:9 aspect ratio, and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection.

All of the controls you would expect from an AMOLED screen configuration are present in Settings, including an option for an adaptive refresh rate. While you would expect this phone to properly support Always-on display, there is no such option, so you will be stuck with having to download a third party app in the Play store.

The display is nothing to write home about, but It's not as if I plan to consume media at 4K HDR anyway. The display is passable. As with most smartphones with a pinhole or teardrop camera, media such as YouTube defaults to a 16:9 aspect ratio which puts black bars on the left and right of the video, but you can pinch out to fill the screen if you want, personally I find it distracting to stretch the media over the default values.

Cameras

As I have said in previous smartphone reviews I've done, I am no camera buff. I'm a point-and-shoot kind of guy, but it is clear to me that smartphone makers seem to want to concentrate a hell of a lot on camera quality, sometimes at the expense of other features, and here it is also no exception. On the rear, we have a 200 MP rear PDAF shooter with an F/1.95 ± 5% aperture and 85° FOV made by Samsung. There's also a (SONY IMX350) 20 MP wide-angle camera with F/1.8 ± 5% aperture and 79° FOV, along with a 8 MP wide angle and macro camera with an F/2.2 ± 5% aperture and 125° FOV.

Unfortunately, there's no optical image stabilization (OIS), which is a common omission on cheaper phones. However, the main 200 MP camera includes PDAF (phase detection auto focus), which is a high-speed automatic focus technology. Most of the daylight pictures I took were in focus, which is a first from my previous experience with different rugged phones.

Google gets around the lack of OIS on its Pixel phones by using the gyroscope for stabilization, but if this tech is included here, it isn't disclosed.

Gallery: Doogee DK10 camera by day

As you can see in the above photos, I was blessed with lovely weather, so as long as the sun was behind me while taking the shot, the images came out well. Closeups, as I have seen in other Doogee, Oukitel, or Blackview rugged phones, seemed to over-saturate reds, which on this phone seemed to be turned up to eleven. The good news here is that the cameras performed remarkably well when pictures were taken in the shadows, although a couple of photos had a really weird bokeh effect. There's no audible click or noise when the picture gets taken, so a few shots (not included) were just blurs, as the PDAF had not yet completed.

The display itself was easy to view even in bright sunlight.

Gallery: Doogee DK10 camera by night

Taking pictures at night was an experience, once again it seemed like the flash wanted to activate with every shot. You can clearly see above that closeups, where the flash actually did not help capture the moment at all, along with any night scene I tried taking, in which the flash was totally ineffective. bear in mind I was using this on default settings.

You can see this still needs work.

Gallery: Doogee DK10 Night Vision

The Night Vision camera again is excellent, if not a bit grainy. It can be accessed right from the default Camera app, so no digging around for an obscure app that would need to be used. I was quite surprised at how good it was in my pitch-black bedroom. However, from my quick taking of shots you can see that only one came out really crisp in focus.

My verdict on the camera is that it will serve you well during the day if you have steady hands, and it's absolutely suited for Night Vision captures, or even using it to navigate dark spaces.

Software

The DK10 ships with Android 13 with the April 2024 security update, which is quite old. In terms of software updates and support. You can expect a security update maybe once every quarter, and a warranty that lasts for one year. I checked for updates and there were none.

The phone comes with a mostly stock experience, with Quickstep enabled by default. However, this phone also comes with some bloat software like Dobest Search, Dobest Security, Dynamic Box (also by Dobest) which when opened is called Widget Box and appears to be a configurable widget for search.

The User-defined left side button can also be found in the Android Settings under "Easy key". It lets you assign predetermined actions (see above images) or an app to the key on 'Single click', 'Double Click', and 'Long Press'. I set 'One Click' to launch the camera, but it is nice to see that all actions or apps can be assigned to each key mode. Frustratingly, the app list appears to be randomly sorted, so I had to scroll down quite a ways to find Camera.

The "Toolbag" tool has a few apps grouped together like 'Compass', 'Mirror', which is literally just selfie mode, 'Sound Meter', and height and level tools. It certainly does not have the sensors to back these as professional tools. It's a fun mixed bag of quickly accessible tools in the absence of the proper professional ones.

Although the DK10 ships with Android's own Quickstep launcher by default, Doogee also includes "EasyLauncher" which you may remember from our V Max Plus review, frankly it is a weird mashup of iOS and Windows Phone, swipe right and you get a screen where you can add a bunch of your favorite contacts, swipe right and you can pin your favorite apps. In this newer version there's now a Settings tile that lets you lock the desktop, access Android settings, and "Exit the desktop" which makes it easier to go back to the default Quickstep.

In addition, this newer version of EasyLauncher no longer resets Gesture navigation to the older 3 button navigation bar in Quickstep, like it did on our V Max Plus.

I'm also pleased to report that the DK10 also comes with a notification LED, that can be managed in Notification settings to a certain degree, to flash with incoming messages and emails.

Performance and Battery Life

The phone offers charging through the wall charger at 120W along with unspecified wireless charging, and with an 5,150 mAh battery. The product page claims it takes 57 minutes to fully charge from 0 - 100% at 120W, or 25 minutes to go from zero to 50%, however I let the phone completely discharge and then charged it to 100% and it took less than 20 minutes, so I am not completely sure what is up with that, impressive for sure. The phone did get hot while charging at 120W.

The official web page claims 24 days on standby, 31 hours of call time, 41 hours of music, 11 hours of web browsing, and 11 hours of video playback, but I haven't had this phone long enough to check.

For those who love benchmarks, there are a few below. I started off with GFXBench which tests the GPU.

Next up, I ran Geekbench, which returned a score of 985, which was half lower than a flagship phone of 2023 and placed it between the Samsung Galaxy A54 (980) and Samsung Galaxy S21FE (1096). At 3,343 for Multi-Core that puts it between the Google Pixel 7 (3323) and Samsung Galaxy S222 (3423). These MediaTek CPUs continue to lag in comparison to the likes of Qualcomm in benchmarks.

Last but not least, I ran the Wildlife benchmark using 3DMark for Android, and as you can see the score is better than 57% of other benched devices, which puts it firmly in the mid-range category.

The V Max Plus includes the MediaTek Dimensity 8020, which is an 8-core chipset that was announced in April 2023 and is manufactured using a 6-nanometer process technology. It is comparable to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, but does not best it at all; even though the the Snapdragon is almost a year older and built using the more power-efficient 4nm process versus MediaTek's 6 nanometers.

Conclusion

As with all rugged phones, this has a very specific use case. It is very good at completing tasks where you would be outside, on a building site, or in an otherwise dirty or dangerous environment. Dropping it in such areas, assuming you don't lose it in the process, will likely result in absolutely no damage to the device, although I do wonder how the plastic backplate will hold up after prolonged use and exposure to rough environments.

However, this rugged phone differs quite a bit from others i have tested which have all been chunky and heavy, the DK10 weighs slightly more than the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and is a little taller. You would not run the risk of being pantsied by your own phone if you had this in your pocket, and with its AMOLED screen and two-to-three day battery life you could easily use this as your main phone.

The user-defined Easy key is pretty cool for defining your own app or function, and its big battery is more than enough that anyone can ask for and is actually useful for the reverse charging option. But then there's the poor software support and only one year of warranty backing the phone. As I said earlier, this phone is mostly for specific use cases. I can easily recommend it to construction workers who find it important to have a smartphone on hand, they can toss it around and rinse it under the tap and it will still keep working.

Where to buy, and coupon!

This phone isn't cheap at $519, but right now it is discounted to $469 with the DK10OFF coupon code. However, for that cost, do keep in mind you can only expect a year of support, plus only around four Android security updates in that year.

This tough package definitely speaks to those in tough working conditions, perhaps with the thought in mind to use the reverse charge option to juice up a laptop or other smartphone. Although the cameras on this rugged phone once again seemed to receive more thought than other useful functions, at the very least and even if the results are a bit over-saturated and you don't care about taking night-scene photos, it's definitely okay for daytime work related use.