The Doogee S90 Pro: My FINAL Review

Cell phones are one of the most revolutionary pieces of technology to have ever been invented, second only, perhaps, to the internet. Within our pockets are computers more powerful than those that took man to the moon. We can use them to instantly communicate with people on the other side of the planet, almost instantaneously. GPS allows us to navigate just about everywhere without getting lost.

We can now access Everygame online casino anywhere at any time. We no longer have to remember phone numbers, upcoming events, wear watches, or even remember the date. These devices are so convenient they've almost become a necessity for everyone's day to day activities. It's all available in these slim devices within our pockets, and regardless of all their amazing benefits… I still have the gall to call some of the garbage.

My Phone History

Imagine this scenario: A teenage nerd in the year 2019 gets his first job. He saves up some hard earned cash and decides to spend it on an upgrade to his crummy, barely functional phone. He does the research and spots… none other than the Doogee S90 pro.

There were several things that caught my attention with this phone. I can pretend to have cared about the fact that it has a Mediatex Helio P70 processor, 6 gigabytes of RAM, an IPS display with 16M colors, 403 PPI, and a CPU composed of… 4x 2.0 GHz ARM Cortex-A73, 4x 2.0 GHz ARM Cortex-A53, Cores: 8. I also pretend like I know what any of that means.

But in truth, shocking as it may be to hear, those numbers, stats, and brand named components go in one of my ears and out the other. In truth, what really drew my attention to this phone that set it apart from all others, was its gimmicks.

The Rugged Survival Phone

The beast of a phone is built from a frame of titanium, with each corner tipped with rubber and a screen built from gorilla glass. It's certified IP68, which means that it's fit to withstand dust, dirt, and sand and is resistant to submersion under 1.5 meters of water for up to thirty minutes.

That may not seem like much, but trust me, this phone is tough. I've seen videos on youtube of this thing getting driven over by cars, smacked around with bats, and even shot with BB guns. Yeah, okay, it didn't survive that last one, but those others it withstood pretty damn well! Far better than an iPhone ever would, I promise you.

In my personal experience, I’ve gotten the phone wet, dropped it numerous times, and goodness knows what else over the past three years, and it never got any worse than having the paint scratched.

At least… physically. On the outside. I’ll get back to this.

The Gimmicks

Aside from the ruggedness that appealed to my manly monkey brain, what also piqued my curiosity was Doogee's claim that the phone is modular. If you buy the pro-bundle, you receive a little box of components that attach magnetically to the back of the phone and add additional functionality. These include a night vision camera, a walkie-talkie/radio, and a battery pack (not included was a Bluetooth gaming controller that can attach).

All those sounded useful and cool, so I thought, why not? And bought all of them except for the gaming controller.

In hindsight, however, this was a complete waste of money. I literally used none of them, not even the battery pack, because the S90 pro boasts a 5000 mAh battery that held enough power so that I never ran out through daily use. Now, if I gamed on it, that might have been a different story, but since I really dislike mobile gaming, my battery typically never dropped below 60%, unless I was watching youtube for hours on end.

The other two I never touched after I first tried them out. The walkie-talkie/radio is nifty… but I never needed it. And I suspect that people who would use it would have real ones that would be more reliable. Lastly, the night vision camera was a joke. It just did not work, not even in low-light environments. Wah-wah. These two simply sat in my house collecting dust for three years.

So while it's true that the S90 pro is "modular,"… the modules are useless and really not worth the extra expense, which sucks because it's a cool idea—just not a practical one.

Software

The Doogee S90 pro is an android phone that runs a custom version made by Doogee itself. While the phone looked and felt just fine, using it as a daily driver for three years revealed some bizarre quirks.

Firstly, the OS has a variety of basic android features disabled for some reason, where are completely inaccessible without gaining root access. As this is something that I have never done before, I didn't want to risk accidentally bricking my phone. A feature that I had liked on my older android phone was the ability to schedule power-off.

This is a default feature of stock android but on the Doogee S90? It's missing. Who-knows why. In order to get my phone to auto turn off at night (I like to play white noise but don't like letting my phone run throughout the night), I had to make use of apps on the play store- half of whom didn't even work, and the one that I did end up using only closed Spotify and turned off the screen, rather than shutting down the phone itself.

Secondly, the phone would simply stop receiving touch input at random. This happened every day, arbitrarily. The easiest fix was to turn the screen on and off again, necessitating me to sign in again. And again. And again. All-day, every day. I looked up the problem online and found forum posts talking about it with no solution that worked and allegations that Doogee's customer support never even responded. This phone was launched in 2019, and this problem was still plaguing me in 2022.

In December 2021, after going into a restart cycle in which I couldn’t do anything for a while, the phone ended up factory resetting itself. I lost all the data that wasn't backed up, which thankfully wasn't a lot, but still. How did this happen? Why did it happen? I have no idea and probably never will. I should have seen the writing on the wall. My phone's time had come.

In January 2022, my Doogee S90 Pro phone simply went dark and never turned on again.

My phone died. Forever.

As mentioned, I have no idea what happened. My cell phone had, at random, become a useless paperweight, and there was naught I could do myself. The phone uses proprietary screws to hold the case together, and gaining access to its innards would require me to unglue the screen with something like acetone. I couldn't even try removing the battery.

Repairability is a feature that I've come to realize is going to be an important legal battle of the future. Companies like Apple make their phones as difficult and painful to repair as possible so that you'll be forced to replace your iPhone every year or two. The European Union, in a surprisingly populist move, ratified the Right to Repair last year. This is a feature I’ll be looking for in future phones, like the Fairphone, which is only sold in Europe at the moment.

Before, I was able to dismiss these concerns with my Doogee because it was supposed to be rugged. If it was easy to get into, then it would be that much easier to get damaged. Now, however, I don't really think that's the case. Being easy to open would simply mean it would be even easier to repair in the case it was damaged. Which, it is, now that it’s functionally a brick.

I was left with the decision: Do I bother to spend the money to get it looked at and repaired, or do I just chuck it already? Because of my current financial situation, I ended up deciding on the latter.

Overall

That isn't to say that in the end, I hated the Doogee S90 pro. I used it for three years, after all, although I had expected to be using it for at least five. Its rugged durability was exactly as the company claimed, and the screen never so much as cracked the entire time I had it. The software, while strangely limited in certain niche capacities, ran most of the time smoothly.

That said, I can't recommend Doogee or the S90 Pro at this point. The company is distant and unresponsive and for as much as I loved the rough and rough nature of this phone, it is probably overkill for most users. Heck, it was overkill even for me. The additional gimmicks were also, in hindsight, a complete waste of money. Having to turn on and off the screen every so often is irritating, to say the least. I never even mentioned the other sensors included, like the accelerators or barometer. Because who needs to be checking air pressure?

In short, the Doogee S90 pro is a collection of really nifty features and buggy software, crammed together in the world’s most resilient box, at a price-point that makes you think, “Gee, I probably shouldn’t have spent so much on this junk.”