My experience with this phone/company is somewhat unique, never was invited to company HQ in order to play with prototype, I’m feeling obligated to make a short review of the device. I’ll try to be as much unbiased as possible.

The shipping delays were stressful, after giving up my main phone in June, I left with liquid damaged iPhone SE with dead spots on digitizer and some issue with charging - I wasn’t able to use the phone while I was plugged in. The phone condition was so bad, that I’ve started to think about canceling my order .. and then things started to move forward..

Got tracking notification from Fedex that the package is at distribution center that’s few bus stops away from my workplace. After few phone calls, I’ve intercepted the distribution track and got the package(nothing illegal, payed the taxes =))

Unboxing was done at the office(my BD cake got less attention than this phone). The whole package looks super premium with accessories following the company branding. In the box we got headphones, screen protector, leather-like sleeve, fast-charger with different outlet plugs(perfect for travel) and **gollum voice** the phone.





This thing is built like tank, build quality is superb, it’s large and little bit on heavy side(comfortable heavy side). Phone feels good both in a hand and in a jeans pocket. Screen is awesome, it’s color accurate to my eye(maybe little on over-saturated side), bright and can easily be used in direct sunlight.

Typing on the keyboard is a pleasure, clicky, tactile, almost perfect, little bit wider than I would consider as a perfect size, but I’ve seen the prototype, knew it, and I still like it. Backlight is even, got some light bleeding at “TAB” key, but we can call it a feature. If we compare with Nokia N900, the old legend loses in every aspect, both the tactility and the backlight, are much, much better on the Pro1. Using it to connect to remote servers it’s a bless, finally you can work on the go without laptop. Also it’s good for gaming, keyboard gives you better feel for console emulation, tried some GBC roms - it is fun.

Multitasking with physical keyboard is awesome - its now possible, when Galaxy Note came out, it was unusable if you wanted to work with keyboard - now you can =)

Funny thing, I’m really using the hardware keyboard less than I’ve expected, probably i’m still stuck with some fruit(not berry) mindset.

I wasn’t been able to test screen mirroring, tried two cables, one DP->Type-C, other HDMI->Type-C, neither worked. Reported at community forums.

Since the phone supports Level 3 Camera2 API, i’ve downloaded Google Camera port took RX100 and iPhone 7 and went for photo hunting. Some of the known spots are closed for renovation(We are just like every tourist spot in Europe, but not in Europe)
For every scene I took 4 Pictures - Qualcomm Camera, Google Camera, iPhone Camera and Sony Camera =)





All of the photos are non edited, you even can see my finger at one of them and horizon angle on many of them.

Photo Sample 1 - Cannon

iPhone 7



Pro1 - Qualcomm Camera



Pro1 - Google Camera



RX100



Photo Sample 2- Edge of the wall (used this spot for Photo competition)

iPhone 7



Pro1 - Qualcomm Camera



Pro1 - Google Camera



RX100



Photo Sample 3 - The Port

iPhone 7



Pro1 - Qualcomm Camera



Pro1 - Google Camera



RX100



Photo Sample 4 - Silence

iPhone 7



Pro1 - Qualcomm Camera



Pro1 - Google Camera



RX100



I liked the Qualcomm camera better than Google Camera, but vignetting on Pro1 is.. I don't like it. I would use it, but such heavy vignetting making it unsuitable for some situatons. I liked the colors and contrast balance, usually I’m upping on post-processing to same or similar levels. Also currently there is no indication that photo was taken on Qualcomm Camera, shutter sound doesn’t work - I’ve already reported it on community forums.


EDIT: Got confirmation that vignette effect is actually a software issue, that will be fixed later, I’ll do another photoshoot when it’s fixed



EDIT 2: Got two images from the same spots after the OTA







Speakers are loud and clear, call quality is good and the phone speaker is loud. DAC/Jack produces a good sound, comparing to iPad 6, I can hear the difference, but I can’t tell if I like it or not. Definitely better than Surface Pro 3, but probably anything is better than that =)

Fingerprint position is non-convenient in any orientation, it’s too far in landscape/keyboard orientation and too low for portrait one. No physical indication for the position, you can’t feel it. Usually my finger is 5mm above or below. It also reacts when you’re taking the phone with your other hand. But it’s fast and accurate, and probably I’ll get used to use it this way.
Edit Day 2: Starting to get used to this position.
Edit Day 3: It’s really okay.

Bluetooth worked as expected multiple devices, always connected smartwatch, aside from issue that I’ve reported on FxTec community forums no complaints.

Performance wise the device feels fast, faster than iDevices that I got nearby. I won’t do any benchmarks, since we already know it’s not going to beat $devicename.

Battery life can easily last you a day and a half of moderate use. Fast charging is faster than on iPhone X, and led indicator is conveniently changing colours when phone is charged.

Dual Sim works as expected - DSDS mode. Can’t really add anything here.

Software-wise we are getting clean android build with ability to disable Google services. There are some minor things that I’ve mentioned above, but those can be fixed with an OTA update later.

Hardware-wise this phone is really close to being perfect. Screen, SoC, Camera Module, each one of them are known as quality part with specs that are better than competition, and I believe that getting those was not easy. Combining those parts and producing the PCB,case and the keyboard mechanism probably was even harder. The attention to details is on OCD level, no corners were cut here.

This is production-ready device with solid build quality. After one day of toying around, I moved both of my SIM cards to Pro1, and it just works, my whole workflow was transfered to this phone quite easily and got no major issues so far.

Big thanks to Chen, Adrian, Leon, Erik and other F(x)tec team members that made it.
And I would like to see next F(x)tec branded devices, with this level of attention to details, I’ll probably buy it.