To get straight to the point and the reason you’re all here: battery life.
Yes, this phone has a battery. A very large, very heavy, very long-life battery. How long? However long 20,000 mAh buys you. Personally, I’m comfortably eking out a solid week without needing to charge … and most of my unproductive phone usage is binging YouTube like a teenager doom-scrolls TikTok.
I also put it to the standby test, only checking the phone once per day to see how much battery was left (I’m not sure how useful that is, but I was curious) … it ran from Jan. 9 to Feb. 8 before the battery gave up the ghost.
I’d call that exceptional.
There is a downside to having a week’s worth of battery at your disposal in your phone … it’s bulky, and it’s heavy. Like really heavy. And really bulky.
JS @ New Atlas
It’s too heavy to weigh on the little food scale I have at home, but not quite heavy enough for the people scale. So to figure out how much it weighs with the tools I had available, I started filling up a jug with water an ounce at a time until it felt like it weighed about the same as the phone … about 25-ish ounces later, that felt about right. And if you’re wondering, ~739 mL weighs in right about 0.7 kg or 1.6 lb, give or take. As a last line of defense, this phone could absolutely be substituted as a weapon in case of bear attack in the woods (Note: Oukitel just published the actual weight of the phone after I’d written this – and I wasn’t about to delete some of my best science – and they list it as 651.1 grams, or 1.44 lb … I was close.).
Do you remember those big, hardback dictionaries we used to use as kids to defend ourselves from bullies? About the same weight as that, but slightly more “pocket-sized” at 7.07 x 3.33 x 1.07 inches (179.5 × 84.7 × 27.2 mm). No lie, my wrist hurts after ~30 mins of usage. Granted, I am primarily a one-handed phone user, and I use Swype with just my right thumb for texting. If I used both hands, it would likely be less painful/potential carpal tunnel.
JS @ New Atlas
While it does support 45-watt fast-charging, because the battery is absolutely ginormous, it still takes close to ~4.5 hours to charge from dead. A small price to pay, honestly. It’s also compatible with a 10-watt dock charger, however, I don’t have one to test. I imagine charge times might be a bit longer with that … like overnight longer.
Another nifty aspect is that the 20,000-mAh battery phone supports reverse charging from its USB-C port to top up whatever goodies you’d like while out and about. I’ve actually charged my personal phone from it a few times.
Key Specs:
- MediaTek Dimensity 7025 5G processor
- 12 GB RAM / 512 GB storage (expandable up to 2 TB)
- 6.8-inch FHD+ display, 120-Hz refresh rate
- 108-MP main camera
- 8-MP infrared night-vision camera (Hi-846) with infrared flash
- 20-Ah battery
- 45-W fast charging
- Reverse charging support
- 1,200-lumen COB camping light
- Ultra-loud rear speaker (up to ~130 dB)
- 2-W DMR digital walkie-talkie, up to 3.4 miles / 5.5 km
- Android 16
- IP68 / IP69K rugged rating
- Impact mass suitable for emergency wildlife deterrence
What separates this phone from just an average, run-of-the-mill consumer phone with crazy battery life is the built-in digital PTT walkie-talkie. It uses a 2-watt DMR digital walkie-talkie radio, capable of chirping up to 3.4 miles (5.5 km) – which could be genuinely useful for construction crews, event security, anyone trying to coordinate in the field, or in remote areas where there may not be cell signal.
If you’re not using the walkie feature, Oukitel has pretty much every band built into the phone – and yes, in 5G, not just LTE – to give you coverage almost everywhere in the world. It should work on most major US carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The WP61 has all the usual Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, and NFC connectivity as well. As an added plus, the phone has just enough room in it for dual SIM card support, with Nano+Nano or Nano+TF types supported.
JS @ New Atlas
The big Oukitel also has an 8-MP IR camera in it, something I’ve not seen on a phone before. While the resolution isn’t great, it’s still fun to have for goofy nighttime photos with friends in the dark … or for practical uses like spotting animals in the dark or checking equipment and electrical panels when working in low-light environments. The phone even features a 2-MP macro camera for when you really want to get the nitty-gritty.
Unsurprisingly, it also has the brightest flashlight I’ve ever seen on a phone. I’m guestimating about 15% of the entire back of the phone is a COB LED panel that serves as a “camp light” feature. It really is bright – about 1,200 lumens, according to the spec sheet. The kind of bright you’d get from a decent flashlight. The kind of bright that if you look at it, you’re going to be seeing purple spots for a while.
JS @ New Atlas
It also has the biggest phone speaker I’ve ever seen, but somehow it’s not all that much louder than my S22. It is louder for sure – spec sheet says 130 dB – but it just doesn’t seem like it … probably because it’s annoyingly on the back of the phone, muffled by your leg, pillow, or whatever it is you’ve leaned the phone on (because your arms are tired) while trying to watch a movie or video on it. Even my usual perch on the window ledge over my shower while I watch or listen to a podcast as I cleanse my soul doesn’t seem to work well because the speaker placement is on the back. Not to mention the phone’s sheer weight wants to press the side buttons if you’ve leaned it on its side. If you lay the phone on its face and crank some tunes, it does a pretty solid job of making loud noises.
Speaking of buttons, the fingerprint sensor is on the power button itself, something I’m not used to. I habitually tap the power button when I just want to see what time it is, but because the fingerprint reader is on the power button, it more often than not unlocks the phone entirely rather than showing me my lock screen. I guess kudos for making a sensitive and quick thumbprint reader.
There’s a customizable button on the left side that you can assign different functions to; single click, double, long press … I’ve found, due to the placement and ease of accidentally pressing it, that I prefer single click to do nothing. Double-click is where it’s at, because it’ll inevitably be tapped once, whether you mean to or not. And the long click for anything that you also don’t want accidentally launched.
The screen is as good as any modern phone – a 6.8-inch FHD+ display with a 120-Hz refresh rate at 1080 x 2460. Visually, it’s no better or worse than the average smartphone I’ve used. It’s protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5, which has been around since 2016 and is tried and true, so it should hold up well.
JS @ New Atlas
Speed-wise, it’s not flagship processing speed. My four-year-old Galaxy S22 isn’t significantly faster, but it’s still snappier than the WP61’s MediaTek Dimensity 7025 5G processor. But that doesn’t mean the Oukitel feels slow. That being said, if you’re trying to watch a 4K video on YouTube or even locally on the phone, you will see some frames drop. It seems to handle 1080p with very little issue. I never game on my phones, so I’m not sure how it runs games, not that it’s marketed as being a gaming handheld.
Privacy is a bit iffy. When I first put the phone on my network, I routed it through my Raspberry Pi so I could log what and who the phone was trying to talk to without me, monitoring DNS lookups and outbound traffic to see where the connections were headed. I didn’t really like what I saw, and I started digging through the phone’s communications stack and trimming things back. I busted out ADB tools and removed a handful of apps and background services that didn’t seem necessary – including the Chinese app store and a few other components that were a little too eager to talk to the other side of the world.
JS @ New Atlas
That being said, pretty much every cell phone maker and carrier does this same background communication-type behavior – updates, analytics, bloatware. My last Samsung Galaxy S20 on Verizon may have been the biggest offender I’ve ever seen.
The WP61 runs on the latest Android 16, which is great. Even my daily driver Galaxy S22 is still only on Android 13. Though the WP61 might be a custom Android 16 build specifically for the Chinese market and translated to English … stuff like “Bluetooth open/closed” rather than “on/off” pops up here and there.
It’s IP68 and IP69K rated, so getting it wet or even dropping it in the pool isn’t really an issue. The USB-C port even has a closable flap like you’d find on a waterproof OtterBox case that seems to do the job. While I wouldn’t necessarily call it “military grade,” it is rated MIL-STD-810H, which is a US military durability testing standard for stuff like shock/drop resistance, vibration, high and low temperature, pressure changes, etc. Basically, the thing is rugged and made for the great outdoors, and perhaps even for some high-octane door kicking.
Ultimately, this phone isn’t marketed to chase flagship specs. It’s built for people who actually work with their hands or spend real time outdoors and don’t want to feel tethered to the charging dock – people who appreciate outright durability and battery life. This phone is a tool. And for that crowd, myself included, it’s pretty awesome … albeit heavy.
Product page: Oukitel WP61
Our reviews are impartial and our opinions are our own. New Atlas may receive commission if you purchase the dictionary I linked to on Amazon