DOOGEE N20 Smartphone Review
DOOGEE N20 Smartphone is the next in the row in DOOGEE”s portfolio. At first sight, it seems that is a significant upgrade from its predecessor the N10.
DOOGEE is a less-known Chinese brand, but it makes pretty good quality phones. The main competitor of the DOOGEE N20 can be the UMIDIGI A5 Pro.
This upgrade from the N10 is tangible on the DOOGEE N20. You get higher overall quality, three-camera setup on the back, a big display, superb battery life, and excellent performance values.
In this budget segment for only around $100, you probably did not get any better specifications out there.
Don’t get me wrong. I did not say that DOOGEE N20 is one of the best budget phones in the market; however, there is a price to value consideration.
DOOGEE N20 came out in November 2019 but still can be an excellent value for those who want to have this their first phone.
Let’s take a look at what lies under the hood of the DOOGEE N20 budget smartphone.
Design
DOOGEE N20’s rear panel is made out of 2.5D curved plastic, caged in a delicate aluminium frame, resulting in a robust unibody design.
The edges are rounded, and overall this phone has a sturdy quality, only the rear surfaces are scratch sensitive so that a protective case can be a great use.
On the right edge, you will find the usual volume rocker and power button.
Going down, you get two speaker grilles embracing a micro USB slot. Unfortunately, there is no type C connectivity.
On the other side there is the SIM tray, enabling only 2 SIM cards, or 1 SIM card and a micro SD card combination.
On the top, there is a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and surprisingly an infrared port, nowadays, unfortunately, it is not very used.
At the front, you are facing a big display, a significant upgrade in clarity from the predecessor N10.
On the front panel, the bezels are thinner than on the previous model, and the waterdrop notch for the front-facing camera is an upgrade too.
Display
With the DOOGEE N20, you get an IPS display with FullHD+ resolution. In size, it measures 6.3-inch, which is pretty big for watching videos or playing games.
The 2280 x 1080 pixel resolution is sharp enough for crystal clear viewing. The viewing angles are also decent, with great details and colours.
Brightness is also excellent, with 428ppi illumination level you can easily use the phone under the sunlight.
With 94% screen to body ratio and a 19:9 aspect ratio, DOOGEE N20 is in line with the current trends.
Camera
The triple camera setup on the back and the waterdrop notch camera on the front is not too prominent in quality.
We could expect that this is the weak point of this phone, not so bad although. Surprisingly all three camera works, they are not fake, as we encountered on other cheap Chinese brands.
The primary camera is a 16 MP Sony sensor with F/2.0 aperture value. The second and third one have the same 8 MP, one being a wide-angle 130-degree lens, the other is a depth sensor.
The primary camera takes decent shots in daylight, the colours are natural, the detail level is high, and the contrast is also good.
If there is not enough light, the photos came out grainy, fuzzy and lack of detail.
The wide shots are almost useless, the edges look pretty deformed and obscure, and the bokeh effect only works on people, not on objects.
Other than these, the primary camera is surprisingly good in the optimal weather and daylight conditions.
The selfie camera is almost the same as the primary camera; it has 16 MP resolutions and 80 degrees wide lens. It takes good shots with optimal lighting.
On the video side, both front-facing and rear cameras support FullHD resolution at 30 frames per second.
The primary camera on recording videos has a constant focus issue; hopefully, with an update, this problem goes away.
Performance and Battery
DOOGEE N20 has an Helio P23 chipset from MediaTek. It runs on eight cores at 2 GHz.
Along with the processor, this smartphone got a Mali-G71 MP2 graphic processing unit that runs on 700 Mhz.
We could rightly ask if this is a gaming phone now? Not really, but certainly it has excellent capabilities in that area.
With 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB internal storage DOOGEE N20 can easily handle not only the everyday tasks but also some graphics-heavy tasks too. The phone storage can be expandable with a micro SD up to 128GB.
The N20 runs on Android 9 Pie smooth enough that you won’t notice any glitches or lags in the everyday tasks.
The fingerprint scanner under the triple camera works amazingly fast, like the face unlock feature. These two aspects are a big surprise at this price range.
N20 comes with a 4350mAh battery which is roughly enough for one day of usage. The 5V/2A, 10W quick charger fills up the phone with juice in about 1 hour 45 minutes.
If battery consumption optimisation were made suitably, this phone efficiently could have been run up to 2 days.
Conclusion
DOOGEE N20 is a decent smartphone with excellent capabilities. The overall package comes with a great display, a solidly built quality, snappy fingerprint scanner, high-performance values, good battery life, and a surprisingly good primary and selfie camera.
The N20 is a budget device, at $100 price range has excellent value. For a more known brand, these data and specifications would undoubtedly have cost much more.
If I have aroused your interest in this smartphone, you can buy it or order it on Banggood or AliExpres. Sometimes there are on sale, and you can get it $20 cheaper, so it’s worth watching for.
