Oukitel WP63 rugged phone review

Oukitel WP63: 30-second review

Oukitel has a strange approach to phone naming: they release phones in seemingly random order. Therefore, the WP66 has been around for a while, and now the WP63 has arrived.

But perhaps the problem isn’t the order in which these devices were announced, but when they actually get delivered.

With so many phones on Oukitel’s stable, you might be wondering, not unreasonably, what makes this one different?

On the surface, this is a heavy rugged design where battery capacity is paramount, mostly at the expense of fitting in a normal-sized pocket.

That hints it’s aimed at the adventure market, since this phone could easily last a week without a charge, if you use it wisely. Reinforcing that notion, it also has a big speaker and a camping light. But one feature on this phone I’ve never seen before sounds a little bonkers.

This is the first phone I’ve reviewed that has an ‘ignitor’ in it. Yes, something to intentionally start fires, not just accidentally. If you need to start fires, or you just can’t give up smoking, then the WP63 might be the perfect phone for you.

In other respects, this isn’t an especially powerful smartphone, but it can reverse charge at 18W using an inbuilt USB-C cable, and it is running Android 16. It’s also not expensive, making it a good candidate if the rugged requirement is only for a specific trip or job. However, I can’t see myself putting this in our best rugged phone collection, even with its unique features.

Oukitel WP63: price and availability

• How much does it cost?$390/£295/€405
• When is it out?Available from Oukitel in early November
• Where can you get it?Only from Oukitel

While I was writing this review, I was slightly confused by the lack of a web page for this device, since I knew its release was imminent.

Thankfully, now the WP63 has a webpage, and I’ve been promised it should be available to purchase by the time you read this review.

The quoted US price is $389.99, supposedly 35% less than the $599.99 MSRP Oukitel imagined when they cooked up this phone. UK customers pay £294.58, and in the EU it’s €348.05. But keep in mind that prices can change. Unusually for a Chinese phone maker, these prices are roughly identical based on the current exchange rates between the US dollar, British pound, and Euro.

While the WP63 has some unique features, plenty of rugged designs offer 20000 mAh of battery capacity, but most pack more processing power than this model.

A phone with a similar spec is the Blackview XPLORE 1, which costs $359.99 on Amazon.com, and at that price you do get more RAM and 55W charging.

That pricing suggests the WP63 isn’t a bargain, but if it saves you from carrying another ignition

The WP63 isn’t an expensive phone, but it also has modest specs.

Oukitel WP63: Specs

Oukitel WP63: Design

• A chunky monkey
• In-built USB-C cable
• Light the blue touch paper

If I were inclined to hike a long way, maybe over several days, I’m not sure I’d take the WP63 along. At 629g and an awkward fit in most pockets, this is a hefty device that you wouldn’t want to carry in open water.

However, Oukitel sloped the undersides, so it’s relatively easy to handle unless you have weak wrists.

Button placement is typical, with the power and volume rocker on the right and a PTT custom button on the left with the SIM slot. One mild annoyance was that when it wants a fingerprint for access, it places a fingerprint icon on the screen, where some phones have the sensor embedded under the display. This isn’t one of those phones, and the fingerprint reader is actually on the power button.

That said, most people should be able to transition to this device easily.

On the rear is a 3W speaker for summoning beach-party people, and that pushes the two rear cameras out to the edge of the phone. What space is left by the speaker and camera cluster is taken up with a substantial camping LED, one of those that can temporarily blind you if set to full brightness and looked at. This device has no wireless charging because there is no open space for it.

None of this is especially unusual, as I’ve seen a dozen or more rugged phones with a big lamp and speaker, probably in the past year. Where the WP63 goes off into uncharted territory is with two other special functions, one of which is a short but integrated USB-C cable. This cable can be used to charge and also reverse charge other devices, making it unnecessary to carry a charging cable with you. I like this idea, and even with the shortness of the cable, it’s useful.

The other special feature is slightly more controversial, because the WP63 can set things on fire, hopefully when you intend for it to do so.

Given how phones and other battery-powered devices are often blamed for starting fires, it seems contradictory to actually design a phone specifically to set things on fire, but Oukitel did.

Along the top edge is the ignitor, which comes out of a tube when pressed down and sideways, so it doesn’t deploy accidentally. A phone app controls when it heats and for how long, so it should be impossible for this to happen unintentionally.

The minimum heating time is four seconds, the maximum is ten, and then there is a longer period during which the ignitor must cool down before it can be fired again. You are advised that the ignitor gets extremely hot, and it is best not to touch it when in use.

So what is this practically useful for? Well, I suspect it’s fine for lighting cigarettes, the odd firework, but you would need some paper or dry tinder to start a campfire using it.

The box includes a spare igniter element, so it will eventually burn through the heated wire it uses, and you can replace that part. Some grease is also provided to make sure the igniter deploys smoothly when you want it.

I don’t know how much power this feature uses, but it will have an impact if you use it repeatedly.

As a non-smoker and non-pyromaniac, this isn’t a feature I’d find much use for, but I accept that others might find it useful. I just wouldn’t want to be found with this phone in an era which has had an unexplained forest fire recently.

Oukitel WP63: Hardware

• UNISOC T8200
• 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage
• 20000 mAh battery

The UNISOC T8200 (UMS9621S) is a mid-range 5G chip. It has eight cores in two clusters, with two Cortex-A76 cores at up to 2.3GHz and six smaller cores at up to 2.1GHz. A two-core Mali G57 handles graphics, and the chip is built on TSMC’s older 6nm process. That process is a little dated now, but it remains perfectly efficient if underwhelming.

Memory support is sensible. The controller handles LPDDR4 and LPDDR4X, with the latter used here. That means no speedy LPDDR5, which holds back peak performance.

The integrated modem covers sub-6 GHz 5G with carrier aggregation. There is no mmWave here, but few phones at this level need it.

The camera and display features are generous for the price. UNISOC says the chip supports sensors up to 108MP, 4K video recording and a 120Hz FHD+ display. Variable refresh rate support should also help battery life. However, not all of those features apply to this phone.

So how does it perform? Day to day, it should feel fine. Scrolling, browsing, social media and video streaming sit well within its abilities. The two A76 cores give it a useful turn of speed when apps need it. Notebookcheck lists a Geekbench 6 single-core score of around 750. That is respectable, and clearly better than entry-level silicon.

Gaming is where limits appear. Two GPU cores will manage casual titles and older 3D games without fuss. Demanding modern games will need lower settings and will not hold high frame rates for long. I would not buy it for that job.

Against the competition, it sits below chips like the Dimensity 8100, which uses a 4nm process and much faster Cortex A78 cores. It is a budget-friendly alternative, not a rival, and Oukitel only use UFS 2.2 storage because it works in this context. The allocation of 256GB is plenty for most people, and you can add a 1TB microSD if you need to capture lots of video.

For a rugged or value-focused handset, the T8200 is a sound choice. It is quick enough, frugal enough and well connected. Just keep expectations realistic.

The one area where Oukitel pushed the boat out is battery capacity, with 20000mAh to splurge. That obviously provides a substantial running time, but it can also be used through reverse charging to keep other devices powered. One nice note about that feature is that if it is charging another phone, for example, and the battery capacity hits 20%, it will stop so it doesn’t exhaust the battery entirely.

Oukitel WP63: Cameras

• 64MP and 8MP on the rear
• 20MP on the front
• Three cameras in total

The Oukitel WP63 has three cameras:

Rear cameras: 64MP Omnivision OV64B40 , 8MP Hynix Hi-846 (Night Vision)
Front camera: 20MP Sony IMX376

The camera sensor collection on this phone isn’t the best, but it isn’t junk either.

I’ve seen the 64MP Omnivision OV64B40 on many devices, and it performs decently on most of them, even if it’s not a sensor a premium phone would use.

The biggest issue is that it has no optical zoom, so all zoom is digital. That undermines the premise of using a 64MP sensor with pixel binning to deliver 16MP images that are sharp and perfectly saturated. The results without zooming are therefore much better than those with. I took some decent pictures using this sensor, but it does like plenty of light.

One positive aspect of this sensor is that it will capture 4K video, but only at 30 fps. In fact, it’s locked to 30 fps at all resolutions unless you use ‘slow motion’ mode, where the frame rate jumps to 120 fps for 1080p or 720p capture.

The second rear sensor is an 8MP Hynix Hi-846 Night Vision chip. An SK Hynix part with an 8-megapixel 1/4-inch sensor and 1.12 µm pixels. It outputs 3264×2448 natively, so the resolution in your screenshot matches its true array and not a cropped one. Works well if the subject is close enough to be illuminated by the IR array,

The front-facing 20MP Sony IMX376 seems ideal for selfies, but it is limited to 1080p video.

And, as I always check, this phone is rated for Widevine L1 encryption, so streamed video can be higher than 480p. However, the screen resolution isn’t enough for 1080p streaming, so it’s not a huge benefit.

Overall, the cameras can take decent photos and video, but these choices seem mostly budget-driven and not meant to deliver photographic excellence.

Oukitel WP63: Performance

To be direct, if I put this phone up against one of the many Dimensity 8200 phones, it would look like it was going backwards. So instead, I chose the UleFone RugKing 5 Pro, another relatively low-power handset that also uses a Unisoc SoC.

The T8200 appears to have about 50% more power than the T7250 from a compute perspective, and the G57 MP2 is double the performance of its base counterpart.

Neither phone would excite anyone who likes to game, but the WP63 beats the RugKing 5 Pro in all but one area.

That’s the flipside of powerful phones, in that delivering that performance consumes more power. Here, the extra performance of the WP63 comes at a cost of battery life. Although being able to run PCMark for nearly 30 hours and still have 14% of the capacity left is an accomplishment that many phones would be envious.

One major issue I ran into with the review hardware was that the provided charger refused to charge the phone, even with the cable that Oukitel provided. That should not be a problem, since I have plenty of USB-C chargers.

Except when I used one of my 100W-capable chargers, it peaked at 20W while charging the phone, which meant after 30 minutes it had only recovered 16% of its power. That said, even if it accepted the full 33W, I calculate it would still take four hours to recharge the WP63, and possibly longer.

So this isn’t a phone you want to wake up next to after forgetting to charge it. Overall, the WP63 is power-efficient enough to deliver a reasonable user experience and run most Android apps, but it’s hardly rocket-powered.

Oukitel WP63: Final verdict

What an odd phone.

If we ignore the slightly charred elephant in this room, this is a mid-order rugged phone with plenty of battery capacity to keep it alive for a decent number of days away from civilisation.

The cameras can take acceptable photos and video, and the asking price isn’t excessive. This is something you could say about a dozen or more other designs.

But people won’t be buying this phone for only those features, will they? No, they’ll want the phone that can light a cigarette, or fireworks, or burn down half of Canada.

Part of me thinks this wasn’t a great idea, but it’s possible to create a fire with a glass bottle, a magnifying glass, or a battery and two wires, so am I overreacting? Possibly.

My concern is that, since this is a phone and can be remotely controlled, someone might use it to initiate something remotely. But then phones have been used to do that without having an ignitor in them, so perhaps the truly dangerous part is the phone?

Whatever the answer is, because I’m far from being an expert, the WP63 does have a feature that no other phone I’ve seen sports. Will it spawn a whole new generation of fire-starting phones? I doubt it. But if you need to carry something that can start a fire in a pinch, the WP63 exists.

Should I buy a Oukitel WP63?

Buy it if…

You need extended battery life
While 20000 mAh isn’t the biggest phone battery I’ve seen, it’s a good size, and if managed, it will last a long time. The only caveat to this capacity is that the maximum charging wattage is only 33W, which means even if you can get the provided charger to work, it won’t be charging that quickly.

You need to start fires
Something I never thought I’d write in a review is that this phone is perfect for setting fire to things, assuming they burn. Chain-smokers, firework fans and common or garden-variety pyromaniacs will love the WP63 and its inclusive gift from the gods.

Don’t buy it if…

You need a daily driver
If weight and size matter to you, then give this a miss. At 629g and 27mm deep, this is not an easily pocketable device by any definition. There is an argument that with this phone you won’t need a power pack for other devices, a charging cable or a lighter, but it’s still heavy.

For more ruggedized devices, we’ve reviewed thebest rugged tablets, thebest rugged laptops, and thebest rugged hard drives