Aspera Mobile is a small scale manufacture of Android phones based out of Sydney and have been in operation for a while now. They produce nitch smartphones by analyzing the market and offering solutions to what exactly customers are looking for. This brings us to the Aspera R9 their latest smart phone to reach the market. It’s rated IP69 giving it the highest protection from water and dust and is designed with a rugged exterior cover for best protection from heavy knocks or drops.

Here’s a quick specification of the device before we take a closer look at the unit.

Specifications:

IP certification

IP69
Protected against close-range high pressure
Protected against high-temperature spray downs

Network frequency

4G bands 1/3/5/7/8/28 a+b
3G bands 850/900/2100MHz
2G – 850/900/1800/1900MHz

Performance

MediaTek Helio A22 Quad core 2.0GHz processor
3GB RAM
32GB ROM
Expandable memory SD card to 128GB maximum

Camera

13MP rear + 5MP front auto focus camera
Video recording full HD 1920 x 1080
Continuous shot to 99 shots

Multimedia

Video AVI/MP4/3GP
Audio MP3/MP4/ACC/AAC+/WAV
Video recording

Dimensions

Size 161 x 77 x 14mm
Weight 215g

Battery

5000mAh Li-polymer
Long usage
8.5 hours talk time

Construction

Rubberised outer body for shock absorption, high visibility yellow/black
Tempered Glass
Completely sealed battery
Seals for USB charge point, 3.5mm earphone jack

Display

5.45” HD+ IPS display
1440 x 720 pixels
Screen recessed 1mm from protective body
Tempered Glass

SIM card

Dual SIM cards or 1 SIM and 1 SD card
Nano SIMs card slot

Connectivity

4G network data
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/ac 2.4/5 GHz
Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Hotspot
NFC
VoWiFi
Bluetooth 5.0 LE

Other features

GPS
Micro USB charge point
2A charging
Extra loud speaker
Face ID unlock

Aspera R9 Unboxing

The retail box surprisingly was quite heavy yet has an elegant look with all the key features of the R9 highlights across the box.

Looking through the specs alone makes the Aspera R9 look quite impressive. I’m expecting that 5000mAh battery to last forever.

Opening up the box, you find a neatly packed phone with the user manual, charger, cable and ear phones at the bottom.

On the Left side you’re offered a SIM card slot and Micro SD card slot capable of supporting upto 128GB. Alternatively if you wanted dual sim functionality, you can use the SD card location for another SIM.

On the right you’re offered volume and power keys.

The USB charge slot is located at the bottom which is sealed via a rubber flip.

The screen does not come with a separate screen protector, however is recessed 1mm from the outer protective cover.

Functionality

The Aspera R9 is powered by a Mediatek Helio A22 2GHz quad core processor and offers 3GB of RAM with a 32GB ROM. It’s not a huge amount of ROM storage, however you do get 128GB support for a SD card slot which is ample for everyday use.

Out of the box the Aspera R9 is offered with Android 10.0. The phone has a 13MP rear camera and 5MP front facing camera. While the camera specs aren’t anything to brag about, it’s decent enough. Reality is, this phone is designed purely targeting tradies or people working outdoors who require some form of ruggedness. As such it’s unlikely you’d want the higher speced camera which would indeed further drive up cost.

We tested out the rear camera and even closeups were quite detailed and the color reproduction wasn’t that bad. The camera would be more than adequate for tradies in the field who would want quick point and clicks.

Aspera R9 Battery Life

The Aspera R9 packs are whopping 5000mAh lithium polymer battery. Even with its 5.45″ HD+ display and heavy internet and video usage, the R9’s battery life was hovering around 40% by end of the day. There’s no way you’d be on the phone watching movies on a work day however our tests were purely to understand the battery performance. Rest assured, a fully charged battery will easily last you a couple of days with moderate activity.

Software

You get a vanilla version of Android 10 without any bloatware you’d normally get with some of the bigger manufactures. This is a huge plus in our books. There are some handy features incorporated however, such as the “Glove Mode” which allows you to control the phone even when wearing gloves. This will no doubt come handy during winter or if you’re a tradie pretty much through your work day.

The interface itself is quite snappy and responsive as you’d notice in the above video. We did not encounter any performance lags during the time we used the Aspera R9 through our testing. There are some default Google apps installed and apart from that it’s the stock standard Android 10 on it.

Aspera Mobile offers a very comprehensive user manual that even details out some of the software functionality. You can download the manual from here.

Conclusion

Having used the Aspera R9 for a few weeks now, I must say it has been quite impressive. Clearly the phone isn’t for everyone and targeted towards tradies or anyone wishing to have a rugged phone due to the nature of their work. For me personally I love the fact that you can snap pictures underwater via a sub $300 phone. The phone is designed to take a thrashing and come out the other side unscratched. You can dump it in mud with no remorse and simply wash away at the end.

Kudos to Aspera mobile for truly identifying this nitch market need and coming up with the Aspera R9. It offers solid performance without any bloatware and comes at an awesome price point of only AU$279. Their decision to go with a 5000mAh battery should not be overlooked either as it’s one of the key factors for many tradies out there. You can’t find any faults with the Aspera R9 as they seem to have got everything right with this release and we highly recommend this model if it fits the nature of your work.