Armor 27T Pro has great hardware and pretty amazing battery life, if you can deal with the absurd weight of the device. However, the software operating system and system apps have made the phone unusable for me in just a few months.
After months of trying to get this Ulefone Armor 27T pro working properly, it has some major drawbacks that have made me switch to a different phone.
I use Signal, Textra, Whatsapp, Telegram, Instagram and Gaia GPS regularly, and these all have issues.
For Textra, if the app hasn’t been started lately, text message simply do not arrive at the phone. They end up in a black hole somewhere. Open textra and look at it, and send a text to it, and it works fine. Close textra for a few hours, and send a text, it never arrives, even after reopening the app.
Likewise with Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram, Instagram, after sitting idle for a few hours, you can send a message to them, and there will be no notification. Only after you check the app will it poll for undelivered messages and then notify you.
With Gaia GPS, It’ll work fine for 20 minutes of a trail run, then stop working. When I reopen Gaia GPS to check or to finish my run, it will have continued to count the time taken, but the GPS will have stopped working, and the mapline will instantly teleport from where it stopped working to where I am now.
Now, I have spent months on forums, youtube videos, and discussing it with app publishers, but no amount of editing battery optimization settings, enabling or disabling apps in duraspeed, or just all-out disabling a raft of system apps, (Including com.pri.screenoff.killer) has resolved these issues Here are the list of bloatware and pest apps that I’ve disabled or uninstalled:
Disabled:
https://i.postimg.cc/GtTP47vw/2025-12-18-07-46-29-Universal-Android-Debloater.png
Uninstalled:
https://i.postimg.cc/SRQs5JND/2025-12-18-07-46-46-Universal-Android-Debloater.png
There are a few other annoying things about the software, but they would be ok if I wasn’t losing basic app functionality, and especially text messages disappearing into the aether.
I’ve bought an alternative phone, and I’ll probably keep the Ulefone and use it only for its thermal camera, endoscope and microscope, maybe as a hammer too, but its not usable in daily life.
At this point, despite the hardware being pretty impressive, and the price being reasonable, I must strongly recommend against buying a Ulefone device.
Endoscope?
It’s an optional attachment, a tiny camera on a thin cable that you can poke into places. I’ve used it to inspect for rust inside an old motorbike tank, to convince one of the kids that there *wasn’t" a spider in her ear, poking around in the crawlspace looking for signs of pests, etc
Maybe OP bought this together with the phone
https://www.ulefone.com/products/usmart-e03
What did Ulefone say about these issues?
I’ll be honest I didn’t even get in contact with support because they a big corporation who probably don’t give a shit once they’ve sold a product and I expect to just get L1 helpdesk runaround forever.
Ulefone is a tiny Chinese company that employs between 500 and 1000 employees. It’s far, far, far from being a “corporation”.
They market themselves as approachable and say they have a 24/7 chat available. Sure, it’s probably a bot you’d start talking to, but potentially end up talking to a human.
But, well, you do you. Bought a phone, spent months troubleshooting on your own, and now want to stop using it completely - if you feel good about it, it’s all good.
But I were in your shoes, I’d probably at least see what happens if I contact support.
Is the bootloader unlockable?
How to unlock bootloader on Ulefone Armor 27T.
OP, if you’re still interested in trying to solve the issues, this would be an interesting project. I’m not sure there’s a ton of documentation on flashing a custom ROM to the phone.
I have looked into this, using Lineage, /e/os, grapheneOS, etc, but I’m just not convinced that if it is even realistic, that it would preserve functionality of some of the more niche hardware, like thermal camera and such. I’ve found no account of someone flashing an alternate ROM to a ulrfone successfully.
I’m still open to that if it comes along in the future, but I’m not soliciting tech support with my post here, just describing my experience with a product that, out of the box, has some major software flaws that the average consumer (the person to whom ‘ROM’ has no special meaning and might not even have the ability to hunt and kill apps using UAD or ADB) will experience if they decide to buy a Ulefone.
That’s fair. The hardware looks so cool, it’s unfortunate that the software isn’t up to snuff.
It is actually really cool. I thought I was being a bit extra getting a phone with a thermal camera and endoscope, but it’s been immensely helpful in restoring an old motorbike, finding heat leaks in my house, and putting together a custom passive heatsink for my raspberry pi.
It also supports reverse charging, so being able to use my phone to charge my wireless earbuds, headphones, and even someone else’s phone has been super helpful when travelling and hiking, because I don’t need to bring a spare battery bank.
It’s infrared blaster also allows me to control my TV, air conditioner, and other people’s RC devices (like the digital displays in shopping centres 🫢) from a single app.
It’s a real shame that it seems so insistent on cutting me off from my friends and family though. I have family that only use SMS, cousins that only use insta, friends in groups that only use WhatsApp, and other friends that only use signal, so to stay in touch with everyone I have to use all these.
It’s also not much good as a hiking companion if I can’t reliably record my track when walking.
Most phones, I wouldn’t have even bothered to spend this much time to get it working the way I like it.
I’m guessing some of the features are accessible through like a built in system app, do you think it would be possible to export as an apk and installing it from a different OS?
Also, is it still getting updates? Maybe it will be fixed in the future?
Looked it up, phone was released in 2024 so it should still get updates for a year if not 2 or more. Maybe backup current firmware and try to find different firmware online to see if reflashing work, backup is if you make it worse, just in case.
There is also the option of contacting customer service if they have any answers or anyway to get official firmware, or something.
This is a known issue on some default roms, more info and tips here, but I guess you already tried them: https://dontkillmyapp.com/
Maybe a daft question, but have you tried a factory reset? I’ve got a Xiaomi Mi 10t Lite 5g that’s having a lot of the same sort of problems, but a reboot tends to fix them temporarily. I’m hoping that once I get my new phone at Christmas, I can completely wipe this one, including the cache, and see if that helps.
Yes, it’s been factory reset a few times with no noticeable improvement unfortunately.
While there are some system apps which are notoriously aggressive ( com.pri.screenoff.killer and com.mediatek.duraspeed) and well known, disabling or uninstalling these via ADB or UAD don’t change these behaviours.
Ah, that’s a shame. Thanks for letting me know :)
Unlock bootloader and install iodeOS GSI problem solved.
While that might fix functionality for messaging apps, I suspect it would severely degrade or make unusable some of the unique and uncommon hardware features that I bought the phone for, including hardware special keys, thermal imaging camera, night vision camera, expansion port for microscope and endoscope, IR blaster and remote control, and god knows what else.
If I believed I could safely load an alternate ROM and keep this functionality, I would install One of the more mainstream ROMs like Lineage.
Still better than not using it at all IMHO…
