Doogee S88 Pro review

Design, build, handling

If you've seen a couple of rugged phones, then you've seen them all. The Doogee S88 Pro does look a lot like other Doogees, Ulefones, CATs - it has a flat metal frame with reinforced corners, a thick plastic back, and you can see a lot of tiny screws everywhere.

Doogee tried to make the S88 Pro stand out among its indestructible peers by putting Iron Man eyes-shaped LEDs on the back. And they do win aesthetics points when they glow for incoming calls or missed notifications. Doogee is also selling an additional Iron Man helmet-inspired case, if you'd like to go all-in with the famous Avenger's look.

The Doogee S88 Pro has a 6.3" IPS LCD screen that's covered by a piece of Gorilla Glass, unknown revision. It's surrounded by a thin yet solid plastic rim that will reduce scratches and even absorb the shock when the phone lays or falls down on its face.

There is a waterdrop-shaped notch for the 16MP selfie camera though obviously, it wasn't necessary, and it doesn't really make sense. You can clearly see the bezels are thick enough to fit a dozen of cameras and then some.

Something we didn't expect is to see a front notification LED light right next to the earpiece. Doogee didn't have to put such a thing as there are two large LEDs at the back, yet it did go the extra mile, and we did appreciate this. No matter which way your S88 Pro is facing, you will always know if you have some missed notifications.

The frame is made of metal (long sides) and plastic (short sides). The metal pieces extend towards the back for additional sturdiness. The top and bottom parts of the phone are covered in this soft rubber-like plastic, which is responsible for the shock-proof capabilities of the S88 Pro.

We are not sure if the screws around the frame and the back serve any real purpose, but they do fit the rugged design.

The left side of the Doogee S88 Pro has the hybrid-SIM tray and two custom keys - the top one is entirely custom, while the bottom one is for emergency purposes. Still, you can assign and reassign actions to those buttons as you see fit.

The right side is housing the volume rocker and the power key. Below those, exactly where your thumb should be resting, is the always-on, blazing-fast, and very accurate fingerprint scanner.

Luckily, this sensor is configured to react only upon successful recognition, so it will not vibrate, turn the screen on, or lock you out of your phone if you touch it several times with your palm or unregistered fingers. We didn't like this on the Ulefone Armor 9, and we are glad to see Doogee has done it better.

The bottom has the lone USB-C port that is protected by a rubber lid. Even if this lid is absent, the port itself is sealed with glue, so no water or dust can get past it. At first, we did like the cover, but we feel it will eventually rupture.

The back is made of thick plastic, unless we count the extended frame around the longer sides. The triple-camera and the dual-LED flash sit on a huge metal piece. Another metal strip can be seen around the bottom, showing off Doogee's logo.

The speaker grille is next to the Doogee branding, on the left, while the right grille is fake and is there for the sake of symmetry only.

The Doogee S88 Pro seems to be a properly built and well-sealed phone. Doogee has taken good care of its weaker spots - the USB port and the SIM slot, by using both internal and external sealing.

The phone is IP69K and MIL-STD-810G compliant and is probably one, if not the toughest phones we've met. It is water-resistant and can survive in 1m deep water for a day or 1.5m for at least 2 hours. The phone is fully dust-sealed, so no worries about that either.

The Doogee S88 Pro is also shock-proof and can easily survive drops from up to 2m on flat concrete or up to 1.5 on rough surfaces. We did drop it a couple, oh, well, a dozen times on various pavements, parquets, floor tiles, and we got worried for a bit about the floor tile it hit. Don't forget this phone weighs almost half a kilogram, so dropping it on fragile surfaces will probably end badly for the contact surface.

The device is also MIL-STD-810G compliant. it can survive extreme cold (-55°C for 4 hours), can be left out in the sun (50°C for 20 hours), and it will laugh in the face of high humidity or even acidic atmosphere (35°C, 2 hours).

All this comes at a price. The Doogee S88 Pro is no compact or pocket-friendly phone. It is bulky and heavy and may not be the best fit for your everyday jeans. It's not as terrible as it sounds, though, with neatly 2cm thickness and 372 weight - it's not unreasonably big and will be fine for most workman's clothes. And it will go where only a handful of phones can go, get the job done and survive unscathed.