Review: Telstra Tough Max

Made for Australia

Samsung might have coined the term “made for Australia” for phones in its Galaxy S5 advertising campaigns, but since the company has left it alone for a while, we feel it’s more apt here on the Tough Max.

Quite literally, the specs and design suggest Telstra’s ZTE-made phone is more made for Australia than most other phones you’ll see through, and that’s the Australia people see when they leave the city.

You know what we’re talking about: brush, bush, dust and sun, with the odd bit of rain when it gets down to it.

A rating of IP67 tells us the Tough Max can handle itself when it gets down to brass tacks or even dusty rocks, and there’s even an amount of water resistance here, too.

The casing is perhaps the one area worth noting that is different, and that’s because it will survive a drop or two, though not necessarily the sharpest or steepest of drops. That’s better than knowing it will break the moment it collides with the ground, though, so be thankful for something.

You can also be thankful for a screen protector and a torch, because both are included in the box. The extra screen protector is something few phones arrive with and will be welcomed, as will the button for switching on the rear LED flash and using it as a torch.

If the lights ever go out and you find yourself looking for a light, this phone serves as it (as they all do) and there’s even a trusty button to switch it on. Neato.

What needs work

With a decent build, a nice enough screen, a battery capable of hitting a day and a half to two days, and acceptable cameras, what hasn’t Telstra (and its manufacturer ZTE) done right?

Simply put, it’s a toss up between the performance and what is obviously the use of some outdated phone hardware being masked to look modern.

We’ve already touched on that performance, mind you, because while the Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 can handle its own, there are obvious signs of phone lag on the Tough Max (ZTE T84) and it wouldn’t even handle our standard phone benchmark.

That last thing alone isn’t a great sign, though we pushed on with the review all the same and found the lag was definitely there jumping between apps, though it was fine if you were patient.

It’s not the most horrible lag ever, but if you’re used to flagship quality or the punchlines of an iPhone, this isn’t the smartest of upgrades.

Our other quibble is one of Android, because while this runs Android and is easily compatible with pretty much every major app, it’s clear that ZTE has made some compromises, one of which is the OS: good luck expecting an update for this phone.

While it runs Android 5.0 “Marshmallow” which is kind of up-to-date (or was for last year, anyway), the updates section of the phone basically suggests copying card updates to a microSD card and doing it there. No over-the-air connections or a server for you to talk to, which basically tells us the Tough Max will probably stay at version 5 of Android likely forever.

That’s not necessarily a good omen, but it is possible Telstra will release something… we just doubt it.

At least it runs a recent iteration of Android, or recent enough, though even with that some of the hardware definitely wasn’t made for that recent version.

Specifically, we’re talking about the buttons under the screen, the ones that in that triangle, circle, and square shape are supposed to imply back, home, and app switch respectively.

That’s the way Android does it now, and usually with on-screen digitally-recreated buttons, but manufacturers are allowed to stick them on with soft buttons if they so choose, and Telstra and ZTE have certainly done so in this phone.

Except it has also been done so with old hardware, because the square — which normally lets you jump between apps for multi-tasking — doesn’t work on the Tough Max this way unless you hold it down. No, a basic push brings up the settings menu, and that tells us this is actually an old phone with the menu button with a new label over that button instead.

Not quite the brand new phone you might have been expecting.

This type of trickery isn’t totally foreign in electronics, and we’ve certainly seen it a few times in phones, but it’s still annoying all the same.

If you don’t know what the square normally does in Android, it’s not a big issue, and if you do, it’s a retraining of how long you hold it down.

Still, though, it would have been easier for ZTE (makers of the phone) or Telstra (the people who ordered the phone from ZTE) to make sure the square did what it was supposed to, and not just sit there superficially in the first place.

Conclusion

It may not be the most attractive phone on the planet, but Telstra’s Tough Max is a surprising phone that really does the job, and even steals a line or two from the likes of Samsung to make this device “made for Australia”.

Easily one of the better things we’ve seen come out of ZTE, the Tough Max is a surprising little phone with enough of the stuff that 4G phone buyers are looking for while also packing in durability for the dirt out the back of the country.

We’d like to see a boost of speed if we could and there’s obviously some older hardware serving use here, seen via that not-quite-right set of soft buttons, but overall, this is a decent phone for anyone needing durability in places where phones don’t quite hit the mark.

If you have the patience, this is Telstra’s true blue battler, only in orange and black.