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The F9 Ultra is a big phone. At 163.49 x 77.94 x 8.74mm and 235g, it’s heavier and thicker than the likes of the Galaxy S26 Ultra and iPhone 17 Pro Max, and a hair narrower than both, so one-handed use is basically off the table for most people. That bulk is the cost of the 8,050mAh battery and the speaker hardware inside — but you’ll feel it in your pocket either way.
The materials are a step down from the priciest flagships, at least on paper. You get aluminum side rails, a glass-fiber rear panel, and Corning Gorilla Glass 7i on the front, rather than the fancier glass you’ll find on phones that cost hundreds more. In practice, though, it doesn’t feel cheap. The textured back resists smudges well, and the device feels solid rather than plasticky.
The back is where the design gets interesting…but also a bit derivative. A wide camera island spans the upper portion of the phone, which has the practical benefit of reducing desk wobble, but also makes the phone look unmistakably iPhone-inspired. It’s a good-looking phone, though, and I actually quite like the camera island on the back.
The phone comes in two colors — black and dark cherry — the latter of which is the colorway for my review unit. I really like the look of it. It’s sleek and stylish without being overly bright, though to be clear, I do like colorful tech.
On the right side of the camera island sits the circular Bose subwoofer, surrounded by a white LED that flashes for calls and notifications and can pulse along with music and some games. It’s a flourish rather than a genuinely useful feature — though if you’re the kind of person who leaves your phone face down on a desk, it might be handy as a notification light, but I’ve never really found those all that useful.
The phone is also reasonably durable. It has an IP68 water- and dust-resistance rating, which means that it should survive submersion in up to 1.5 meters of water for up to 30 minutes. That said, you’ll still want to be careful with it — that rating is there as a fallback, and you shouldn’t take the phone swimming on purpose.
Beyond those design elements, the phone has a volume rocker and a power button on the right edge with a USB-C port on the bottom. The left side of the frame is empty. There are no extra buttons like the iPhone’s Action button, which I’m kind of glad to see, as they’re usually not very useful unless you can program them yourself.
