"A standard budget smartphone that does well in some areas, but falls
short in others. Unfortunately there are better phones out there that
cost the same or even less."
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- MP3/WMA/eAAC+/FLAC player
- XviD/MP4/H.263/H.264 player
- Organizer
- Document viewer
- Photo viewer/editor
- Voice memo/dial
- Predictive text input
Introduction As with a growing number of handsets such as the HTC Desire 510, EE Kestrel and Motorola Moto G 4G, the Vodafone Smart 4 Power brings 4G capability with a sub £200 price tag. On Vodafone's own online store
the Smart 4 Power is being sold for £120, making it a good deal cheaper
than the HTC Desire 510, which costs £149 and the Moto G 4G, which can
be had for around £155. While the Vodafone Smart 4 Power
is more affordable than these rivals, it still can't compete with the EE
Kestrel's incredibly low price of just £99. EE's offering is stubbornly
clinging to the title of lowest cost 4G-capable smartphone. If
you're looking for both a budget smartphone and a new network carrier
and the choice falls between EE and Vodafone, then that £20 difference
could be enough to sway you towards EE - unless the Smart 4 Power
provides good reasons for the more expensive price tag. The
first thing I noticed when I unpacked the Vodafone Smart 4 Power is
that this is a big phone, with the large bezel that surrounds the 5-inch
screen making it a substantial handset. The
Vodafone Smart 4 Power's dimensions are 141 x 71.4 x 9.5mm, a good deal
larger than the EE Kestrel's 133 x 65 x 7.85mm frame and the HTC Desire
510's 139.9 x 69.8 x 9.99mm, though both have smaller screens, with the
Kestrel coming with a 4.5-inch display, and the HTC Desire 510 sporting
a 4.7-inch. At this price, if you're keen on getting a large-screen device, you're going to have to accept a larger body as well. The
Vodafone Smart 4 Power's weight is a hefty 162g, so you'll certainly
know it's in your pocket. It gives the Vodafone Smart 4 Power a robust
feel that can be missing from budget smartphones. The
plastic back of the chassis sacrifices a premium feel but feels like it
could withstand the odd knock and drop. However, the lack of Gorilla
Glass over the display means it's unlikely to come off well from being
dropped face down or rubbing up against your keys. When
holding the Vodafone Smart 4 Power in one hand, the size and weight of
the handset begins to take its toll, and it's certainly not the most
comfortable smartphone I've used. If you're used to one-handed typing
and navigation then you're going to find yourself stretching to reach
all the corners of the screen. Even with my not
inconsiderably long digits I began feeling the strain of trying to
access certain areas of the screen, with the back button on the bottom
of the bezel proving particularly difficult to reach. Though
you could argue that this is par for the course with large-screen
smartphones, the thickness of the edges around the screen don't help. Making
life slightly easier is the location of the power button in the middle
of the right-hand side of the phone, just beneath the volume controls.
These are the only buttons on the body and they prove to be firm and
responsive when used. It does mean there's no dedicated
camera button, so the Vodafone Smart 4 Power isn't ideal if you want a
phone you can quickly whip out and take a shot with. A headphone jack is
located at the top-left of the body, with a micro USB port situated at
the bottom of the case. Removing
the back of the Smart 4 Power's case is easy, and once removed you get
access to the sim card slot and microSD expansion slot. Though
it's not quite as easy to get to as a microSD slot built into the side
of the case, the fact that the back of the case is so easy to remove
means I wasn't too bothered with the placement of the microSD slot in
the Smart 4 Power. The Vodafone Smart 4 Power will accept
microSD cards up to 32GB, which does a decent job of boosting storage
over the rather paltry 4GB of built-in storage. Considering
the cheaper EE Kestrel comes with 8GB of onboard storage, the 4GB of
storage seems pretty tight. Fresh out of the box with Android 4.4 and
other apps installed, you only actually get 1.8GB, which means that
expanding the Vodafone Smart 4 Power's storage space via microSD cards
is less of an option and more of a necessity, especially if you want to
take lots of photographs. While 32GB of additional space
should be more than enough for many people, it's worth pointing out that
some similarly priced phones such as the HTC Desire 510 can handle
microSD cards up to 128GB. The Vodafone Smart 4 Power comes in black or white. Its overall look is reminiscent of the Vodafone Smart 4 Mini, though quite a bit larger. It's a no-nonsense design which doesn't stand out against other budget handsets. While
it's certainly not ugly, and comes in either white or black, it's not
going to wow anyone either. Budget handsets such as the Moto G
demonstrate that just because a phone might have a low price tag, that
doesn't mean they have to look plain, which sadly the Vodafone Smart 4
Power does.
Interface, performance and battery
To help make the Vodafone Smart 4 Power feel like a modern
and feature-packed smartphone regardless of its price, it comes with
Android 4.4 (KitKat) installed as the operating system. The
Android 4.4 that comes installed on the Vodafone Smart 4 Power is the
standard stock affair, though it comes with a few Vodafone-flavoured
apps including Vodafone Discover. This app (and its widget that's
preinstalled on the home screen), offers quick access to settings such
as flight mode, along with various Vodafone services and deals. The
app itself is rather bland and uninspiring, and while you might get
some use out of it, I get the feeling that the app is more use to
Vodafone that it is to customers. I removed the widget from the home
screen pretty quickly, and I can image most people will as well. While
other Vodafone apps don't really prove to be much use (such as Smart
Flow, which is simply an animated wallpaper), you do at least get access
to all the apps you'd expect for Android 4.4 through Google's Play
Store. The Vodafone Smart 4 Power comes with Android 4.4 plus a few Vodafone-centric appsThe
components inside the Vodafone Smart 4 Power does the job acceptably
well powering the handset. The processor is a quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU
clocked at 1.3GHz, with a Mali-400MP2 GPU and 1GB of RAM. These
average specifications are roughly what I'd expect from a handset of
this price range, and is good at keeping up with most day-to-day tasks. Though
Android 4.4 has felt smoother and snappier on phones with higher specs
(as well as price tags), it still feels responsive on the Vodafone Smart
4 Power, though some apps take a second or two to load, rather than
appearing almost instantly. Even the rather simple
messaging app had a pause before it displayed the one solitary message
I'd sent. With a more populated inbox, this pause does grow slightly. For
a solid, no frills, Android KitKat experience, the Vodafone Smart 4
Power does a fine job, though it sometimes pauses when launching apps. On
the Geekbench 3 benchmark the Vodafone Smart 4 Power managed a
multi-core score of 1174, slightly below the EE Kestrel's 1190 and much
lower than the HTC Desire 510's score of 1330.
Battery life
The
Vodafone Smart 4 Power comes with a decently sized 3000mAh battery, a
good deal larger than the HTC Desire 510's 2100mAh offering, and the EE
Kestrel's 2000mAh power pack. This meant that during my
time with the Vodafone Smart 4 Power, it held onto its battery life
admirably. With medium to heavy use I managed to get two days use out of
it. This involved browsing the internet, playing a few games, making
calls and watching videos. With lighter use, I could
easily see the Vodafone Smart 4 Power stretch for at least another day.
The low price and impressive battery life means that if you're a keen
camper or festival goer, then the Vodafone Smart 4 Power would be a
decent choice. The
Vodafone Smart 4 Power also comes with a few power saving features.
These can be accessed through the battery management menu. The battery saving options are not as exhaustive as those seen in other handsets such as the HTC Desire 510. You
can choose to dim the brightness of the screen (and by how much), as
well as turn off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. There's also a setting for
'White list for backlight off', which lets you choose which apps you
want to stop running when the screen is turned off. It's
pretty basic, but it offers a quick and easy way to shut down services
and features to preserve the battery when you need it. The Vodafone Smart 4 Power comes with basic battery saving featuresIn
our battery test, which involves running a high definition video for 90
minutes with the screen at full brightness, the Vodafone Smart 4 Power
lost just 20% of its battery. In comparison, the EE Kestrel lost 30% of
its battery during the same test, while the HTC Desire 510 managed a
similarly impressive 19%. Playing the rather intensive
Real Racing 3 game for 15 minutes made the battery drop a further 7%,
though those 15 minutes were a bit of a chore due to the Vodafone Smart 4
Power's poor performance – more on that later. Throughout
the tests the Vodafone Smart 4 Power held onto its battery life
admirably, and can easily withstand a day of medium to heavy use.
Whether or not you'd want to use it for that long is another question...
The essentials and camera
As the 4G connection is one of the main selling points of
the Vodafone Smart 4 Power, it's going to be used a lot for browsing the
web, over 4G, 3G and wireless networks. It comes with two web browsers, Google Chrome and a native app. Both perform fine, though my preference is for Chrome. Web
pages were delivered quickly and the larger screen size meant that
reading text-heavy website was comfortable. Though I lamented the lower
resolution earlier in this reviey, for websites I found it actually
worked in the Smart 4 Power's favour. Because of the big
screen and lower resolution, text was large and easy to read, it meant I
didn't have to zoom in on websites to read them, like I have with
smartphones with higher resolutions. Vodafone clearly
wants the Smart 4 Power to be a smartphone you use to surf the internet
regardless of where you are, and in this regard I think it's done very
well. Making
and receiving calls is also fine, with the phone app providing a big
dial pad for typing in numbers. Again, the large screen helps make this a
good choice of phone for people who have trouble viewing and using
phones with smaller screens and higher resolutions. It
would have been nice to have more accessibility options to help people
who have trouble seeing use the phone, as the big screen is a real
benefit here. Call quality is perfectly acceptable, and though it falls short of the clarity found in more expensive phones such as the Xperia Z3, it's fine for a handset of this price. Text
messages are handled by Android's default Messaging app, so everything
is handled as expected. The 5-inch screen size of the Smart 4 Power can
be either a blessing or a curse here, depending on how comfortable you
are typing on a large screen. The Vodafone Smart 4 Power handles the essentials fine, but didn't blow me awayIt
makes the keys large and easy to hit, but I did find I was stretching
my fingers a bit more than usual when typing one-handed. When typing
with two hands, the larger screen (and therefore keyboard) helps make
sure your fingers aren't knocking into each other. I'm a
fast typist and was pleased to see that the keyboard kept up with my
furious key presses, smoothly correcting any spelling errors or typos as
I went along. Media and games are increasingly seen as
essential to the smartphone experience. As far as watching videos goes
on the Smart 4 Power, while the increased screen size is nice, the low
resolution of 540 x 960 pixels means you're not going to bask in the
glory of full HD. Video
playback was pretty disappointing, with both the low resolution and
juddery playback marring the viewing experience. Sadly I can't recommend
the Smart 4 Power for watching films, which means its nice big screen
goes to waste here. Music playback is handled by Google Play Music, with the sound quality being solid, but not mind blowing. Regardless
of the type of media you'd want to play on the Vodafone Smart 4 Power,
you'll want to invest in a memory card, as the Smart 4 Power's paltry
4GB of internal space will fill up very quickly. With Android 4.4 installed you have access to Google Play Store and a huge range of apps and games. Again,
you're going to be limited to how many apps and games you install
because of the low internal memory, however you may need to lay off some
of the more intensive games due to the relatively weak specifications
of the Smart 4 Power.
Camera
The Vodafone Smart 4
Power features a main camera with a 5 megapixel sensor. I wasn't
expecting much considering the price of the handset, and though the
photos taken with the Smart 4 Power were acceptable, they lacked
sharpness and clarity. This meant that certain details were lost. Colour reproduction was OK, but some snaps did appear washed out. What
I did like about the Smart 4 Power's camera was how fast it managed to
take photos, with barely a pause from when I pressed the screen to the
image being captured. A dedicated camera button on the body would have
made it much more useful for taking quick shots. A
front-facing VGA camera is also present, though the low quality of the
camera leads to blurred looking shots, so you'll want to look elsewhere
if you're a fan of taking selfies. The Smart 4 Power's
rear camera can also capture 720p video. It does the job fine, though
even at 720p resolution the footage suffers from the same lack of
sharpness as the still photos. If you want a cheap
smartphone that can take the odd short video to put up on Facebook or
YouTube, then you might not mind the Smart 4 Power's lack of finesse
when it comes to image quality. if you're looking for a camera that can
capture once in a lifetime events, you'd be much better looking
elsewhere.
The Vodafone Smart 4 Power is a difficult phone to either
recommend or write off. For everything eit dos right, such as a
brilliant battery life and decent Android performance, it disappoints in
other respects, such as its poor quality camera and screen. However, these disappointments are balanced by a low price that makes me more willing to forgive some of its transgressions.
As
I said at the beginning of this review, creating a budget handset is a
delicate balancing act between keeping the price as low as possible
while packing in enough power and features to make a desirable
smartphone. Unfortunately, I don't think Vodafone has got the balance
quite right.
We liked
There's not much to dislike
about the price, and the Vodafone Smart 4 Power is one of the cheapest
4G capable smartphones on the market. If you're after a cheap no frills
smartphone, you'll probably be perfectly happy with the Smart 4 Power. Battery
life is excellent as well, which makes the Smart 4 Power a good choice
as an emergency backup phone, or one that you could happily take camping
without worrying about having to find a charging point every day. I also liked the build quality, which made the phone feel sturdy and well built despite its low price.
We disliked
Though
the screen is large, the resolution is unfortunately too low, making
the Android user interface look a bit ugly. Videos also suffer from the
poor resolution, and the low specs of the smartphone means it can
struggle with some high-definition video. The camera
quality is also poor, and although I wasn't expecting much from a
smartphone at this price, I was still left disappointed. The
4GB of in-built storage is also very small compared to its competitors,
and even straight out of the box you'll find very little room to store
apps or photographs, forcing you to buy a microSD card.
Final verdict
If
you buy the Vodafone Smart 4 Power knowing exactly what you're going to
get (which is a cheap 4G smartphone that's good for browsing the web
and little else), then you may not be disappointed. However, while it is cheaper than some of its rivals, crucially it's still not as cheap as the EE Kestrel, which although has a smaller screen, is comparable to the Smart 4 Power in a number of ways. It's also worth bearing in mind that although the Vodafone Smart 4 Power is around £30 cheaper than the HTC Desire 510 and the Moto G 4G
you might need to invest in a microSD card to increase the storage
space, which would eliminate the price advantage of the Smart 4 Power. Unfortunately,
that price advantage is all the Smart 4 Power has over the Desire 510
and the G 4G, which means either of those are a much wiser purchase.
