Although there are only a few Android phones are as desirable as the iPhone the range of handsets available allows people who can’t or won’t spend big money to own an iPhone to get their hands on a very capable smartphone at a lower price. In the early days budget Android phones were difficult to recommend on any grounds other than cost, tiny amounts of storage, low quality screens, and poor build quality were all to be expected from these low-end devices. In the last couple of years things have massively improved as far as cheap Android phones are concerned with EE and Vodafone doing especially well at producing the best bang for your buck.
In May EE’s £200 Harrier became one of the best budget options but Vodafone’s new Smart 6 Ultra may blow it out of the water. At just £125 on Pay As You Go the Smart Ultra 6 is a very affordable device and it’s surprising to see just how high-spec this phone is despite costing so little. At the heart of the Smart Ultra 6 is a 64-bit octa-core 1.5Ghz processor and with 2GB of RAM it has enough memory to cope with just about anything the Play Store can throw at it. the rear camera is 13 megapixel and around the front you’ve got a 5 megapixel sensor for taking high resolution selfies.
Storage is only 16GB but is expandable so you won’t be stuck without space to to store all your apps, games, and media even if the on-board storage isn’t enough. One thing that beats even many flagship devices is the battery with a very reasonable 3,000mAh capacity. You also get Android 5.0 Lollipop in a much purer state than you would on most devices from Samsung, HTC and other top manufacturers.
For a budget device the Smart 6 Ultra is quite a looker with a clean and attractive appearance plus it has some nice little touches like the glowing softkeys and iPhone 6 style camera placement. The large 5.5 screen is a good quality 1080p IPS display and thanks to its slim profile the Smart 6 Ultra isn’t too unwieldy for a device with such a large screen. Performance isn’t an issue with some of the most strenuous games such as Real Racing 3 running just fine on the Smart 6 Ultra.
In short you’d have to pay almost twice the price to find another phone as good as the Smart 6 Ultra and as long as you understand that it’s never going to compete with the Galaxy S6 or similar phones you won’t be disappointed. On paper the Smart 6 Ultra even looks more than a match for the iPhone 6 in most respects and for £125 you can’t really go too wrong. If you’ve had your phone for a couple of years then you may well be better off selling your old Android and cheaply moving to the Smart 6 Ultra.
Via: Vodafone