Are you sleeping appily?

Hi all.

Yes i'm still here - I'll explain that in the next post but for now I want to speak to you about something close to my heart. Tiredness, something we've all experienced in one or more ways with embarrassing consequences from time to time (trust me, falling asleep on the bus is never fun.) Especially as one in three Brits claim to have slept through their stop when commuting due to tiredness.

But it's time to claim back that happy sleepy time as March is National Bed Month and our good friends at Vodafone have rounded up some of the best sleep apps to help tackle tiredness – all of which are available to download on the Vodafone Smart platinum 7

Now it's all good and well saying try some apps on an amazing phone (trust me - I own one)  but not without some of the best apps out there to aid a restful nights sleep. So here we list the best four apps for sleep training and tracking to dream journals and gentle alarm clocks to help fight fatigue right at your fingertips!

Our top four for Appy Dreams.
Sleep Genius – | Android (£4.89), iOS (£4.99) Designed by experts in neuroscience, sleep, sound and music, Sleep Genius helps you sleep longer, deeper and faster than ever before. Neurosensory algorithms help you get ready for sleep, train your brain into its natural sleep rhythms and wake you with a gentle refreshing alarm. PROs: Guides your brain through each stage in the sleep cycle Gentle refreshing alarm Relaxation program which reduces stress and anxiety	Sleep Cycle | Android, iOS (Free) Sleep Cycle is the intelligent alarm clock that makes waking up easy. The app helps to analyse your sleep and wake you in your lightest sleeping phase – the natural way to wake up so you feel rested and relaxed. PROs: Wakes you in your lightest sleeping phase Gives you detailed sleep statistics and sleep graphs each night Has 15 carefully selected, high quality alarm melodies
SleepBot : Android (63p), iOS (Free) This innovative sleep cycle tracking app will record any movements and sounds that you make during the night and can provide detailed graphs showing motion, sound, sleep debt, wake patterns and sleep times. It also has a dependable optimal alarm that lets you customize your sleep tracking. PROs: Can track sleep talking and snoring Has handy solutions to fall asleep or stay awake The only sleep app that includes motion and sound graphs, sleep debt log, statistics, trend graphs (averages, sleep/wake times, patterns) and multiple custom alarms	Awoken : Android (Free) Awoken is a lucid dreaming guide that helps you understand your dreams and has techniques to achieve and control clearer dreams. It helps you to become aware that you are dreaming and then helps shape, influence and direct your dreams with clarity. Features such as ‘Dream Journal’ let you jot down your dreams in a diary and review them later. You can also search the most common words from your journal so you can monitor any reoccurring themes.  PROs: Keep your dream journal entries in a searchable list Search the most common words and themes from your search journal Helps shape, influence and direct your dreams with clarity

.

So my fellow night owls give these a try and tell me what you think - I will add more of your personal picks on sleepy time application if you can suggest some

Paul

The Sony Xperia Z3 Review

Hi all,

Last week I posted my initial thoughts on the Vodafone 4G Powered Sony Xperia Z3 smartphone and whilst the phone has gone back now it's left an incredibly good impression on me. Truth be told It's raised the benchmark in terms of expectations in build quality, while many see Sony as a lesser manufacturer I say be weary of such a view, they have a lot more potential than many give them credit for.

In this full review I'll also be talking about how I put Vodafone's upgraded 4G network using the Xperia Z3

Let's start with the phone itself. With dimensions of 146 x 72 x 7.3 mm (5.75 x 2.83 x 0.29 in) and weighing 152 g it's a tall and thin device with 5.2 inch display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels giving you a pixel density of approximately 424 pixels per inch. Encased in a metal and glass frame it feels amazing in the hand with a reassuring build quality, lacking from some other flagship devices. I do have one caveat about the rear glass panel, while shatter-proof and they are lovely to hold and look at. They don't grip well on certain materials which could result in your phone taking a tumble, while I'm confident it can withstand a few knocks and bumps, a case is recommend to ensure such a nice phone stays protected.

Also rejoice in the Z3's IP68 certification, meaning it's both dust proof and water resistant over 1 meter and 30 minutes, perfect for the parent with the children who think your devices require a cold refreshing drink on a warm summers day!

The user interface on the Sony Z3 is well thought out and designed to ensure you to get the most out of it. I feel they've hit the nail on the head here with a perfect user experience for both old and new Android users, with the additional treat of the device transfer tools from Sony to help you move your content from your previous device to another. Although for those less confident, Vodafone do offer assistance with transferral of data in-store thanks to the in store Red Box transfer service.

The overall user experience of the handset is enhanced by usefully placed buttons, with the lock/power, volume and dedicated 2 stage shutter key, all placed in an ergonomically sound position to reduce the chance of over stretching while taking snaps, turning the tunes up or simply checking the time.

I'll not go through specifications again as their in the first thoughts post, but I will say this now it'll run everything you want it to and so much more, while trying to push the phone it became apparent the CPU had plenty of grunt left to spare.
During the two weeks, I put the Z3's Non-removable Li-Ion 3100 mAh battery through it's paces - charging it until 7am to see how long it would last until it got to 10% under both normal and heavy load to me and colour me happy, one charge under normal use lasted me around two and a half days with heavier use coming in at just shy of two days. Although low battery is not a concern thanks to the built in Quick Charge 2.0 technology giving you a fast battery charge averaging 60% in 30 mins, making this phone perfect for heavy users, meaning more time doing things and less time attached to a charger port.

The cameras on the Sony Z3 are awesome, there's no other way to put it. The 20.7 mega-pixel Sony Exmor IMX220 camera produce crisp images with good colour reproduction and up to Ultra HD 4K video, we've uploaded a 4k video for your viewing pleasure with thanks to the smalls for showing off their tree hut. (I apologise, it's a tad loud.)

Then we come onto the front facing camera, a 2.2 mega-pixel sensor includes 1080p full HD video recording capabilities. On testing both cameras capabilities they held up fantastically, no matter the conditions we threw at the Z3 it produced a fantastic image every time. Helped by the plethora of options, while many sound more at home on DSLR cameras they've made themselves at home here ready for your adventurous side to come out to play. For those who just need point and shoot, the automatic mode will do a perfectly good job of choosing the best mode for your photographic needs.

Call quality was fantastic with no good call clarity, ringtones and vibrate work well too, loud enough to hear and feel.

Multimedia is well covered on the Xperia Z3 with Walkman, a fully featured media player, widely compatible with most music files, meaning Sony has you well covered. And you movie lovers are also well covered too, the media player is packed full of popular media codecs, with Sony's X-Reality Engine and Triluminos image enhancements, meaning your favourite movies look better than ever. Audio produced through the bundled headphones or front facing stereo speakers sound great with minimal distortion or crackle at full volume.

And for those streaming media fans, Vodafone has your back with RED 4G packages bringing exclusive entertainment bundles, including Spotify Premium, NOW TV or Sky Sports and vastly improved service thanks to the recently announced investment and upgrades to the Vodafone 4G network, resulting in a far wider cell coverage, greater call clarity and faster internet access, and with new Red 4G customers set to receive an increase in data allowances it's never been a better time to check Vodafone out.

With the upgrades in mind Vodafone tasked me to put the local network through it's paces as a power user with continuous internet use and bundled Spotify premium for entertainment, meaning the iPod was left at home. I found the 4G Lte network extremely fast in direct comparison to another 4g provider in the area, with speed tests averaging 8-31 Mbit/sec upload and an average upload of 10-25 Mbit/sec resulting in speedy downloading of apps, streaming your favourite music or sharing of images, video and social media interactions.

On using the network for my daily dose of digital goodness with an added flood of music was faultless with the network going from strength to strength with near seamless switchover from 3G and 4G networks, meaning continuous music and data on the go with no hiccups. The winning feature for Spotify premium is the ability to download a whole album for 30 days at a time means those who are data savvy can relax, knowing all is taken care of for you without a huge bill for data. Using Spotify to download an entire album, for example Savlonic - Red, took around two minutes to download, whereas larger albums, took on average five minutes.
For fair comparison I conducted similar tests using a throttled WIFI connection with a maximum throughput of 30 Mbit/sec to see if the speeds of testing downloading content through Spotify was any different and It seemed to happen at similar speeds.

The 4G network handled everything I could throw at it better than I expected with no complaints from myself or my wife when I let her try the handset, she wanted to swap it for her S4.

In conclusion the Sony Xperia Z3 is a well equipped phone ready for whatever you throw at it, with good looks, large capacity battery, water and dust proof, cracking set of cameras and super fast 4G LTE ready to go, it's one mobile powerhouse you should consider buying if your looking for a new phone.

As for Vodafone, I have to say the service they offer has vastly improved over the last few months with the recent updates to the 4G network here in my area it brings a fast, stable and reliable mobile network for all types of mobile users, from the power users like myself who need to be contactable at all times, Social media addicts pining for their next like or retweet, teens who need their Tumblr fix, right down to aunt Mabel who religiously calls the grandchildren every weekend. Vodafone have you covered, no matter your needs, big or small.


If you have any questions about the phone, network or for more information on Vodafone's new tariffs, services and 4G for all new connections, please let me know and I'll respond promptly.
Paul

The Sony Xperia Z3 Review - First thoughts

Hiya,

Over the last few years Vodafone UK have been investing in their network, upgrading and improving 4G services to the point they could comfortably release some fantastic value devices with RED 4G services and features, that I've talked about already on prepay!
As impressive as the upgrades have been, around a month ago it was announced by our local store that Vodafone had rolled out an improved 4G services, bringing in wider coverage, faster internet speeds and improved call clarity within the UK, let alone the local area. As a result of this I was challenged to put the network through it's paces with the Sony Xperia Z3 and their exclusive Spotify premium entertainment bundle on the RED XL tariff.



In the first few hours of use I have to say I like it a lot. It feels incredibly solid and looks beautiful, compared to the Samsung Galaxy s5 it feels nicer in the hand.
Internal wise it's also very impressive, The 2.5GHz Quad core Snapdragon 810 packed with 3GB ram and 16GB internal storage (32gb model also available) makes for an ultra powerful, fast smartphone. With additional features including IP65 water resistant construction, shatter proof glass, NFC and smart watch compatibility, topped off with the Sony Home launcher it's high quality throughout.

On first tests of local 4G Services I was impressed too, with speeds at between 13 and 27Mbit/sec it's fast enough to download a whole album and a few games in minutes, rather than waiting until you get home.

The specifications, as always with big love to team GSMArena.

NETWORK Technology : GSM / HSPA / LTE

BODY:
Dimensions 146 x 72 x 7.3 mm (5.75 x 2.83 x 0.29 in)
Weight 152 g (5.36 oz)

Uses Nano-SIM

DISPLAY Type IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size 5.2 inches (~70.9% screen-to-body ratio)
Resolution 1080 x 1920 pixels (~424 ppi pixel density)
Multitouch Yes, up to 10 fingers
Protection Shatter proof glass - IP68 certified - dust proof and water resistant over 1 meter and 30 minutes

OS Android OS, v4.4.4 (KitKat), upgradable to v5.0 (Lollipop)

Chipset
Qualcomm MSM8974AC Snapdragon 801 SOC
CPU Quad-core 2.5 GHz Krait 400
GPU Adreno 330

MEMORY
MicroSD Card slot Maximum capacity, 128 GB
Internal Storage 16 GB,
Ram 3 GB RAM

CAMERA
Primary 20.7 MP (5248 х 3936 pixels)
Features 1/2.3'' sensor size, geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR, panorama, autofocus, LED flash,

Video
Primary Video 2160p@30fps, 1080p@60fps, 720p@120fps
Secondary Video 1080p@30fps

COMMS
WLAN - Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, hotspot
Bluetooth -  v4.0, A2DP, apt-X
GPS - Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, Beidou
NFC - Yes
Radio - FM radio with RDS
USB - microUSB v2.0 (MHL 3 TV-out), USB Host

FEATURES
Sensors - Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer
Messaging - SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, IM, Push Email
Browser - HTML5 (chrome pre-installed)
Java - via Java MIDP emulator

ADDITONAL FEATURES
- Fast battery charging: 60% in 30 min (Quick Charge 2.0)
- ANT+ support
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- Xvid/MP4/H.264 player
- MP3/eAAC+/WAV/Flac player
- Document viewer
- Photo viewer/editor
- Voice memo/dial
MANUFACTURER BATTERY INFO
Non-removable Li-Ion 3100 mAh battery
Stand-by Up to 890 h (2G) / Up to 740 h (3G)
Talk time Up to 14 h (2G) / Up to 16 h (3G)
Music play Up to 130 h

The full review will be up on Friday, as the phone will be back with Vodafone by then. But, you have any questions, please ask and I'll respond as quick as properly.

Paul :)

The Samsung Galaxy S5 and Gear Fit Review Pt 2

This is part 2 of a two part review. Click here for part 1.

Hi all,

Over the last two weeks I've been using the Vodafone Powered Samsung Galaxy S5 phone and Gear Fit fitness band/smartwatch while doing the #SchoolPedal with the kids and tracking our progress.
I must warn you this is a long one, with no TL:DR spoilers at the bottom!

While the review is primarily about the devices we will be talking a lot about the fitness benefits of the device duo so without further ado, let's crack on with the devices themselves,

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is the SM-G900M Vodafone specific build of the device, be happy in the fact Vodafone have listened to it's customers and left out the bloat, while there is a few Vodafone Specific applications they've not caused me any issue. So rest assured you're getting a good experience from the get go, also Android Lollipop is on the way too!
The handset is a very well crafted desirable phone, with a premium feel, with it's gold leatherette style battery panel to the feint gold colouring etched into the touch panel bezel it oozes class in my mind. It's a good looking phone with some very desirable internal goodness to live it's days out as a perfect companion to you.

Thanks to the amazing people at GSMARENA we've got the handsets full specifications and data from the tests they've done at their labs. We love you guys!

2G Network
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 - all versions

3G Network
HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 - SM-G900F
HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 - SM-G900A
HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100 - SM-G900M
HSDPA 850 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100 - SM-G900T

4G Network
LTE 800 / 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 / 2100 / 2600 - SM-G900F
LTE 700 / 850 / 1700 / 1800 / 1900 / 2100 / 2600 - SM-G900A
LTE 700 / 850 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100 / 2600 - SM-G900M
LTE 700/850/900/1700/1800/1900/2100/2600 - SM-G900T

Sim Type - Micro-SIM

Announced - 2014, February
Status - Available. Released 2014, April
BODY
Dimensions 142 x 72.5 x 8.1 mm (5.59 x 2.85 x 0.32 in)
Weight 145 g (5.11 oz)
 - Fingerprint sensor (PayPal certified)
- IP67 certified - dust and water resistant
- Water resistant up to 1 meter and 30 minutes

DISPLAY:
Type Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors 1080 x 1920 pixels,
5.1 inches (~432 ppi pixel density)
Multitouch Yes
Glass Protection Corning Gorilla Glass 3

SOUND
Alert types Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
Loudspeaker Yes
3.5mm jack Yes

MEMORY:
Card slot microSD, up to 128 GB
Internal 16/32 GB, 2 GB RAM

Connectivity:
DATA GPRS Yes
EDGE Yes
Speed HSPA 42.2/5.76 Mbps, LTE Cat4 150/50 Mbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot
Bluetooth v4.0, A2DP, EDR, LE, apt-X
NFC Yes
Infrared port Yes
USB microUSB v3.0 (MHL 2.1 TV-out), USB Host

CAMERA:
Primary 16 MP, 5312 x 2988 pixels, phase detection autofocus, LED flash, check quality
Features 1/2.6'' sensor size, 1.12 µm pixel size, Dual Shot, Simultaneous HD video and image recording, geo-tagging, touch focus, face/smile detection, HDR
Video 2160p@30fps, 1080p@60fps, 720p@120fps, HDR, dual-video rec., check quality
Secondary 2 MP, 1080p@30fps, dual video call

FEATURES:
Android OS, v4.4.2 (KitKat), upgradable to v5.0 (Lollipop)
Chipset - Qualcomm MSM8974AC Snapdragon 801
CPU - Quad-core 2.5 GHz Krait 400 GPU Adreno 330
Sensors - Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer, gesture, heart rate
Messaging - SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM
Browser - HTML5
Radio - No
GPS - Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, Beidou
Java - Yes, via Java MIDP emulator

Colors:
Charcoal Black, Copper Gold, Electric Blue, Shimmery White

Additonal:
Wireless charging (Qi-enabled) - market dependent
- ANT+ support
- S-Voice natural language commands and dictation
- Smart stay, Smart pause, Smart scroll
- Air gestures
- Dropbox (50 GB cloud storage)
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264 player
- MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+/FLAC player
- Photo/video editor
- Document viewer
BATTERY:
Li-Ion 2800 mAh battery
Stand-by Up to 390 h
Talk time Up to 21 h
Music play Up to 67 h

MISC:
SAR US 1.20 W/kg (head)     1.58 W/kg (body)  
SAR EU 0.56 W/kg (head)     0.41 W/kg (body)  

TESTS:
Performance Basemark OS II: 1082 / Basemark X: 11744
Display Contrast ratio: Infinite (nominal), 3.549 (sunlight)
Loudspeaker Voice 66dB / Noise 66dB / Ring 75dB
Audio quality Noise -96.3dB / Crosstalk -95.2dB
Battery life Endurance rating 72h


Now onto the Gear Fit wearable fitness band, before you get excited it's not running android, while many applications are compatible with the band it's more of a fitness companion over smartwatch so please bear that in mind when choosing this.

The Galaxy Gear Fit will only work with 17 Samsung handsets officially so this does put it at a disadvantage compared to Android wear, and similar products on the market, this I feel should change this as it could be a unique seller for Samsung on a wider level.

However where it wins brownie points is the beautiful curved touch-screen, boasting an incredibly beautiful 432 x 128 pixel resolution Super AMOLED display, bringing great brightness, amazingly bright colours and considerably less battery draw compared to traditional LCD Displays. Being curved the device feels natural on the hand compared to some early smartwatches, on top of this it's minimal weight makes it feel more like a watch than a smart companion.

Key Features:
Bluetooth 4.0 low power draw
Curved 432x128 pixel display with touch
Heartrate monitor
App connect for third party application paring
Sleep monitoring mode
Pedometer
Media controller
Phone notifications and reader,
Incoming call controls
Excercise mode with running, walking, cycling, hiking and exercise log/history (these tie into the S Health application)

For the rest of this post we'll talk about the devices and how well they work together, while this may mean a part three it's well worth it I promise you now.

The SGS5 is a well crafted smartphone with all the power one could need to go through the day and that is down to the generous 2800mAH battery, add the beautiful HD display, ip65 waterproofing, fingerprint sensor for secure payments, UltraHD 4K video capabilities with editor tools and NFC functionality make for a highly desirable powerhouse with everything you could possibly need and want. But we'll get to that in higher detail later in the post. 

Before we get into the review I'll explain how it's been used. 

I've been using both S Health and Endomondo for fitness tracking comparison, both are free applications with one built into firmware and the other available on the Play store, with Samsung generously offering a years premium service to get you on the way, even for newbies to the pleasure of releasing the endorphins will appreciate such a generous offer. (For privacy of my children and their classmates at school I'll not mention or show tracking data from the daily School Pedal, while some are on-line the tracker was disabled away from the school. Any that pinpoint the school will remain hidden or deleted)

S Health is a one stop well being shop with many, many features not found in premium applications, especially when pared with a Galaxy Gear device or similar fitness band/watch it becomes an ultimate tool kit to aid in achieving or fitness and health goals in life. Now I can't lie I was hesitant to  use S Health due to the need of a Samsung account but once I bit the bullet I actually regret not doing so sooner.
As the screenshots show, the S Health tool show's you're progress through a day with quite achievable goals, 10,000 steps for walking is easy and I beat this target often through the review. Similarly to the goals set for cycling, S Health sets the goal's for you and let's you smash them, and once you do, both devices let you know, by means of a little buzz on the hand or an audio message played through headphones, with the audio messages being notifications of half way points, encouragement when you slow down or seem to be feigning, I promise you now when you're feeling deflated, the bike's brakes thickly coated in a mix of mud and leaves, making every inch moving torture. Just hearing "you're doing great, keep it up" helped so so much the smile came back and I was trying my best to hoon (speed up) it despite the mud causing me the pleasure of slipping and crunching one's chestnuts on the crossbar! Always a pleasant experience.

The only problem I found (and this may be me doing something wrong) was the Gear fit wouldn't monitor my heart rate while riding, meaning my most recent ride/mudfest missed out some information I would have liked to have for comparison, I think this was due to me using the phone to commence the ride rather than using the Gear fit, but I can't confirm this as it went back the same day I was completing the post. I must say though I'm happy Samsung made the S5 and the Gear Fit IP65 water resistant here as they got a little moist in my pocket and muddy on my wrist.

The handset itself runs well, and while I wish some of the Google tools were the defaults here I get what Samsung are trying to achieve here by utilising their own applications. This is done for device uniformity throughout their Android, Tizen and Feature phones so I can fully understand and appreciate the reasoning for this. Many manufacturers could learn from this methodology.

On testing the 16 mega-pixel camera I was impressed, even in the cold it held up well, producing some fantastic shots, with similar quality to the Nokia N8, I've left the images on Flickr as it seems to leave the images as I intended them to look without any editing. Images come out good, despite the autofocus likes the odd slowdown at times but it's caught up as your taking the shot with the shot improving through sheer fluke. On top of that the camera modes are top notch too.
While I didn't play with all modes on trying HDR images came out as you would expect,

Video comes out beautifully with 4K ultra HD capabilities, but I would recommend using the phones microphone over the wired headset's as you'll hear in this video. Additionally the lighting in this shot is not the best thanks to a mix of florescent lights, LED's and natural light coming through the roof lights.



On top of high quality video recording playback is no problem, including 4K UHD clips, playing UHD was easy for the phone while I suspect most users will be watching youtube and facebook videos so for majority the GPU will tick along quite nicely, on this note higher performance games ran with no lag or issues.

Audio and music performance is very good on this handset, in fact it's miles better than the iPhone I have here to pit it against. And I'm not just talking volume here, audio and voice quality is sublime, no doubt down to software and hardware enhancements to improve things on an aural level for all users.
When showing the phone off the first thing friends did was launch the music player and they were very impressed with the quality Even if my choices of music from The Beards, Steel Panther to Lindesfarne could not have been any more diverse.
The bundled headphones sound fantastic, with great all around sound, the Microphone was a bit boxy as shown in the above video, but it's a fair compromise here as we can't have it all

Data access was kindly provided by Vodafone's Red 4G services. Our town is awaiting a 4G boos in the near future so for now we have 2G, 3G and HSPA based services available, with decent speed tests of approximately 2-4MB on 3G whereas H+ on average pulled around 4-6MB. This is about normal for the local area.

GPS Signal took next to no time to latch, even on 2g, this with Google's built in wifi and cell location service disabled for most of the fortnight so again impressive.

Image credit: DailyTech LLC

Battery impressed me a lot, Many phones won't last two days on moderate - heavy use this did. Impressive when I'm used to charging daily, my only niggle here was the connection, a USB 3.0 plug, I've only used one other device with this jack and didn't like it much at all, more down to the fact I had to concentrate on what I was doing more than normal when connecting the phone to a charger or pc, the USB 3.0 Micro USB port is a slightly different design to Micro USB 2.0, despite being compatible if not used to it it can be fiddly.

Now the phone also includes a fingerprint sensor, certified for PayPal payments which I've not tested due to time constraints, but it's a good innovation.

A welcome addition to the phone comes in the shape of Kids Mode,
A fall-back to the success of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Kids edition it's a child safe android launcher, with individual user accounts for all your children. housing a child safe app store with pre-installed child friendly music player, camera, doodle pad and gallery. to exit kids mode you need to enter a pin code, if by chance the little angels lock the device out a quick login to your Google account will fix it.



In Conclusion the Vodafone Samsung Galaxy S5 and Gear Fit are a great duo for both every day use and improving health and well-being for everyone thanks to the wide array of applications designed for both to work together in unison. Add in the High build quality and high end components it's a daily driver even iPhone users can and have turned to.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is available is available for £34.50 on Vodafone Red 4G price plans 

Thanks to Vodafone for the loan of the S5 and Gear fit for the duration of this review, 

The Vodafone Smart 4 Turbo review Pt2

This post forms part of a three post review Hands on | Part 1 | Part 2

Evening,

As promised in Part one this is part two of the Vodafone Smart 4 Turbo review. This part will talk about the hardware, how it performs to similarly priced devices and the phones strengths and any physical weaknesses that we may find.

Now it's here I remind you this is a budget handset with only a few recently released equals, three of those being the EE/Huawei Kestral/P6 and the Motorola Moto E and Moto G LTE. with budget 4g devices being in high demand these days it's good to see a fair few available from multiple manufacturers.

Many budget phones are a pure plastic affair, with many being a bit poor on the build quality side of things, but here the build quality looks and feels great compared to other similar priced devices. The phone has a more premium feel thanks to a metal casing, but that's not where the goodness ends. The NFC enabled back cover has some clever tricks under it's sleeve, housed under the rear casing are two little retaining clips which hold both the memory and SIM cards safely in place, to prevent these coming out or becoming damaged if the phone flexes too much, which in this case won't happen as much thanks to the metal side housing.

The metal side casing houses the headphone jack, Micro USB port at the top, and on the sides a volume rocker and a lock/power button, while it looks good here the USB Port annoys me as it's not angled to protect the port and prevent the user from putting the charger in the wrong way. But we all use common sense here, right?

The Smart 4 Turbo's 4.5inch lcd display boasts a low, but acceptable resolution of 480 x 854 pixels with a 218 pixel per inch density, it boasts good colours, with very acceptable readability in sunlight.

The touch panel is a standard panel with no apparent tempering or oleophobic (anti fingerprint) coating. Sadly the handset went through an ultimate strength test, the device suffered a fall onto the pavement as a result of me falling flat on the ground on a wonky pavement, causing the panel to crack, it fell from my hand at around 30 centimetres away from the ground, I feel here Vodafone and Yulong should have have used a composite plastic/fibre glass panel as used on many lower end LG's and Alcatel devices to toughen up the glass, or bundle a screen protector into the box to help prevent panel damage.

The Smart 4 Turbo has a storage of 4 gigabytes and while perfectly usable in day to day situation it's not a huge amount and means many people will require a MicroSD card as well. It'll make a worthwhile improvement in the long run especially at the low price of removable storage these days!. The Smart 4 Turbo's 1Gb of RAM is perfectly paired with the Qualcomm MSM8926 Snapdragon 400 quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 CPU making multitasking a breeze, more intensive applications seem to run without any problems or complaints. Add in the Adreno 305 Graphics processor and it a silky smooth, butter like user experience and a perfect entry level kick into perfectly acceptable fast paced gaming on Android.

Battery life is VERY Impressive, and I genuinely wish more expensive devices held up this well, I was testing it this weekend just gone in predominately 4G areas, Chessington, Surbiton and Kingston Upon Thames. The 1880 mAH battery lasted over a day with calls, 4g YouTube for the kids, app downloads and syncing photos to my computer at the hotel via dropbox It was taken off charge at 6:40AM and put back on charge at 11:40 with 9% left in the battery, leaving me confident it would keep going well into the following day. This was a huge win for the device in my eyes as it holds up as well as higher end devices. The charger is a a 1000mA device, which does what it says on the tin!

Now I did do a lot of speed tests for comparative purposes and also to make sure I was not seeing any erroneous results.
4G seems to be very dependant on the area still as the Upload speeds were vastly better than Download speeds with the odd exception in Kingston Upon Thames as shown on my left. However as with all speed tests you do need to take them with a pinch of salt as they are not the most accurate, especially when many connections could be throttled by the servers or websites you're visiting or the content you wish to stream.


Now the camera is a 5MP sensor with Autofocus, While it's not the latest and greatest it does work fairly well as seen by this sample image taken in low light. I only have one complaint here and that's the how the camera's interface lags at times for next to no reasons, but images are more than acceptable.

The camera can also record in HD 720p, SD 480p and 640*480 resolutions,
Below are some test clips, filmed on the Luton and Dunstable Busway as pre-emptive test due to the items in the fore and background and the flattish nature of the track, despite my wobbly camera work. In my opinions it's good for small videos and quick YouTube videos, but in the right light and conditions it'll do a good job for vlogs.

480P video test clip


HD720p Video Test Clip


NFC works well, it had a few wobbles on advertisements on the trains but 9 times out of 10 were great. I didn't test the pay by tap options as I would prefer to rack charges to a review unit, but I've been told it would work with contactless payment, including the tube's oyster system. file sharing via NFC and Bluetooth also work great too. I also tested it with a friends NFC embedded Nokia BH-121. It paired perfectly worked well.
On top of this Bluetooth worked great, audio and voice quality were great and file transfers worked well. I tested it with both my Nokia BH-214 and Plantronics discovery 957 and also my friends BH-121 as mentioned above. No complaints from me.

Ringtones and vibrate functions were clear, loud and vibrate was strong, this alone is enough for many end users.

Now for the Benchmarks. I'm not sure how good these are compared to some phones but I assume they are better than many. Programs used were Quadrant Standard, AnTuTu Benchmark and Vellamo.


Starting with Vellamo beta,
It seems to think the phone is at the lower end of the spectrum which is expected from a beta benchmarking tool still in testing with multi core SOC's, due to the beta it's lower than many devices but it holds up well.

In this instance we're beating the MotoG in many cases and some considerably older but more expensive phones are beating us, while I feel it's not the best test I'd rather show you truthfully!

Next We go to Quantum Standard, It's again at the lower end of the spectrum but still better than could be expected for similar devices. Beating the HTC One X is a darned good achievement for a budget phone. I like that a lot, Well done Yulong and Vodafone!

Our AnTuTu Benchmark tests shows very confident results and holds up well to quite a few more expensive, midrange devices.

The benchmarks are very good from how I understand these tests.
My conclusion is the Vodafone Smart 4 Turbo is a well thought out 4G phone, with a good design, feel and a perfect user interface, at a price point that to me is still a huge bargain, It's performance may not be as fast as the latest and greatest devices but considering it's stellar battery life, 4g functionality and build quality I would easily recommend this as a daily driver phone for a wide variety of people. While the touch panel broke on me in a fall I'm certain it's not going to happen to everyone. If you would like to try a demo handset pop into your local Vodafone store, I know the new Dunstable store has some for you to try out, and many stores are getting them over the next week or two.

My final question....

Is this worth your money?

I would have to say depending on your needs yes, yes, YES! It's a decently thought out phone, good connectivity, and not an all plastic design. At £26.50 a month or £135 prepaid it's well worth a punt in my opinion.

Paul

The Vodafone Smart 4 Turbo Review Pt1

This post forms part of a three post review Hands on | Part 1 | Part 2

Over the last two weeks I've been putting one of the newest handsets from Vodafone, the Smart 4 Turbo through it's paces.

As there will be a lot to cover this review will be a two part affair, part one focusing on the phone, it's software and ease of use from day to day use and the main question on my mind, is it worth the £135 price tag.
With part two will focus on the hardware including the battery, screen, optics, 4g vs 3g speed tests, device strengths and weakness and benchmarks

The phone itself is very similar in size to the Samsung galaxy s2, but feels a a lot better in the hand, while it's the usual plastic back we're getting used to with Vodafone devices in the past but with a hugely premium feel for the market it's aimed at. The device have very good flexibility while in the pocket and does not seem to creak when tested, on top of this the rear of the case also holds the SD and Sim cards safely in position to help prevent removal by flex as they are not lockable. It feels great in the hand with a sturdy feel and well suited to both the larger and daintiest of hands, much to the joy of my children who've loved playing games on it.

Software wise the Smart 4 and the smart 4 turbo are both rocking the latest version of Android, similarly to the Moto G lte, Similarly they've left it as a stock setup, while it does have Vodafone services installed on the device they are non intrusive and easily disabled in settings and/or removed from the main home screens, while I know these are not to everyone's tastes and I'm not overly keen on them but in this instance they are finally utilising new tools inside these to help find wifi hotspots and tell you batter life and storage space in handy indicators.

Additionally, the phone comes with no demos on the device, something of a refreshing thing to see, especially as these trials are usually 30 second limited things with little value to many so with this, and in many cases non-installable without rooting and voiding your warranty in the process so it's great to see. Thanks Vodafone for a double barrelled win.

I've used the phone as a parent and blogger rather than a geek here on this side of the review to provide a real world view of the device so it's had the usual application I use day in day out installed being YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Molome, with Google Calendar, G+ and Yahoo Email for good measure. There were some glitches I will mention soon, just in case it's an isolated issue with the firmware.

For you music lover you get Google Play Music bundled in and while I prefer Winamp Pro for it's graphic equalizer and extra audio tools bundled in it seemed to match audio quality with Google Play Music here. Audio playback was good with little distortion and good overall sounds. But I seriously would consider not using the the built in headphones, they look awful and identical with the ones bundled with many cheaper (£10) phones I've used in the past. I can't say how good the online side of Play Music is as it requires purchase and I felt it was not relevant to the review in itself at this point.

Day to day usage of the phone was fantastic with decent voice quality, a decent quality camera, fast processors and memory for multitasking and games. add the phones internet and radio capabilities (2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 3.75 and 4G) and you have an impressive device I will probably be purchasing in September and happily use it as a daily driver phone as long as Vodafone tweak one or two things on the device in the near future you'll have a perfect starter 4g phone rivalling the MotoG.

There are two issues I run into with the phone but not major enough to discourage purchase, one of them has since stopped so I'm assuming it was an issue with Google's side of things more than the devices software.

Instagram would take an image and store it on the phone itself but it uploads a black image with the filter you added. Reinstalling or updating did not fix this. I've reported it so I hope it'll be fixed soon. But until fixed it those snap happy Instagrammers may feel left out. Here I tell them to try Molome!
The more concerning glitch/setting was from the Google Play Store. By default I always set auto updates via wifi only so not to gobble data from my plan and also reduced the risk of app corruption while out and about but in the first few days the Google Play store ignored this setting and tried updating anywhere it could. This is concerning as many contracts are given capped data allowances which could be gobbled with no warning. It's not good to receive a scary data bill.

As with all things glitch related I've contacted Vodafone, Instagram and attempted to reach out to Google about this so they can resolve this in the future.

For the phone's price of £135 prepaid or £26.50 on a fixed term contract it's an absolute bargain. A high quality device with some solid specs for the budget market. A solid phone you know could cope with what the day has in store for you. Now while my reviews are hopefully good enough for many to make the decision to buy or not to buy I would always say go into a store and play with a demo unit. Thankfully my local store, which happens to be the spanking new Dunstable store has demonstrator models so you can try it and see why I like it so much!

The Vodafone Smart 4 Turbo - initial hands on

This post forms part of a three post review Hands on | Part 1 | Part 2
Heya

Today I get to play with a fresh new 4g device from Vodafone. The Smart 4 Turbo. Minus the racing stripes sadly. But for two weeks I'll be chatting about the device from both a budget concious users perspective and a parents perspective.



Firstly let's do the initial hands on thought.
On seeing the device I was worried the phone would be a cut corners to cost Alcatel junker, but no. They've used a new manufacturer, hugely popular in China to create a well specced device on a darned good price point, now to many specifications mean nothing but for the budget concious geek the more bang you can easily get for your buck the better. So for you to decide I've pulled the specs of GSMArena as they're listed in the best format on the GSM scene in my opinion. - Thanks Guys!

GENERAL	2G Network	GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 900 / 2100
	4G Network	LTE 800 / 1800 / 2600
	SIM	Micro-SIM
	Announced	2014, Q2
	Status	Available. Released 2014, Q2

BODY	Dimensions	134.5 x 67.5 x 10.4 mm (5.30 x 2.66 x 0.41 in)
	Weight	155 g (5.47 oz)

DISPLAY	Type	TFT capacitive touchscreen
	Size	480 x 854 pixels, 4.5 inches (~218 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration, MP3 ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes
	3.5mm jack	Yes

MEMORY	Card slot	microSD, up to 32 GB
	Internal	4 GB, 1 GB RAM

DATA	GPRS	Yes
	EDGE	Yes
	Speed	HSPA+; LTE, Cat4, 50 Mbps UL, 150 Mbps DL
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
	Bluetooth	v4.0, A2DP
	NFC	Yes
	USB	microUSB v2.0

CAMERA	Primary	5 MP, 2592 х 1944 pixels, LED flash
	Features	Geo-tagging
	Video	Yes
	Secondary	VGA

FEATURES	OS	Android OS, v4.4.2 (KitKat)
	Chipset	Qualcomm MSM8926 Snapdragon 400
	CPU	Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7
	GPU	Adreno 305
	Sensors	Accelerometer, proximity
	Messaging	SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM
	Browser	HTML
	Radio	FM
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS
	Java	Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
	Colors	Black, White
		- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic - SNS integration - MP3/WMA/eAAC+ player - MP4/H.263/H.264 player - Organizer - Document viewer - Photo viewer/editor - Voice memo/dial - Predictive text input

BATTERY		Li-Ion 1880 mAh battery

While the specs are possibly low to mid range compared to some of the latest and greatest 4g devices it's a well thought through device, especially with additions like NFC and even a 3g only variant (I won't lie! Get the 4g version it's worth it) 

I won't lie I think vodafone have done a great job here on the first few hours. We live in an area where signal is hard to come by without a Sure Signal, in places where the go to Nokia 3510 can't squeeze any signal out the Smart 4 Turbo seems to pull it through, even Edge/2g seems to work better where it refuses to on my main sim! (I should say Vodafone have lent me a 4g sim to play with too.) We'll be trying the device in 2g, 3g, faux g(Hspa) and 4g LTE networks over time.

I'll let you know more about the phone over the next two weeks. Including benchmarks, gaming with the kids trying it out and a few other bits and bobs.

If you have any ideas drop them here and I'll test them out.

The Smart 4 Turbo is avaliable for £135 in Vodafone stores prepaid, and avaliable on contract with Vodafone Red 4g plans. you can get more information online or if local visit the new Vodafone Dunstable store in the Quadrant Centre to have a hands on play with the phone itself.