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 Acer Z120. Nice phone, shame about the bugs!

The Acer Liquid Z120 review.

I purchased an Acer liquid Z2 last week when my clumsy but working Alcatel ot903 died recently. Sadly it wasn't to be, but we can go through that soon.

Acer built three models of this phone, the Z2, Z2 Dual and the Z120. Today we talk about the Z120. (the z2 has a Qualcomm MSM7227A Snapdragon running at 1Ghz and a 5Mp camera)  But a note to Acer. I'm sure selling a lesser model as the same device could be a bit naughty under consumer laws, but I'm not an expert.

The z120 is a device rocking Android Jelly Bean, with a 320 by 480 pixel display, which is not groundbreaking in this day for mobiles but suitable for a budget device, but with a MTK 6575M chipset, 1 GHz CPU and PowerVR SGX531 Ultra GPU. It can and does hold up really well compared to some cheaper devices. Even if the 512mb ram holds it back a bit but still does the trick

The specs are listed below, with huge thanks to the awesome team at GSMarena for the information,


GENERAL 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network HSDPA 900 / 2100
SIM Optional Dual SIM (Mini-SIM)
Announced 2013, February
Status Available. Released 2013, March
BODY Dimensions 110 x 62.5 x 12.3 mm (4.33 x 2.46 x 0.48 in)
Weight 110 g (4.59 oz)
DISPLAY Type TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors
Size 320 x 480 pixels, 3.5 inches (~165 ppi pixel density)
Multitouch Yes
SOUND Alert types Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
Loudspeaker Yes
3.5mm jack Yes
  - SRS sound enhancement
MEMORY Card slot microSD, up to 32 GB
Internal 4 GB, 512 MB RAM
DATA GPRS Yes
EDGE Yes
Speed HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth Yes, v3.0 with A2DP
USB Yes, microUSB v2.0
CAMERA Primary 3 MP
Features Geo-tagging, touch focus
Video Yes
Secondary No
FEATURES OS Android OS, v4.1.1 (Jelly Bean)
Chipset Mtk 6567m chipset
CPU 1 GHz
Sensors Accelerometer, proximity
Messaging SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email
Browser HTML
Radio FM radio with RDS
GPS Yes, with A-GPS support
Java Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
Colors Black, Black/White
  - SNS integration
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail
- YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa
- MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player
- MP4/H.264/H.263 player
- Organizer
- Document viewer
- Voice memo/dial
- Predictive text input (Swype)
BATTERY Li-Ion 1300 mAh battery
Stand-by Up to 450 h
Talk time Up to 4 h


The phone is cute but feels a tad wide but i feel it's down to the rounded design and it was more comfortable in the hand than some devices i've used in the past, including the SGS2.

Battery life is poor, charge the phone fully and it'll get to 80% and within 2-5 mins it would shoot up to 100%, but discharge stupidly slow. For instance take it off charge and leave it on overnight it'll lose 20-40% charge. Even if the phone is in airplane mode drain is similar.

Software. The overall android experience is pretty good, although themed it's not over the top when compared to touchwiz. With a decent integrated Accuweather clock widget. The home-screen is pretty similar to stock. This is a good thing for those who like the purer side of things, despite not being pure stock android. There is a 60 mb software update ready and waiting for you on first use. Despite there being 2gb space free on the internal storage it requires you to insert a memory card to install the update, I think this is due to it's use of recovery mode to perform the update which seems to run more stable off the root folder of the SD Card. However I seriously recommend you install the update via wifi for reduced risk of crc failure of software corruption also the cost of data these days too, if it fails over 3g a few times you can easily deplete your allowance!

The device is compatible with most apps, but more intensive ones will overheat the phone. Whatsapp and bbm work ok.

For music lovers Google Play Music is installed as the default music player. This is not an ideal tool, It may be clunky for those who's used to the stock player but the phone does have SRS audio controls preinstalled and do a good job compared to the default equaliser but you'll need a good set of headphones as the phone didn't come with any.
If you do use for music buy headphones with a plug that is at a right angle, as plugs that stand to attention do not sit well when in the pocket due to the curved back. It loses connection with the internal connectors and messes music enjoyment up, it's not a deal breaker but be aware of this.

The camera is what you would expect of a budget device, but it requires lots of light due to the lack of flash. Images can come out ok, but usually they come out grainy in lower light. Video was not tested as I'd not got time to play with youtube! But video playback on youtube was acceptable, so the Mediatek chipset was doing a good job. (something they seem to do really, REALLY well)

Connectivity is fully featured with 3g/HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS, EGPRS for mobile network browsing and works well when it can be bothered. The phone features WIFI for faster browsing while out and about or home use and works fantastically, when tested at home and on the bus (Arriva 38 route and A route. Plus Centerbus busway services) it seemed faster than my Sony Miro in similar situations.
Bluetooth works well when tested with the Nokia BH-214, JBL Soundfly and a generic keyboard.
With all phones I use in and outdoors are left with both mobile data and wifi enabled so the device could default to the preferred choice when required. A configuration we've used and worked perfectly since owning the Nokia E71, sadly the Z120 struggles with this. If left in this configuration the phone refuses to connect to 3g data, resulting in the need for a reboot. Annoyingly this can require a few resets as turning 3g off and on or forcing airplane mode does not rectify the situation.



Root and mods. While I didn't try to root the device as it was too new for me to invalidate the warranty (in September i would have experimented) at that point from reading XDA Developers there are ROMS in development and a root method but it could also work with E-Root as mentioned in the ot903 post. It found the device but that was as far as i went (less than a week old it's not worth risking it) if I spot any decent ROMS i'll link to them later.

Price. At £64 sim free it's a good price but the bugs do let it down. But if it'll be used for voice and wifi browsing you should be good to go. Sadly i took the phone back due to the network issues and a few other bits that were diagnosed as a faulty device. I replaced it with a Vodafone smart mini.

Dear Acer. the device is nice but buggy, when the issues are sorted it'll be a fab budget phone and I'd be happy to buy or test another one to see if the problems are resolved!


Paul.

Throwback Thursday

Well. This is a strange one today,

This week I was given my fathers old cellphone today and thought I'd give you a treat from 2003. Here is the Nokia 3510i.

A pioneering device from when Nokia acutally made hardcore devices for all sectors, what makes this device more epic is it's one of the first Symbian s40 colour devices sold in the masses, including the variants for CDMA and AMPS, yes many versions were created.
On top of this it was also one of the first phones I knew of that came in with either a mono (3510) or colour (3510i) display and Polyphonic(marketing buzzwork for Midi music files)

This phone has been shelved since my father passed away, but surprisingly on sunday when i charged it it worked fantastically. And has lasted on one charge since.

The screen is clear and bright, well as bright as any nokia was in 2003. The only thing missing which i will be sorting if i can find my fbus data cables is Snake.

The point of this post is the memories. My old man struggled with technology, where i feel he would have thrived now as things get easier to use over time. But he did get a good easy to use device.

Now onto a question for you.

What older device do you miss or still use to this day?
Paul.

P.S. This phone is going to be a special project device for a post i've got on Dadzclub.

Alcatel One Touch 903 no root optimisation +ROOT

Image credit Futek

Before you laugh at me for owning a budget device think one moment. It's cheaper to fix than the galaxy s2 by a huge difference

HUGE UPDATE - A Root has been found and works well, but does have some bugs! How to post is linked here! 

But i do admit it's a sluggish thing due to a slow processor and it's hampered by it's small internal memory (256mb ram) But with a few tweaks we can make it better WITHOUT ROOTING and for free. (note: Thanks to the developers who made these free applications - Please consider buying the full versions over the free variants I  will be once I can get a play store gift card - HURRY THE HELL UP GOOGLE - Finally I found one today)

************** UPDATE *****************
to help speed other bits up go to settings, Applications. Manage Applications. go through lots of preinstalled apps, remove what you won't use and what you will tap the app and move to SD card
this will speed the phone up a bit. use the other tips to make it work fantastically
*****************************************



The default launcher that comes with the phone is a memory hog. Alcatel Please make a vanilla rom without the bloat! But we can change this with Holo Launcher.

Holo Launcher replaces the default launcher on any device with a low memory consumption launcher made to look like Android Ice cream Sandwich. This makes a huge difference with performance.

Now the processor. It's a 650mhz Mediatek CPU with PowerVGR graphics. but it's slow at default. We can overclock it safely to 806mhz for free using the MTK CPU Control test Just make sure you apply the mod and set to apply on boot. I've done benchtests and it's increase in speed is shown. It's far from a placebo tool. The processor still shows 650 in any settings but the benchmarks show it works.

Memory optimisation. Use Memory Cleaner and Advanced task killer  
Memory cleaner is a bit placebo but in tests it does a small bit of good combined with Advanced task killer.

Use these freeware tools to make your Phone fun faster than it has before.

Now for Social media.

If you want to run Facebook Give up. it's too slow for anyone's liking on the phone in it's huge 30mb footprint. (10-15mb minimum ram use too)

I suggest Fast for facebook it's basic but works well. But as it's in beta they are improving the tool every few weeks. It's a lot more fiddly than facebook on the first look. But it works well enough.

If that's too slow for you look for Opera Mobile and use the basic mobile facebook and twitter

For twitter. use the official app. it works ok but slow at times.

Instagram users it'll throw a wobbler despite installing.(unless they listened to my email) install molome  it's just as good and can send pics to instagram too!

One more tip is the 3g access is slow, it's the limitation of the device itself.

This is a quick post and more will be added over time (i just realised i can get a new phone already. but will stay with this one as i like it. quirks and all)

Paul

Rutland Cycles Smartphone holder Review

Many moons back I posted a DIY bike mount for you all to try. It's time to ditch that idea.

However, things change, mobiles are worth more and many people have Super Mega Hyper 4Inch IPS superphones which do anything and everything bar throw the kitchen sink at you, although siri possibly would if it had hands I suspect.

I had been looking at bike holders online, many of which comprised of those $2 tat fests and resold with a clamp bolted on to attach onto the bike, most break and need a rubber band or ten to stop them from falling off. However Rutland Cycling comes to the rescue by sending me the awesome Rutland Cycling smart phone holder.

I've used the holder with the following devices over the last few weeks.

Nokia C3-01, E6-00. E71
Huawei Ascend P1, Ascend G300
Samsung Galaxy Sii

The holder worked fantastically with touch and non touch screen phones, holding out rain and dirt fantastically.

The only problems I had with the holder was due to it's generic nature there are no dedicated headphone or charger holes, which would be useful, but at this price point It's not an issue. (also I use a bluetooth kit)

Secondly this is not recommended for devices with a screen larger than 4 inches. for instance the Galaxy s2 just fits the display in view.

Additional uses for this. Endomondo sports tracker, GPS speedometer, Nokia Maps/Here, Waze, Google maps/navigation, and (if you want outdated information) Ios6 Maps HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA*breathes in* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Sorry apple users. I could not resist.

If you cycle a lot, I recommend this holder. it's durable, waterproof for both light ans heavy showers and mud attacks and compatible with devices up to 4 inch screens. It is fantastic value at the price of £6.99. I've seen a similar holder for £20.00 and you needed to spend another £20 for a dedicated device specific pouch.

Go for it. You won't regret it

Paul