Vodafone Smart 4 review:
PRICE £75
Vodafone's latest budget smartphone improves on its predecessor and adds a few extras to the recently released Smart 4 mini to create a decent workhorse of a smartphone for a sub-£100 price.
It's on sale now for £75 from the Vodafone online shop.
Chassis and screen
It's not quite as cheap as the £45 Smart 4 mini, but for your extra 30 quid you get a bigger screen and a better camera, plus the latest version of Android. The casing is all plastic of course, but it feels sturdy and robust. The rear doesn't flex easily but you can pop it off to reveal slots for micro-SIM and microSD cards along with the decent 1,880mAh battery.
The 4.5-inch screen is half an inch bigger than the one that can be found on the Smart 3, but the sub-HD resolution has barely improved, stretching from 800x400 to 854x480 pixels. It doesn't have the 'pop' (or anything like it) of an HD handset but it's reasonably bright and clear -- fine for comfortable web browsing and video viewing. Its size also makes it comfortable for typing, something that couldn't quite be said of its 4-inch predecessor.
Software and processor
It's a pleasant surprise to see that it's running the very latest 4.4.2 KitKat version of Android -- most budget handsets tend to come with an older version. Vodafone has given Google's interface a light, red-themed skin, but mostly it's left it alone, which is no bad thing.
The dual-core processor is clocked at 1.2GHz and backed by 512MB RAM. That's a small step up from the Smart 3's single-core innards, though it's similar to the Smart 4 mini. It performs its duties reasonably well, although you can expect a slight delay in opening apps. Displaying web pages also turned out to be an occasionally jerky experience. Our AnTuTu benchmark test gave it 10,434, which is pretty low and puts it behind the budget Moto E and ZTE Blade V -- not a great result.
Photography
The 5-megapixel camera comes with an LED flash, but not a lot else in the way of extras besides a few settings for night and action shots. It's fixed focus, so you'll need to be careful when you're setting up your shots, and you can expect a fair amount of blur and not a lot of detail. There's also a bog-standard VGA resolution camera on the front for video calls and selfies -- basic, but at least you get a front-facing camera. The same cannot be said for the Smart 4 mini.
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