Tech Tools review: Vodafone Smart Ultra 6

With smartphones, it used to be that you got what you paid for. If you wanted a high-powered phone that would do everything bar make you a cup of tea in the morning, it came with an equally astonishing price tag if you wanted to buy it without signing yourself up for a bill every month for the next two years. If you decided a more modest phone would do, you were faced with underpowered devices that scrimped on features from the camera to the screen, although there were one or two exceptions.

But we’ve moved on from there. It isn’t all or nothing with smartphones anymore and, with the current crop of handsets on the market, you can choose a reasonably priced model that won’t have you howling in frustration when asked to do anything more complicated than run an instant messaging app.

You could put some of that down to the Android handsets that are springing up such as the OnePlus One, which has nailed the "great spec, great price" schtick. Or perhaps the ramping up by Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei, who are aggressively targeting the European market with handsets that range from high spec to entry level, with one eye on price.

Whatever the reason, it's good news for consumers. The latest handset to hit the market is a Vodafone exclusive, the Smart Ultra 6. It's part of the low-cost range Vodafone has been offering for some time, but it's one of the best that has been added.

It comes with a 5.5-inch screen, a 13 megapixel rear camera and five megapixel front-facing camera. It supports 4G, neatly sidestepping any issues in the future, and is powered by an Octa-core chip. The phone also runs the latest version of Android, Lollipop (or 5.0 to those who refuse to use the sweet-themed names).

The good

The Smart Ultra 6 doesn’t look like a budget handset. You wouldn’t know instantly by looking at it that this is pitching at the lower end of the price range. It’s sleek and slim, at only 8.4mm thick.

The screen, which is usually where you start to encounter issues with budget handsets, is responsive and crisp, handling both text and images with ease.

The device comes with 16GB of storage space, but you can boost that with a microSD card; unlike other handsets, the Smart Ultra 6 has kept the memory card slot.

That gives you the option of boosting the memory by 128GB; sadly, you’ll have to shell out for that one as an extra, but it’s worth it if you plan to store a lot of movies or music on the phone.

Performance is usually another stumbling block for cheaper phones. The Ultra 6 has 2GB of RAM, which helps enormously when running applications, as does the Snapdragon 615 chipset, which has four 1.5GHz and four 1GHz cores. There was no noticeable lag in performance when running most of the apps I could throw at it.

And, of course, you can’t get away from the price tag. At €170 for a pay-as-you-go smartphone with this spec, it’s a good deal.

The not so good

One thing that I took an instant dislike to was the headphones included with the phone. They’re hard earphones, which means they’re uncomfortable, no matter how much padding you put around the ear pieces. They never seem to stay in properly either, so they were instantly discarded. It’s probably less of an issue these days, when every set of headphones seems to include an inline mic for use with a smartphone.

The rest

The battery is not removable, in line with the moves made by HTC and

Samsung

in recent years. The Samsung Galaxy S6 was the latest phone to fall to the integrated battery. But in saying that, there seems little reason to panic here. The 3000mAh battery held up well throughout the day.

The verdict

****

As far as budget handsets go, this is one that is definitely punching above its weight.

vodafone.ie