Smarter than the average gear
State-of-the-art gadgets are great, but what if you need a device that won’t break the bank?
WALK into the Apple Store today on the hunt for a phone and tablet and you’d be asked to fork out the best part of £2,400 for the latest, greatest, fastest and best – the iPhone X and the iPad Pro 12.5in.
Google’s best smartphone, the Pixel 2 XL, costs £799, while the new Samsung Galaxy S9+ will set you back £869. Samsung’s best tablet – the Tab S3 – costs more than £500.
In short, living on the cutting edge of today’s technology is not cheap.
There is a tendency to focus on those tech treats that hang at the top of the tree – and with good reason. They have the best cameras you can get, run the fastest chips available, have lots of memory, and beautiful hi-res screens.
But for most of us, a lot of that might be overkill – you don’t drive to the supermarket in a Formula 1 car, do you?
I wondered then what was hanging a little lower, a little cheaper, and little less capable.
What would you pay for just about the cheapest smartphone and tablet out there, and would they be a waste of money because they couldn’t do anything? Or would they do just enough, well enough, to be usable?
I eventually opted to try out two Vodafone-branded devices. Step forward the Smart N8 and the Smart Tab N8, and take a bow. It’s your turn in the spotlight.
SMART N8 (£79)
Specs: 2400mAh battery, 5-inch 720p IPS display, 16GB storage, MediaTek MT6737 quad-core 1.25 GHz CPU, MicroSD (up to 32GB extra), 13MP rear camera, 5MP front camera.
PROS
NETWORK: It’s a 4G phone and it costs £79 without a contract. FINGERPRINT SCANNER: Incredibly, this phone packs a fast and reliable fingerprint scanner on the back. That would have been unheard of not too many years ago. ANDROID 7: There is some useless Vodafone software pre-loaded onto the phone, but it’s easy to get rid of and you’re left with pure Android 7. So, all the apps you’ll ever need from the Google Play Store, plus all the stock Google apps that many of us have come to rely on. BATTERY LIFE: A phone with performance as slow as you get here is always going to be easy on juice, and this phone has no trouble getting through the day on a single charge.
CONS
CAMERA: Given plenty of light the camera is passable – but when it gets more challenging, it’s more or less useless. PERFORMANCE: This phone is slow, but not too slow. It can do most things pretty well (Google Maps runs OK, for example, and scrolling is tolerably smooth in Chrome). Don’t expect it to run complex games, though, and some of that Snapchat face-filter magic is beyond it, too.
DESIGN: Functional and simple – it looks like almost every other phone out there. It’s plastic with a clip-on back panel that you have to prise off to get to the sim tray and SD card slot.
SMART TAB N8 (£129)
Specs: 4600mAh battery, 10.1in 1280 x 800 IPS LCD display, 16GB storage, 1.1GHz quad-core MediaTek MT8735B CPU, MicroSD, 5MP rear camera, 2MP front camera.
PROS
NETWORK: This must be the cheapest 4G-enabled tablet out there – if you want fast data, look no further unless you want to pay a lot more.
ANDROID 7: Like its little smartphone brother, the Tab N8 runs the latest-but-one version of Google’s OS – so all the apps are there, and it’s fully plugged into the Google services. This makes it a better bet than its closest rival, the Kindle Fire HD 10, which is heavily locked into Amazon’s services. BIG SCREEN: The display is lower resolution than you’d like, but it’s reasonably bright and at this size is good for video on the go.
CONS
PERFORMANCE: Again, like its little brother, the Smart Tab N8 is no sprinter. Don’t bother with games, but video playback is certainly usable.
CAMERAS: I don’t think you’d ever take any photos with these cameras, but with the speedy networking, you might use them for video calling.
BATTERY: The length of time you can watch video is a bit disappointing, especially over 4G networking. You’re looking at about 6hrs on full brightness. But that might be enough for you.
CONCLUSION
THESE devices are cheap, and it shows. But if you want a phone that does email, web, a little bit of social media, lasts all day, and will do the job on bright days of acting as an emergency camera, it’s excellent value for money.
The Smart Tab 8 should be for you, also, if you want fast networking for watching video – it’s basically a portable video machine, with Google services built in.
The Smart N8 is available at £79 on the Vodafone Pay as You Go 1 tariff (the tariff that caps your spend at £1 a day), while the Smart Tab N8 is available for £129 on the Pay as You Go 1 tariff, or from £10 a month on contract.