Vodafone branded mobiles

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xpd

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#250558 16-May-2019 11:33

Are the Vodafone branded mobiles any good ? Or is it the case of "get what you pay for ?"

My daughter now has a mobile, but its ancient (some old Alcatel that runs like a dog), so would like to look at replacing it, but dont want to spend too much, kids being kids.....

XPD / Gavin

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Echoe

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#2239006 16-May-2019 11:40

Personally would recommend the Xiaomi Mi A2/A2 Lite. They run android one so you get years of updates. Easy to use with Google Family Link (https://families.google.com/familylink/) and are reasonably robust.

The Vodafone branded phones from my experience are very slow and have a ton of issues.

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#2239049 16-May-2019 11:57

The Vodafone branded phones are often at the best price point so they're probably better if your kid breaks them or loses them - I've had some foster kids with them. As yours has an old phone they obviously don't have require frequent replacement.

Make sure to get more than 1GB of RAM as is a big constraint in the cheap phones.

Echoe:

Personally would recommend the Xiaomi Mi A2/A2 Lite. They run android one so you get years of updates. Easy to use with Google Family Link (https://families.google.com/familylink/) and are reasonably robust.

My son loved the specs on his Xiaomi Mi but hated the UI - funnily enough a Chinese phone salesman sad the Chinese UI is even worse to use - so one with Android One should be good but it will cost more.

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#2239051 16-May-2019 12:02

Not to expensive and running the latest features, can be had for around $250. With a good case and glass screen protector should last them a couple of years at least.

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#2239066 16-May-2019 12:29

What network are you on? We've got a Vodafone smart something that won't SMS properly on Skinny :-(

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#2239075 16-May-2019 12:46

Ahh the Voda-branded kit, still have a soft spot for it - was very close to my heart circa 2015 and I used the Smart ultra as a daily driver for a solid six months quite happily.

The devices are whitelabelled by ZTE and TCL (Alcatel) with design direction and software sign-off from Vodafone Group in Germany. Depending on the year, it can be extremely competitive product, smashing everything else out there, like 2015's Smart prime which ended up at an insane $149 thanks to a happy cycle of exchange rates and has thus far been a difficult trick to replicate.

To my mind these products have good years and bad years depending on factors like said exchange rates, which components are available in which price brackets, and what the competition is doing. There were a few years wherein the likes of Samsung and Huawei had stopped playing in the entry level, leaving the Voda-branded kit virtually unchallenged in this market.

Since then we've seen Huawei and Samsung return to the entry level (if not the very bottom tier), Xiaomi have entered NZ, Nokia is back, and it has become harder to differentiate low-end products, but to my mind the Voda kit is still pretty good bang for buck. It is certainly lightyears ahead of buying something equivalently priced with sketchy QC / software / no warranty from a no-name third tier bottom of the barrel vendor.

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#2239209 16-May-2019 15:21

I had a Vodafone Smart Prime for a while, switched to a Nexus 5X until it got the bootloop problem, now I'm on a Vodafone Smart V8. I've been very happy with my Vodafone-branded phones, never had any problems and I think they give pretty good bang for the price. One of the things I wanted my phone for was to play Pokemon Go; the Smart Prime struggled with it, the Nexus 5X was reasonable but if you switched to another app and then back to the game then it would reload the game, the Smart V8 runs it really well and lets me switch back and forth between apps without reloading them.

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#2239864 17-May-2019 11:40

MurrayM:

One of the things I wanted my phone for was to play Pokemon Go; the Smart Prime struggled with it, the Nexus 5X was reasonable but if you switched to another app and then back to the game then it would reload the game, the Smart V8 runs it really well and lets me switch back and forth between apps without reloading them.

That is the joy of 3GB RAM versus the 2GB of the Nexus and the 1GB of the Smart Prime. Of all the apps I use regularly, Pokemon Go is by far the slowest app to reload which makes RAM even more important.

The teens I looked after who used Vodafone phones all played a lot of game apps so storage space was another constraint but that could be fixed with a microSD card.

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#2239929 17-May-2019 12:53

Hammerer:

That is the joy of 3GB RAM versus the 2GB of the Nexus and the 1GB of the Smart Prime.

Agreed, I'd never go back to a phone with less than 3GB now.