High performance at a low price
Five hundred quid for a phone? You must be joking, you might think. I don’t need all that, you might think. Retina this, fingerprint scanner that – who cares, as long as you can make calls, send texts and install a few apps? So you buy a budget smartphone. You turn it on. And then you remember it isn’t really a phone at all, it’s a computer. Features aside, that extra you pay is for performance: the ability to do the same things, but with less staring at the screen waiting (often praying) for them to actually happen.
Most smartphones run Google’s Android software, and the cheaper they are, the more they struggle to do it. Even the simplest task, like scrolling down a web page, can be alarmingly slow and jerky. Here’s a phone, though, that breaks the mould. Its MediaTek processor is as powerful as those in phones costing twice as much. The nearest we’ve seen in this price bracket is the Vodafone Smart Ultra 6, and the Liquid Jade Z beats it. 3D games aren’t its strong point, but everything else works gratifyingly smoothly.
In other respects, you get what you pay for. The 5in screen is sharp, but colours are quite dull and it doesn’t get very bright. The case is nice and slim, but feels more like a plastic office chair than a high-tech accessory. Photos from the 13-megapixel camera show lots of detail, but their high-contrast look makes shadows too dark. Indoors, things get very grainy.
You’ll soon be spending another tenner on a microSD card, given the miserly 8GB of storage, most of it eaten up by Android. Version 4.4 is installed, and although this will be upgradable to 5.0 (Lollipop), don’t expect to see 6.0 (Marshmallow) on this phone. Finally, battery life won’t get through a full day: in our video playback test it conked out after eight hours 20 minutes.
VERDICT
It’s a good budget choice if you want a phone primarily to make calls on. Don’t expect much more, though.
SPECIFICATIONS
5in 1280x720-pixel screen • 13-megapixel rear camera • 5-megapixel front camera • 8GB flash storage • MicroSD card slot • 802.11n Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 4.0 • 3G/4G • Android 4.4 • 143x70x7.9mm (HxWxD) • 110g • One-year warranty