Durban – Vodacom has come in for quite a bit of stick over the past week for its decision to hike its call and data prices.
Unfortunately for its customers it seems they’re well within their legal rights to do so, even mid-contract. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it.
But with Cell C implementing a similar increase in February and no guarantee MTN won’t follow suit, there seems little disgruntled consumers can do.
One option is go prepaid once your contract runs its course, switching promiscuously between networks that offer the best tariffs for the services you use the most.
The major drawback to this plan is that unless you’re happy with your by now two-year-old cellphone, you’re going to have to fork out cash for a new one. This can be daunting when you consider that top-end smartphones start at around R9 000 going up to R18 000 and mid-range devices sell for between R5 000 and R6 000.
But a new breed of cellphones that are big on smart features and small on price is starting to swing that equation in consumers’ favour. And one of the most compelling of them, ironically, is offered by, wait for it… Vodacom.
At a recommended retail price of just R1 499, you could be forgiven for dismissing the Vodacom Smart 4 Turbo as yet another cheap and nasty, poorly-specced Android knock off. You’d be wrong.
I was pretty sceptical when I got it for review, but after several weeks of putting it through its paces I’m mightily impressed.
The first thing that struck me was that it looks and feels like a close-to-premium, if not high-end, device. Put the Smart 4 Turbo next to a top-of-the-range Samsung or iPhone and the 854×480-pixel, 4.5-inch display won’t exactly knock your socks off. But compared with any other budget phone – and many mid range devices – it’s really very good.
At this price you’re not going to get any fancy touches like metal trim, but the plastic body (it comes in black or white) feels comfortable and well put together in the hand.
Yes, it’s powered by a low-end Qualcomm MSM8926 processor with just 1MB of RAM, but apart from the odd stutter when loading a game or big web page, it performed flawlessly. The quirky and beautiful game Monument Valley looked particularly good on the Smart 4 Turbo.
Pleasingly it runs a pretty recent version of Android (4.4 KitKat) and, even more impressively, will connect to Vodacom’s high speed LTE network, so expect scorchingly fast download speeds where available.
I was also pleasantly surprised to find that it supports Bluetooth 4.0, near-field communication technology and GPS, all options you’d previously only have found in devices costing three times the price or more.
With a decent sized 1 880mAh battery, the Smart 4 Turbo has a claimed talk time of 6.5 hours. I generally found it lasted a full working day, even with fairly heavy use, but if you are caught low on juice between charges there’s a clever battery saver mode that switches off or limits power hungry functions when the charge dips below a certain level.
On the downside, there’s just 4GB of onboard storage which you can expect it to fill up pretty quickly if you download a lot of music, apps and videos, so you’ll probably want to buy yourself a 32GB microSD card.
I wasn’t blown away by the 5-megapixel rear camera. While pictures taken in good light were bright and fairly detailed, low light snaps were pretty terrible. But you could say the same about any device in this price bracket and many that cost significantly more.
Selfie fans will be relieved to hear there is a front-facing camera, but at just 0.3-megapixels don’t expect to offer any threat to Beyonce, Ellen or Miley soon.
But these are minor niggles. Remember, I’ve been spoilt by regular access to high-end smartphones and the very fact I’m comparing the Smart 4 Turbo to heavyweights like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and iPhone 6 is a huge point in its favour, especially when you consider you could by 10 Smart 4 Turbos for the price of some iPhone models.
In my opinion there’s no Android smartphone to beat it at this price, and it leaves quite a few handsets that cost twice its price in the dust.
Some of Microsoft’s new Lumia offerings running the Windows Phone operating system may give it a run for its money, both in terms of specs and price, but that’s the subject of another column.
* Visit alanqcooper.tumblr.com for more specs and pictures. If you have any questions or comments tweet me @alanqcooper or e-mail [email protected].