Vodafone 845

After seeing my son's new iPhone last Christmas, I decided it was time for me to upgrade. I didn't want to take out a contract, and money was a bit tight, so after some shopping around I found the Vodafone 845 available on PAYG from Tesco. They were running a deal which enabled me to buy it for just under £50. What a bargain! OK, so it's not exactly a high-end device, but it does everything a good smartphone should quickly, efficiently, and with the minimum of fuss. The screen is resistive (rather than capacitive), which takes a bit of practice to use without accidentally opening things you don't want, and it is also a little smaller than most smartphones - however it's still big enough to comfortably watch video clips etc. Sound quality is good (by mobile standards) from the inbuilt speaker, but a few quid spent on a lead for your home hi-fi and an adaptor for your car sound system turns it into a very adequate mp3 player. Every app I've downloaded from the market works fine, which seems not to be the case for many other handsets.

In common with lots of other smartphones, I thought battery life was going to be an issue, however this was resolved by setting up the phone to prolong it - disabling automatic updating makes a big difference, also only switch on the bluetooth and GPS when you need them.

Overall the Vodafone 845 represents outstanding value for money - look at it as being 75% as good as an iPhone but for only 20% of the money.