Vodafone launches the cheap and the super-cheap: Smart Prime 7 and Smart First 7

Vodafone today unveiled two new own-brand smartphones, the Smart Prime 7 that retails at £75, and the Smart First 7 that will set you back just £25.

These are the pay as you go prices, and you’ll also be able to get the Smart Prime 7 on a pay monthly contract too, with prices starting at £16 a month (and coming with the recently announced 30 day network guarantee).

Smart Prime 7

The Smart Ultra 6 was by far the best Vodafone-branded handset of 2015, but the Smart Prime 6 wasn’t that far behind.

Until a new Ultra is announced (the Smart Ultra 6 is still on sale at £130 on pay as you go) the Smart Prime 7 becomes the newest own-brand model on sale, coming with the latest version of Android too.

The Smart Prime 7 measures 144×72.1×7.99mm, making it smaller in every dimension over the Ultra 6 (154x77x8.4mm).

The phone is powered by a Snapdragon 210 quad-core chipset and with 1GB of RAM, which is where you can begin to see why this phone is so much cheaper than the Ultra.

Nevertheless, it has a 5-inch HD display (720×1280 pixels), a 8-megapixel autofocus camera on the rear, plus a 5-megapixel selfie cam up front.

It has a 2,540mAh battery, and supports Vodafone’s 4G service for speeds up to 150Mbps, as well as DC-HSPA for 3G speeds of up to 42.3Mbps.

Colour choices are very simple; black or white. The black (with silver accent) is on sale now, with the white (with gold accent) model coming later.

At just £75, this could well be one of the best value budget phones on the market this year. That’s when put up against other affordable phones from the likes of Honor, Motorola, Wileyfox, and the many other Chinese phones available on Amazon and the like.

So what’s it like? Well, I should have a review unit to check out in the next day or two, so will be able to give it a go and see how it stands up in real life to similarly priced handsets – including the Smart Ultra 6.

More info: Vodafone Smart Prime 7

Smart Prime 7 Specs

Smart First 7

The specs of the Smart First 7 won’t set the world alight, what with a mere 512MB of RAM, a low-res 3.5-inch screen, 2-megapixel camera, 1,400mAh battery, plus an older version of Android (5.1), but let’s remind ourselves again that it does sell for just £25 on pay as you go.

The Smart First 7 doesn’t offer access to 4G either, but it clearly isn’t designed for you and me.

Instead it will appeal to someone who might otherwise choose a normal feature phone (the type sold in Argos for under a tenner), but will now get the ability to run basic apps in addition to basic calling and texting.

More info: Vodafone Smart First 7

Smart First 7 Specs