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Introduction and design
The key difference between the Smart 4 Max and last year's Vodafone Smart 4 Power is hinted at in the name – this is a seriously large phone that fits snugly in the phablet category, if not quite the average-sized pocket.
Where previous Smart handsets have suffered is that there have always been a range of similarly priced but superior alternatives. While I'd argue that's still the case with the Vodafone Smart 4 Max, it does have a couple of notable distinguishable factors that mark it out as unique.
I'll discuss those in more detail later in the review, but the Vodafone Smart 4 Max's key strength boils down to this: it's hard to name another 6-inch smartphone that's available for around £125 in the UK. Trust me, I tried, and I came up completely empty.
If you demand a Nexus 6 or Samsung Galaxy Note 4-sized screen for a quarter of the price, the Vodafone Smart 4 Max could well be your only choice.
Of course, that doesn't make it an automatic recommendation. Far from it. You should know from the outset that you'll be making a number of sacrifices in the name of that cheap super-sized display, and for this kind of money you might want to consider dropping an inch and picking up the Moto G.
In the strange world of budget smartphones, the terms 'no-nonsense' and 'functional' are often considered to be positive. After all, the alternative tends to be words such as 'cheap' and 'tacky'.
The best thing I can say about the Vodafone Smart 4 Max's design, then, is that it's no-nonsense and functional, and not at all cheap or tacky. There isn't so much as a whiff of faux-metal plastic (well, apart from the camera rim), and it doesn't creak or flex when you squeeze it in your hand.
This is a solid slab of a smartphone with a plainer-than-Nexus front; flat, subtly angled and slightly shiny plastic sides; and a matte plastic rear cover that feels quite nice and grippy, whilst simultaneously attracting a surprising amount of grease and dirt.
It's a heavy device at 170g (that's similar to the iPhone 6 Plus), and combined with the Smart 4 Max's chunky 164 x 83.4 x 7.9mm dimensions, you won't be slipping it into too many trouser pockets.
In fact, during a recent lengthy walk, I opted to carry the Smart 4 Max like a purse rather than put it into my usual inside jacket pocket. It felt that uncomfortable. And bear in mind that I've been lugging an LG G3 around with me of late, which isn't exactly the most petite of phones.
Still, I was impressed with how solid the Smart 4 Max is in the hand. Its volume and power keys are plastic but appreciably clicky, and both are found along the now-customary right-hand edge of the handset, just where I wanted them.
Above that you get an external microSD slot, which is well tucked away behind a tight flap with a neat access nubbin. Habitual nail-biters might struggle to access this, though, as well as the similarly designed SIM card slot on the opposite edge.
You'll need to access that microSD card slot, too, as there's a fairly standard 8GB (though that's double the Vodafone Smart 4 Power) of internal storage on offer. If you really want to pile on the MP3 files or HD videos, note that you can squeeze only a relatively meagre 32GB microSD card in here.
Key Features
As mentioned in the intro, the key selling point of the Vodafone Smart 4 Max is its unique combination of size and affordable price.
At £125 on PAYG, the Smart 4 Max is £25 cheaper than our current top budget smartphone pick, the Motorola Moto G. Despite this, the Smart 4 Max comes with a significantly larger 6-inch display.
You can complain all you like about the ballooning size of smartphone displays. The fact remains, people like large-screened phones, and with more and more phone owners using their device as their primary means of web access, I can understand why.
That being said, I found the Vodafone Smart 4 Max's 6-inch display to be over the top. I have longer than average fingers, but I couldn't stretch my thumb across to the other side of the display when holding it in one hand. Needless to say, my straining digit fell far short of the top area of the screen, too.
That's my own personal preference for how large I like my phones, of course, and your mileage will no doubt vary. If you're happy to use both hands to operate your phone at pretty much all times, then this won't be an issue.
Of course, the side-effect of having such a large screen is that the pixels are more stretched out than in a 'normal'-sized phone. Sure enough, the Smart 4 Max's display isn't very sharp at all.
We're talking about a 720p resolution here, which would be perfectly adequate in a 5-inch display, and could even still be considered a high-end spec in anything smaller than that (see the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact or the Samsung Galaxy Alpha).
Here, though, everything feels a little indistinct and fuzzy, with a pixel density of just 245ppi. That's particularly noticeable when you boot up one of those web pages that are presumably meant to sing on such a big phone.
Colours and viewing angles are fine, thanks to the fact that this is an IPS display, but the maximum brightness setting feels a little miserly. You'll want to crank it right up from the off, particularly if you spend any amount of time outside.
Another key feature of the Vodafone Smart 4 Max – which again needs to be placed in the context of that price – is its 4G capability. Admittedly, being able to connect to the UK's growing LTE network is no longer a particularly big deal, even for a cheaper phone.
Still, it's a welcome feature in a £125 phablet – which, as I've discussed, is intended for web and media consumption on the go. Just what you want a 4G network for, in other words.
As mentioned in previous Vodafone Smart reviews, the very fact that this is a Vodafone handset might limit this 4G capability somewhat. While it's improving all the time, Vodafone's 4G coverage isn't as good as EE's, so if you're looking to sign up (particularly in rural areas), check the network's coverage first.
Another component that you don't often find on affordable phones is NFC. While mobile payments haven't quite taken off as we all hoped, it makes sharing contact details and pairing with devices that much easier if you or the other party have the gear to match.
Performance and battery life
While the Vodafone Smart 4 Max has a number of impressive components for the money, it isn't a very strong performer in general terms.
It runs on a fairly competent (if low-end) 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 CPU with 1GB of RAM, but I experienced noticeable stutters in general navigation, and particularly whilst updating multiple apps in the background.
Whilst trying to play the downloaded 720p video file for the standard TechRadar battery test shortly after switching the phone on from a night on charge, it stuttered repeatedly while several apps updated in the background.
This sluggish performance extended to games, where even a simple (albeit pacy) 2D platformer such as Mikey Boots couldn't maintain a fluid, consistent frame rate.
Perhaps surprisingly, 3D racer Real Racing 3 performed adequately – albeit evidently on the automatic low-detail settings.
In our GeekBench 3 tests, a multi-core score of 1145 places the Smart 4 Max in the same kind of territory as its older, smaller brother, the Vodafone Smart 4 Power. Slightly below, in fact. It's also below the score of the EE Kestrel, another smaller and seemingly less capable device from Vodafone's main UK rival.
This would appear to be a side-effect of the Smart 4 Max's 720p display, which highlights an apparent predicament. The phone's display resolution isn't sharp enough for the screen size, but it seems to be a little too sharp for the engine (CPU and RAM) that drives it.
Going back to that point about the interface, the Vodafone Smart 4 Max runs on a stock version of Android – but an out-of-date one. Android 4.4.4 KitKat has been superseded by Android 5.0 Lollipop, so it's a shame that Vodafone didn't make an effort to ship its latest phone with this.
Perhaps Google's much-documented Lollipop software gremlins (which Android 5.1 largely addresses) made such a move impossible, but given the software's stock nature, we would have hoped for a swift update from Vodafone.
It's a shame that Vodafone didn't take some steps to tweak the software for its super-sized device, however. In particular, I really missed the ability to wake the screen with a double tap – something that feels especially useful in less wieldy devices such as this.
In fact, Vodafone has been relatively (perhaps mercifully) hands-off in its treatment of the stock Android OS.
There are a couple of easily removable homescreen widgets – one pushing Vodafone service news, another offering help and tips – and a fairly benign Smart Touch function that has to be activated from the drop-down settings menu.
Smart Touch effectively places an ever-present floating control on the screen that, when held, brings up a radial menu of shortcut functions. These include media player controls, a camera shortcut, and space for some customisable favourites.
I didn't feel the need to use it too much, in truth, but perhaps that's through my own habitual Android use. At the very least, it's another possible aid to single-handed usage on this vast phone.
Battery life
The Vodafone Smart 4 Max comes with a decent-sized 3000mAh battery, which seems to be ample given the lower resolution of its 6-inch display. The similarly proportioned Nexus 6, for example, has a whopping QHD resolution, yet has only a slightly larger 3220mAh battery.
When applying the standard TechRadar battery test, which involves a 90-minute 720p video, with the screen brightness set to full, I was left with 80% battery life on average.
That's a pretty decent result, placing it just shy of such diverse devices as the ZTE Blade S6 and the Samsung Galaxy S5.
When it comes to the day-to-day business of actually using the phone, it shows impressive stamina. I was able to clear a full day (as in, 24 hours) of light usage with just half of a full charge.
While it wasn't my most intensive day of usage, it did include such power-sapping tasks as a 90-minute 720p video (the aforementioned battery test), a 35-minute phone call, and a 10-minute session of Blocky Roads.
That's pretty impressive any way you cut it, and it's clearly a result of that low-res display, combined with that large battery – not to mention that faithful old power-sipper, the Snapdragon 400 CPU.
The essentials
The fact that the Vodafone Smart 4 Max runs on stock Android 4.4.4, with all of the attendant pre-loaded apps that entails, means that it's pretty strong when it comes to the smartphone essentials.
Thankfully, items such as the phone and people apps are straight-up Google efforts, with no attempt to improve, modify, or otherwise tinker with them. This means that locating contacts and making calls are clean, smooth experiences.
The dialler is much improved over previous versions, with a smart feature that suggests contacts according to the number or alphanumeric letters you start typing.
Call quality was strong during my time with the phone, and I particularly appreciated how loud the Smart 4 Max's speaker was.
One area Vodafone has messed with is messaging, and the results are predictably underwhelming.
In fairness, this is an area that Google has struggled to get to grips with over the years, with two available offerings in the shape of the slightly unwieldy Hangouts and the nice-but-optional Messenger.
Vodafone has its own established messaging service, Message+, which is placed front and centre here. It seeks to combine simple SMS messaging with the kind of group chat and media sharing options you'd typically find in something such as WhatsApp or iMessage.
It works as such, but it's an ugly and charmless app, and it doesn't appear to have been well optimised for this larger display type, with clumsily blown-up menus and nondescript typography.
On the subject of messaging, Vodafone has opted to include SwiftKey as the default keyboard of the Smart 4 Max. It's one of the strongest and best-established third-party keyboards out there.
Not only is it easy to tap or drag out messages (it has an integrated swipe-to-type system), it's also highly customisable, with different themes and alignments.
You can alter the size of the keyboard, which is particularly useful with such a large screen.
The smallest option still doesn't quite make it possible to type single-handed, but there's also an option to squish the keyboard to one side, which does.
Once again, you get two web browsers – a tedious habit of most Android phones, and one that doesn't get any more justifiable with time.
The stock Android web browser is just fine. You will ignore it in favour of the much more powerful, modern and slick Chrome. Let's move on.
Before I do, though, it's worth lingering for a moment over the Smart 4 Max's performance as a web browsing device. After all, surfing the internet is one of the main tasks that 6-inch display is intended for.
Mobile-friendly websites (such as TechRadar) load up and look just great – but then they're designed to do so on such devices. It's full-sized web pages that phablets such as this should be making light of, and in that respect the Smart 4 Max is a mixed bag.
While full desktop websites load up well and offer a nice overview on the expanded screen space, I still found myself needing to zoom in on specific areas to read smaller text comfortably.
Don't get me wrong, I could read what was there, but the low pixel density brought about by that 720p resolution meant that this was far from optimal.
Camera
Commendably for such a cheap phone, Vodafone has packed the Smart 4 Max with a 13-megapixel camera.
Now, we're all experienced enough to know that more megapixels doesn't necessarily equal better pictures. But when you're used to reviewing cheap phones that come with nasty 5-megapixel snappers, as I am, I reserve the right to build up a little hope based on such a spec.
Sure enough, the Smart 4 Max is far more capable of taking decent pictures than most entry-level smartphones I've used – though it's a little inconsistent.
Given plenty of light and ideal shooting conditions – such as those I experienced during my main shooting day – you'll be able to capture images that are suitable for more than just sharing on Facebook.
There's even a decent HDR mode that, in my experience, didn't result in freakishly hyper-real images. It lightened the shady areas, whilst keeping the detail in the deep blue skies and white buildings.
I was also impressed with the general speed of the Smart 4 Max's camera. I was able to rattle off a series of quick snaps at a rate that belied the sluggish performance found elsewhere in the phone.
However, I also found that the Smart 4 Max's autofocus system would occasionally throw a wobbly, failing completely to get the right level of focus on a succession of simple seaside landscape shots that lacked a distinct subject.
It was also incapable of focusing on the closest of a series of deliberately assembled objects when testing its indoor capabilities from around a foot away.
I experienced problems, too, when attempting to shoot a series of close-up images of some yellow flowers. The bright reflected sunlight seemed to completely throw off the camera's auto-exposure settings, resulting in comically dark images.
Shots taken inside with decent artificial lighting tend to render predictably murky results, but they're perfectly adequate at this level. Meanwhile, the flash does a reasonable job within very specific parameters. It's OK from a couple of metres away, but a waste of time at any other distance.
The camera's 1080p video capture, meanwhile, was perfectly accurate, though it struggled with dynamic range on the bright and sunny day I shot on, rendering dark and shady areas much darker and shadier than they should have been. Still, I've seen much worse for more money.
All in all, the Smart 4 Max's camera is a little too inconsistent to make it reliable for quick, impromptu snaps – which is typically the kind of shot you most want to capture on your phone.
However, it has the potential to obtain much better results than most other phone cameras at this price point.
Sample images
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Verdict
Generally carrier branded handsets fill me with a sense of dread, but they're improving across the board and the Vodafone Smart 4 Max is testament to that.
It's far from the perfect smartphone, but the big red network now has a range of handsets all at attractively low prices.
We liked
The Vodafone Smart 4 Max offers a lot of phone for your money in a physical sense. It's big, well built, and it has a couple of components you might not expect to see in a budget offering.
Its 13-megapixel camera is one such component, and it can capture some reasonable images in the right conditions. NFC is another welcome addition.
I also appreciate the stock Android experience, even if it is an older version of Google's mobile OS.
We disliked
There's no getting away from it, the Vodafone Smart 4 Max is a very big device. It will legitimately put a lot of people off with its unwieldy width, length and weight.
It's also disappointing how poor the general performance is, with annoyingly frequent (if slight) stutters in both general navigation and specific apps and functions.
While its 6-inch display is big and relatively clear, its 720p resolution simply feels inadequate, giving the extra screen space the feeling of being poorly optimised.
Finally, the camera, while better than many budget offerings, is inconsistent and unreliable.
Verdict
Vodafone's latest smartphone would appear to represent an improvement for the range. It's a solidly built phablet with a 13-megapixel camera and stock Android, all for just £125.
However, when you get down to the details it's found a little wanting. The screen may be big, but that extra space suffers from an inadequate resolution.
Similarly, the camera is a little too unpredictable for its own good, and the phone's general performance is disappointingly sluggish.
All in all, it's a decent budget offering, but one that ultimately feels somehow less than the sum of its parts, despite the appealing price.
First reviewed: April 2015
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