Review: Mlais MX Base

Introduction and features

Phones have become faster, their cameras have got better, and a slim phone of a few years ago would seem like a porker today. However, one thing that hasn't improved much is real-life phone stamina – most of us still find that we have to charge our phones each and every day.

The mission statement of the Mlais MX Base is to change that. It packs a radically huge 4300mAh battery – the sort of size you might usually find in a tablet.

Haven't heard of Mlais? You're not alone, because this is one of those tiny Chinese brands producing phones you'll never, ever see on the high street in the US or UK, outside of a dodgy second-hand electronics store, anyway.

This raises concerns about the Mlais MX Base's longevity, which are absolutely worth considering in our opinion. But it also makes the Mlais MX Base extremely price-competitive. It sells for £89 (around US$135, AU$185), and – spoiler alert – it does have much better stamina than any other Western phone in this class.

Would we advise buying one over a Moto G 3rd-gen and, say, a 10,000mAh OnePlus or Xiaomi battery pack? Probably not. However, Mlais has proven, once and for all, that it is absolutely possible for a company to make a phone that lasts, well, ages.

Design

The well of no-brand Chinese phones is deep, and its contents multifarious. Stick a hand in and you might find a good one, or burn a finger on a dodgy melting battery. The Mlais MX Base seemed a case of the latter when I initially got the phone: for the first couple of days on charge, the phone refused to turn on at all.

I was about to bury the little guy in his cardboard coffin for good when he sprung to life as if I hadn't been pressing his power button dozens of times in the days previous.

This just serves to reinforce the notion that buying a low-price Chinese phone can be a gamble, because quality assurance standards are going to be so much lower than if you buy a phone from, say, Sony or Samsung.

If you see a phone on sale from one of the big manufacturers or networks, you can figure that it's been through approximately a billion tests. This phone? Rather fewer.

That said, in the week-plus since waking up, the Mlais MX Base has worked just fine. Not a single restart or major blip. And, given its gigantic battery, it's actually tremendously easy to live with.

The MX Base is 9.9mm thick and weighs 168g. That's not slim, and it's not light; but it's also not the pocket-bulger you might imagine of a phone whose sole purpose is to pack in the biggest battery you've ever seen in a 5-inch handset.

There's nothing too clever behind this feat either, and you can take the Mlais MX Base's back cover off and get a good look at the 4300mAh battery cell. It's the standard brick you'd have encountered before every phone maker started locking their batteries in like high-security prisoners; it's just a bit bigger.

The Mlais MX Base has a bit of reassuring heft to it, but much of that comes from the weight of the battery. This is otherwise a pretty cheap-feeling phone, with all the sense of style of a white bread cheese sandwich. It's plain, with only the fake brushed-metal plastic strip along the phone's edge to jazz things up a little.

Elements like the non-illuminated metallic soft keys look a bit cheap too. The question is: does this matter? If you want a phone that lasts for approximately forever off a charge, and are only willing to pay £89 (around US$135, AU$185) for it, then asking you to trade away premium build and style doesn't seem like too great an ask.

I also prefer the Mlais MX Base's plain look to something that tries to stand out, but succeeds only in making you wince.

One element you may want to think a bit more seriously about is the screen covering. It's glass, and toughened glass at that, but it flexes a little more readily than the Gorilla Glass 3 you get in the Moto G 3rd-gen, and countless other reasonably affordable mobile phones.

I've been using the phone for more than a week, though, it hasn't picked up any major scratches. I've seen much worse supposedly toughened glass before.

The Mlais MX Base offers much more than better-known rivals in other areas too. For example, it has 16GB storage when at this price you'd normally only get 8GB, max. It also has an IR blaster, a useful little gadgety extra that even top-end phones like the Samsung Galaxy S6 started leaving out this year.

Samsung did this because basically no-one used the IR transmitter in the Galaxy S5, but it's still pretty neat. An IR blaster can mimic the signals sent by the old-fashioned remotes used by your TV, home cinema receiver and so on, enabling the Mlais MX Base to act as a universal remote.

There's an app to enable you use it too – it's a bit ropey, but there are plenty of better alternatives available from Google Play, and that you get the feature at all in a phone this cheap is an eye-opener. It has 4G too, and all the primary Western bands are supported. There's no NFC, though.

Display

The screen is a little more ordinary, but still competes pretty well with the best at this price. The Mlais MX Base has a 5-inch 1280 x 720 pixel IPS LCD display, which has become the gold standard for budget phones.

It's not a bad screen at all. The colours look fairly natural, only showing a slightly cool temperature, and lacking some of the subtlety of the best.

You can customise all this, though. In the Settings menu there's a very in-depth screen tweaker tool that enables you to alter image contrast, temperature and the dynamic contrast system, which aims to increase the punchiness of images.

As with the Moto G and other 5-inch 720p phones, sharpness isn't quite Retina-grade. But it's still pretty good.

The one issue with the display is that my Mlais MX Base has some backlight bleed, which is where areas of the display look brighter than others – in this case it's a touch of classic edge-of-screen bleed.

It's no surprise in a low-budget phone from a maker with, most likely, less rigorous QA standards than some – there's a level of 'accepted' compromise at this price range, and plenty of cheaper phones from big names suffer from this effect too.

Here the bleed is pretty minor stuff, though, and if I'd bought this phone I wouldn't be looking for a refund.

Performance and camera

The Mlais MX Base runs Android 5.1 and, as I'd hoped, doesn't have a thick, gloopy custom UI over the top. There are some slight customisations, not all of which are great, but it feels as though the phone's software is simple and not overloaded.

What's the difference? Well, the apps menu doesn't use the traditional Android Lollipop 'blank sheet' style for a start. Its background image is whatever's used on your home screen, mirroring what Samsung does with TouchWiz.

It's a fine alternative to the vanilla Google Now look. What's a bit stranger is how the soft keys work. The button that usually brings up the multitasking menu is in fact a context-sensitive 'menu' key, while you have to long-press on the 'home' button to use multitasking.

So where does the Now assistant end up when a long press usually fires up Android's Siri-alternative? No idea. There's no Google Now access from either the home screens or the soft keys.

The Mlais MX Base fiddles with Android a bit and makes it feel ever-so-slightly alien, but I got used to it pretty quickly.

For example, it doesn't come with the usual default Chrome browser, but a dated 'stock' Android one that I haven't touched much in years. Unlike some weirder Chinese phones, the Mlais MX Base does have Google Play installed, though, so rectifying such omissions is easy.

You can't expect a 100% perfect experience from a low cost phone, but the one on offer here is pretty good. The killer part is that there's very little lag, which has been a pretty big issue in a lot of cheaper Android Lollipop phones of the last year or so.

Given how little close attention seems to have been paid to the software, fine as it is, this is a bit of a surprise. It likely boils down to the Mlais MX Base's use of 2GB RAM; a lot of the phones that struggle to make Android Lollipop run perfectly have just 1GB.

The CPU isn't too shabby either, although these days RAM seems to have much more of a bearing on performance. The Mlais MX Base uses a MediaTek MT6735 CPU, which is roughly equivalent to a Snapdragon 410, but uses a different GPU and seems to come out way ahead of that more popular chipset in benchmarks.

For example, feed the Moto G 3rd-gen to Geekbench 3 and it'll come out with about 1410 points. I've seen the Mlais MX Base score as much as 1845. It's in the lead, by some margin.

Given that the main CPU part uses a very familiar quartet of Cortex-A53 cores at 1.3GHz, it must be the GPU boosting this performance to a large extent – the phone has a Mali T720 GPU.

Sure enough, the Mlais has no trouble running higher-end games like Dead Effect 2 with the visuals turned up. For a 720p phone, the amount of power on tap seems just dandy.

Don't get too excited, though. If you're into things that suck up CPU power as if it tastes of chocolate, like N64 game emulation, you'll likely hit the Mlais MX Base's limits fairly quickly. It still has an entry-level CPU.

The phone also feels a bit less sprightly than some because its display's touch layer isn't nearly as sensitive as those on other handsets. There are no flat-out dead zones – it just doesn't feel quite as responsive as some.

Camera

While some elements of the Mlais MX Base stick out as being pretty great for the money, the camera setup is as problematic as you might expect of a no-name £89 (around US$135, AU$185) phone.

Specs-wise it's all fine; great, even. On the back is an 8 megapixel camera with a flash, and on the front a 5 megapixel one. We're not dealing with bottom-of-the-ladder stuff.

It's also not too hard to get shots from afar that look pretty good. I've found the Mlais MX Base's exposure metering to be surprisingly solid. Even the colour performance of the rear camera is respectable, when usually dodgy-looking reds are a tell-tale sign that you're dealing with low-end hardware.

The problem is that the Mlais MX Base's images are almost universally very noisy. Even when shooting in daylight, the poor processing can leave shots looking grainy.

Let's step back for a minute, though. It's far from all bad. While I'd much rather use a Moto G 3rd-gen camera any day of the week, the Mlais MX Base's shots are often punchy, with lots of contrast and, as I mentioned before, remarkably good colour for a phone of this class.

Even the bafflingly slow f/2.8 lens seems fairly good, only introducing a bit of lens flare at times. It doesn't cause the ugly purple fringing and smudging of light sources you get with some super-budget phones.

The HDR mode is pretty effective as well, often yielding great results without trading away all sense of realism. The Mlais MX Base certainly isn't a camera for pixel peepers. Those kinds of shooters would be much better off with the Moto G or, y'know, a phone that costs a lot more.

However, after almost dismissing the pictures as fizzy garbage from just looking at them on the Mlais MX Base's display, I found them far more tolerable on the big screen, where things like contrast and colour have a greater cumulative effect than how well the noise reduction works.

The front camera loses the colour punchiness of the rear one, and keeps the crackly noisiness. It's not great, but does tend to smudge-out a bit less detail than some selfie shooters as a result of its neglectful approach to noise reduction.

In terms of shooting performance and the quality of the camera, the Mlais MX Base is nothing more than passable. There's some shutter lag, so shooting doesn't exactly seem instantaneous, and the app feels like a bad impersonation of much better ones.

What I mean is that while the app appears to have a 'modern' UI like, say, the Samsung Galaxy S6, with the most important controls sitting on the top layer, it's actually just a visual refresh of an old app infrastructure.

So, when you press the HDR toggle at the top of the display, it doesn't quickly flick between on/off/auto, it takes you into an HDR mode that blocks off some of the other on-screen controls.

Overall, though, the only real issue is that the Mlais MX Base camera feels slow, more so than the rest of the phone. Video capture tops out at a pretty poor 720p too, and doesn't use any software stabilisation either.

Camera samples

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Click here to see the high-res image

Click here to see the high-res image

Click here to see the high-res image

Battery life

Now we come to the real meat of the Mlais MX Base, in quite a literal sense given that the battery takes up 67g of the phone's total 164g (my own measurements; Mlais's official weight is 168g).

It's a 4300mAh unit, but having tried many a battery that doesn't match up to its supposed milliampere count, I was initially a bit sceptical.

While the MX Base may not last double the length of all budget rivals with 2xxxmAh units, it does last a very long time indeed. This is a phone you don't have to try incredibly hard to squeeze two days' use out of – indeed, unless you're streaming video or doing a fair bit of browsing, it's easy.

One little anecdote shows you the real benefit of a phone like this. One night during testing, I was going out to see a band. I was using the Mlais MX Base as my regular phone, and thought the dingy venue would be a good test for the camera. So not only did I need it to last until 11.30pm in case of any public transport disasters, I'd be using the camera throughout the evening too.

Thanks to that giant battery, I was able to leave the house with 50-odd per cent battery remaining, with the confidence that I'd be fine. And I was. A night of WhatsApp'ing, taking loads of a photos and bit of browsing only shaved 20% or so off the battery.

To give you a less anecdotal take on the Mlais MX Base's stamina, I put it through some more rigid tests. The first was the usual techradar video playback test, wherein we whack the brightness up to the max and play a 90-minute 720p MP4 file.

This took out 12% of the battery. The Moto G (2015) lost 19% and the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua 25%. The Mlais MX Base is already setting the standard.

Next up I tried browsing the web, using a simulation designed to mimic near-constant Chrome-flicking. With the brightness again set at 100%, three hours of browsing ate away 41% of the battery.

Again, this is a terrific result, suggesting you'll get a minimum seven hours 20 minutes browsing over Wi-Fi with the display burning the charge away.

Kicking things up a notch further, I tried a gaming test. Ninety minutes of Real Racing 3 depleted the battery by 28%, implying that the Mlais MX Base would be good for over five hours of gameplay on a full charge.

The Mlais MX Base may not be fancy, but like an 80s action movie baddie you have a throw a load of crap at it to take it out.

Even on standby the battery performs well, which is likely helped by having a fairly recent CPU. After loading the phone up with apps, running everyday favourites like Facebook and a half-dozen others, then leaving it on a shelf for a whopping 53 hours, the Mlais MX Base only lost three per cent battery.

I also kept an eye on it after the test to make sure the battery reporting wasn't just lagging behind the reality. It's still kinda of hard to believe, though – I doubt whether the MX Base would still be alive after 73 days on standby, as that result might suggest.

You get the idea, though: it's good stuff.

As with the rest of the Mlais MX Base's hardware, there is a slight concern about the quality of the battery. Is this actually a decent-quality power pack? Poor-quality batteries tend to hold charge for less long and see a stamina hit sooner than good batteries.

I can't guarantee that this battery will hold charge as well in six months' time, but the fact that the MX Base's standby result is so good suggests it can't be dreadful unit.

Mlais has put precisely zero effort into making the MX Base quick to charge, mind. As well as not being compatible with any of the fast-charging standards, which is perfectly acceptable for a phone of this price, it comes with a dismal 1A charger. For this kind of battery, a 2A one is the minimum you're after.

As a result it takes five hours to charge the Mlais MX Base from empty. Some phones can be almost fully charged in 40 minutes: ouch. You really need to charge the phone overnight to get a full juice-up, which is the dark side of having such a huge battery in a fairly no-frills phone.

Verdict

The Mlais MX Base is a notable pick among the vast sea of China-brand phones that aren't generally solid in the US/UK other than by importers. Its huge battery provides convenience worth taking seriously, especially if you're tired of having to top up your phone at 5pm.

We liked

As promised, the Mlais MX Base's stamina is superb. It trashes rival Androids in every test we submitted the phone to, including the most important one: real life.

This stamina doesn't come with a huge bulkiness tax either. It's only about 15g heavier than the Moto G, for example, and almost 2mm thinner.

Its screen is perfectly good too. There's a bit of backlight bleed, but in all other respects the MX Base has a respectable display that can go toe-to-toe with better-known budget 5-inch handsets.

We disliked

The Mlais MX Base isn't going to impress anyone with its build. The bland look and dated soft keys are one thing; but when a phone uses un-named front screen glass and refuses to turn on for no apparent reason to start with, it's a bit of a head-scratcher.

Mlais also makes some funny moves on the software side. While the MX Base's UI is extremely clean, it alters some of the basic ways you interact with the system, which can initially be a bit disorienting.

And while performance in general is good, a low-sensitivity touchscreen makes the MX Base seem less responsive than it could be. The camera is patchy too. While images are surprisingly punchy, they also tend to be very noisy thanks to lax noise reduction processing.

Verdict

The Mlais MX Base is not a mainstream phone. It has rough edges, things that these days would not be tolerated in the best phones from the bigger names. We're talking about a sub-Gorilla Glass top screen layer, and a touchscreen that's not as reliable and responsive as that on the Motorola Moto G (2015).

However, in other respects it's a surprise hit. Battery life is, as hoped, great, the display is both solid and highly customisable, and the processor has more power than some more expensive phones, let alone £89 (around US$135, AU$185) ones.

That said, the Mlais MX Base should only be seriously considered if you're gagging for better battery life. While some of the camera hardware is capable, a lot of shots end up very noisy. The Moto G offers a far more consistent camera experience. And even the battery isn't perfect, thanks to super-slow charging.

So yes, there are problems. But the Mlais MX Base gives you a glimpse of what phones might be like if flashy features weren't all that the manufacturers cared about.

First reviewed: November 2015

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Review: Wileyfox Storm

Introduction and features

With the introduction of 2K screens on the likes of the LG G4 and the Samsung Galaxy S6, along with 64-bit processors in the iPhone 5S, flagship smartphone performance and specs have begun to plateau.

The upward trend of progress has begun to slow, especially as software becomes less demanding on hardware, and this development has had a marked effect on the budget end of the market.

If it's the case that the 'trickle-down' effect means new flagship features take at least two years to find their way down to the lower end of the market, then right now the budget market is experiencing the excitement of the flagship market circa 2013, at least to a degree.

Larger batteries, bigger screens and jumps in resolution are coming with almost every passing month, and at ever-lower prices. And of these new, exciting handsets, the Wileyfox Storm is a special example.

British phone maker Wileyfox has only recently arrived on the scene, but – presumably taking the plunge before a feared deluge of cheap Chinese devices begins to hit western markets – the company is already making waves by offering well-specced devices at respectable prices.

The Storm is the more powerful of the two devices currently offered by Wileyfox, the bigger brother to the well-received Swift. Priced at £199, it's a bit more expensive than the Swift, which is going for around £129, but with that jump in price comes a more than commensurate increase in power and performance.

However, with a glut of devices currently available at a similar price point and offering similar or better specifications – and nearly all with trusted brand names behind them – can the Wileyfox Storm make a mark?

Design

Typically, design is the feature most readily jettisoned by phone manufacturers in an attempt to keep prices down. Around the £200 price point however, some small concessions to taste can be expected, and the Storm delivers in this regard.

The first thing I noticed when picking up the device was how solid it felt. With no give or flex in any aspect of its construction, despite being a phablet, the Storm feels worth every penny. At 155g it isn't heavy, and yet has a pleasing heft.

On the top of the device is the 3.5mm headphone jack. The left side of the Storm houses the microSD/microSIM slot. As well as being able to take cards up to 128GB, the microSD card tray can also be used to house an extra microSIM card, giving the Storm dual-SIM capability.

On the bottom of the device is the micro USB port for charging and data transfer. The right side of the Storm is home to two clicky, but rather thin and weedy buttons – the volume rocker, and the power button just below.

Each side of the device is encased in a matte plastic that feels grippy in the hand. This feel is continued on the back, which is comprised of a material not dissimilar to that found on the back of the OnePlus One and 2, with WileyFox even going so far as to call the colour 'Sandstone Black'.

The overall effect is that the handset feels comfortable, durable and, yes, premium in the hand.

Towards the bottom on the rear of the phone is a minimalist Wileyfox logo, along with the speaker grille, with a subtle fox branding towards the centre of the device.

At the top are the 20MP rear-facing camera and dual-LED flash, wrapped in a black gloss plastic with a bronze trim.

Above the 5.5-inch 1080p screen are a call speaker, the 8MP selfie snapper and a single front-facing flash. As a whole, the Wileyfox Storm feels very well put together, almost more so than rivals such as the Vodafone Smart Ultra Six and the Moto X Play.

For a device priced at only £199, so far so good. Wileyfox has done a stellar job of carving out a unique look for its range.

Display

When you pick up the Wileyfox Storm the size of the display is immediately noticeable. Unlike some flagships, such as the LG G4, that wear their phablet trappings lightly, the Storm is unashamedly large.

Putting the screen front and centre encourages certain expectations, and again the Storm delivers. The Full HD screen has a pixel density of around 400ppi, easily exceeding Retina territory. Reading, watching films and playing games are all a pleasure on such a large, detailed panel.

Although it doesn't quite reach the heights of the brilliant 2K AMOLED display on the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+, it certainly matches the likes of the iPhone 6 Plus and 6S Plus for quality.

The exceptional colour accuracy of the display plays a big part here. Typically, especially when chasing higher resolutions, sacrifices are often made in order to keep costs down. In particular, LCD panels can suffer from poor calibration, often exhibiting an odd blue cast. The Storm suffers from no such problem.

Indeed, thanks to the customisation power of Cyanogen OS it's possible to tweak the colour calibration of the device to your personal tastes, or even try out 'adaptive' colour presets – although this latter option isn't exactly recommended, as it has a tendency to make whites either bright orange or blue depending on the time of day.

Being an IPS panel, the screen on the Wileyfox Storm also has excellent viewing angles, with no drop off in either brightness or saturation when watching content at extreme orientations.

The Storm can also become nice and bright when in less than ideal viewing conditions, although the inbuilt auto-brightness control can be a little timid when altering settings for different situations.

All in all the display on the Wileyfox Storm is exceptional – and not just for the price but in general, matching the quality of devices more than double the price.

At this point, the only improvement that could feasibly be made would be to go AMOLED, which would mean a significant increase in price – although the likes of the OnePlus X have already gone in this direction.

OS and interface

The Wileyfox Storm, like the Swift, runs Cyanogen OS. This began as an open-source mod for Android several years ago, helping to breath new life into old devices, and with an emphasis on user control.

And as Google has begun to exert more and more control over Android, this focus on giving the end user as many options as possible has seen Cyanogen expand from a back-room project into a venture-capital-funded OS in its own right.

That isn't to say that things are changed much, however. Based on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, Cyanogen OS looks and feels much like a stock version of the world's most popular mobile OS, and the home screen interface looks much as you'd expect it to.

Everything changes once you reach the Settings menu, however. Take the 'Display & lights' section for example, where in addition to the usual settings such as brightness, a whole host of far more granular controls can be found.

This applies to almost every option available to the user, and for power users who really love to fine-tune their smartphone experience it's an attractive feature.

For the average user, however, things aren't quite so rosy. Invariably, in providing so many options, a degree of confusion can result for users who are less 'advanced'.

Within five minutes of letting my partner loose in the settings menu the screen had been set to an orange cast, the notification LED was somewhat psychedelic, and a whole host of software buttons had been added.

Although this situation will not reflect reality for many users, the options available in Cyanogen can be a little overwhelming, even if they are welcome.

Security

One of the key features of Cyanogen OS, built right into the Wileyfox Storm, is an enhanced level of security. In becoming a widely available, open-source operating system, Android has been subject to a higher level of interest from criminals and hackers the world over than, say, Windows Phone.

Add in several high-profile scares, such as the Heartbleed bug, along with StageFright, and many users are understandably cautious – witness the plethora of anti-virus apps on offer in the Google Play store.

This isn't to say that every user will be subject to a malicious software attack; but the fact remains that, if you're using Android the chances are slightly higher than they would be otherwise.

As such, privacy and security are placed front and centre in the WileyFox Storm, with two apps in particular being utilised to provide extra power to the end user to protect their data.

The first, developed in partnership with popular call-filtering app Truecaller, is inbuilt voice-call protection. Built into the native dialler app, this function works to screen calls before they're answered, using the Truecaller database to help determine their origins.

For those who regularly receive calls to check on their PPI situation, this will be a godsend.

The second feature is Privacy Guard, found in the Settings menu and turned off by default. This enables the user to take granular control of app permissions to the next level, enabling access to information to be toggled on and off.

Moreover, selecting the Advanced option enables you to see detailed reports of what information has been accessed by different apps, at what times, broken down into Personal, Media, Bootup and Device. Using this I found that Google Play Services read my SMS messages 337 times over the course of a week, as did Facebook.

Again, while this level of control can be a little overwhelming, the ethos of placing power back in the hands of the end user is rather nice, and in practice I found these features to be quite useful, even if the latter resulted in more than a little paranoia (I have a lot to hide).

Launcher

As I hinted at earlier in this review, Cyanogen mod presents something of a mixed bag with regards to the user interface, in turns being both pleasantly simple and dauntingly complex.

The Trebuchet launcher is key to the whole experience. It's preloaded, and is the first thing you'll see when loading up the phone for the first time. As mentioned, it's quite close to the whole stock Android experience.

In all, Trebuchet is a competent, unassuming and quick launcher, sensibly laid out and easy to understand. Although it doesn't have any interesting bells and whistles such as those found on the Google Now Launcher, it is nonetheless a pleasure to use.

And, this being Android, changing the user experience is as simple as installing a new launcher from the Play Store.

On the home page, apps are organised much as they are on almost any other Android home screen, with a permanent search up top, and a number of Google services bundled into a folder on the left.

Swiping to the left does nothing, and swiping right brings up more installed apps. Moving into the app drawer brings a nice touch – an alphabetical list of all installed apps, which you can move through quickly or slowly. As a regular Windows Phone user, I appreciated this touch.

Swiping down from the top of the screen, as you'd expect, enables quick access to frequently used settings – mobile internet, Wi-Fi, GPS and so on. A nice touch is the ability to double-tap to sleep, accomplished by double-tapping the status bar, which makes turning off the screen while it's on a desk just a tad easier.

And, being Android, swapping the user experience is as simple as installing a new app from the Play Store.

For the user looking to go a little further in their customisation, there is also the Theme Store, which enables you to change everything from app icons to wallpapers with a single click. Hundreds of options are available here, both free and paid-for.

Performance, essentials and battery

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 615, along with a healthy 3GB of RAM, keeps the WileyFox Storm chugging through daily tasks with aplomb.

Whether it was swiping through the home screens, using the internet, watching a movie, or playing a graphically intensive game, I found there was little that the Storm couldn't handle.

These results are backed up by the Geekbench 3 scores. Although the Snapdragon 615 sits firmly in the middle of Qualcomm's chip lineup for 2015, and is being replaced with the 617, it's nonetheless a very capable performer.

With a single-core performance of 655, and a multi-core score of 2613, the device sits comfortably close to the Samsung Galaxy S4 for the former, and the Nexus 5 for the latter.

To achieve performance that, two years ago, was at flagship level is quite something, and for most users the power ought to be sufficient, give or take a little lag and a few dropped frames here and there.

3GB of RAM also proved to be more than sufficient for the needs of the device and ought to keep power-hounds happy, with the WileyFox Storm being able to juggle many apps simultaneously, if not quite as many as the beastly Asus ZenFone 2.

Music and video

With 32GB of built-in storage, and the option to add to this via microSD card, music lovers have plenty of space to play with on the Wileyfox Storm. And generally, the listening experience is rather nice.

As is the trend on many Android devices the Storm lacks a dedicated music app, with users having to either download a dedicated app for local playback from the Google Play Store, or use Google Play Music.

The latter option isn't particularly welcome, as while Google will happily let you play songs I found paid options being pushed at me with annoying regularity, something that hindered the overall experience a little.

On the plus side the WileyFox Storm does have a couple of impressive features for music lovers, one of which is the speaker setup.

Although the Storm can't hope to match the clarity of the HTC One M9, or the sheer volume of the Nexus 6, I found nonetheless that it could fill a room with warm tones rather nicely. Notably it didn't sound too tinny, even when really pumping out music to the best of its ability.

The second feature I enjoyed was the built-in equaliser. Tying into the wider theme of granular control, you can choose from various presets or simply adjust the sliders to taste.

Particularly when switching from bass-heavy tunes to, say, folk music, I found that it made a world of difference, especially when paired with a decent set of earphones.

As with music there's no dedicated video player on the WileyFox Storm, which is disappointing given the potential of the screen for media consumption.

Play Movies – another gateway to paid content – is the sole video player available upon installation, necessitating the installation of the likes of VLC Player for those wanting to watch their media on the go.

That said, the accurate colours of the screen, along with the aforementioned sound quality, makes for an enjoyable viewing experience.

Calls and internet

The experience of making and receiving calls benefits from the strong call speakers and decent noise cancellation; I was able to hear people I was talking with clearly, and they remarked that my voice came through loud and clear.

As a 4G-capable device, the Storm is capable of stellar download speeds, depending on the reception available in a given area. GPS performance was also adequate, achieving a lock quickly and accurately and maintaining it successfully.

Battery life

Despite having some excellent specifications for the price, there was one aspect of the Wileyfox Storm that I was somewhat apprehensive about.

For the size of the display, I was worried that the 2500mAh, non-removable battery would prove to be the handset's Achilles heel. And after a week of use, battery performance is something of a mixed bag.

One of the key advantages of phablets is the extra space that the large display affords, and typically manufacturers usually make use of this extra room by fitting an extra-high-capacity battery unit.

Unfortunately, the Storm possesses exactly the same battery unit as its smaller brother, the Swift – and while the user can replace the battery in the Swift, they can't do so in the Storm.

This is worrying, particularly given that the Storm is aimed at power users. The facility to swap the battery in order to keep going through a busy day, on the move and with few opportunities for charging, is indispensable for many users, and its absence here is frustrating.

However, with the efficient Snapdragon 615 keeping everything chugging along, I found that the battery life of the Wileyfox Storm was generally acceptable, if not excellent.

Cyanogen is something of a complication in this regard, offering just two battery modes: one that optimises performance, and one that dumbs the phone down a little to eke out extra juice.

On a typical day, waking up at around 8am, playing maybe 20 minutes of Temple Run on the bus, listening to music for around an hour, watching a few videos, browsing the internet intermittently and sending and receiving texts and emails throughout the day, I found that I had around 15% charge left by 10pm.

On one occasion though, I found that the device lost 60% of its charge during the course of an evening. Generally the battery performance of the Storm, while not reaching the heights of, say the Moto X Play, is okay, if a little inconsistent.

Camera

For some years now, megapixels have been the measure of power by which marketing types have sold various photographic devices to an unassuming public, with the ever-increasing numbers implying increasing power and sophistication; this isn't, however, necessarily the case.

In short, more megapixels do not a good camera make. Conversely – and particularly given the small sensors typically found in smartphones – it can actually be to the detriment of the overall shooting experience.

Regardless, the 20MP primary camera on the Storm has been touted by Wileyfox as something special, if not quite on the level of the likes of the units in the iPhone 6S or Samsung Galaxy S6, two of this year's best camera phones.

The camera sports a Sony EXMOR sensor which, in addition to all those megapixels, also benefits from Back Side Illumination (BSI), a new and very in-vogue feature that's designed to improve low-light performance significantly.

The device also sports something of a special flash arrangement, at least for the price, with a dual-LED unit on the rear offering a little more power for better exposures. Another flash on the front complements the powerful 8MP selfie camera.

In good light the main, rear-facing camera produces images that had decent colour, but has a tendency to overexpose shots, especially when shooting towards the sun.

And the large megapixel count delivers here – detail is very well resolved, with none of the mushy textures produced by so many budget smartphone cameras.

The device did particularly well with macro shots, which are typically a strength of many smartphone cameras, given that they have such a short minimum focus distance. Detail was again excellent, and the Storm captured a nice shallow depth of field.

Low-light performance was also good – while images were a little noisy they were perfectly acceptable.

As for the selfie snapper, with 8MP to play with every pore and pimple is rendered in a degree of detail that might not always be appreciated. The inclusion of a flash means decent shots can be captured indoors and at night.

Video footage is of reasonable quality, tending to be a little overexposed but with decent colours.

As for the Cyanogen camera app, it's a mixed bag. Three buttons dominate the right side of the interface – record, capture and panorama – while a sidebar gives access to a camera toggle, flash toggle, quick effects such as HDR, and the settings menu where even more options can be adjusted.

As more manufacturers make more of an effort with their cameras at the low-end – particularly Motorola, with the Moto G (2015) sporting the same sensor as 2014's Nexus 6 – consumers expect a camera that's more than just acceptable.

And the Wileyfox storm certainly delivers in this respect – I found my experience with its camera to be the best I've yet had with a budget smartphone.

Camera samples

Click here for the full resolution image

Click here for the full resolution image

Click here for the full resolution image

Click here for the full resolution image

Click here for the full resolution image

The Competition

Moto G (2015)

With every passing year the Moto G line is typically seen as the model to beat in the budget space, yet the Wileyfox Storm is better specced in almost every regard.

Camera performance between the two is roughly equal, with the Moto G just coming out on top, and given its lower-resolution screen, battery performance is also better on Motorola's budget champ.

The other big feature that the Storm lacks in comparison with the Moto G is one that will only really appeal to the outdoorsy types: full waterproofing. The Moto G can survive in up to a metre of fresh water for around 30 minutes.

The Wileyfox Storm is the better buy – unless you really need that waterproofing.

• Read our review of the Moto G

Moto X Play

One of a slate of Moto X devices released by Motorola in 2015, the Play fills out the mid-range of its lineup.

The Moto X Play has similar specifications as the Wileyfox Storm, especially with regards to the display and processor, and packs a larger 3630 mAh battery. It also has a waterproof coating, and supports voice commands.

In terms of price there's quite a big difference, with the Play costing around £60 more than the Storm. If battery capacity is essential, then the Play is the better buy; otherwise the Swift wins again.

• Read our review of the Moto X Play

Vodafone Smart Ultra 6

The Vodafone Smart Ultra 6 is an unassuming handset released by Vodafone earlier this year. Locked to the carrier, it nonetheless sports many of the same specifications as the Wileyfox Storm, but at a lower price of around £125.

This price comes with a number of trade-offs, however: a poor camera, carrier bloatware and an unclear update schedule for later versions of Android mar the device somewhat.

For those absolutely focused on getting the best value for their buck, no matter the sacrifice, the Smart Ultra Six is a strong option; however the WileyFox Storm offers a more complete overall package.

• Read our review of the Vodafone Smart Ultra 6

Verdict

The Wileyfox Storm, on paper, represents considerable value for money. With great specifications and lots of customisation potential, at £199 it ought to be a real steal.

Yet with a complicated operating system that may not be ideal for every user, and only average battery life, the Wileyfox Storm doesn't deliver across the board. So, as the competition heats up, is being good value for money enough?

We liked

The Wileyfox Storm is a very pleasant device to hold and use, even one-handed. With a decent balance and weight, and being made from good quality, grippy materials, it feels robust and polished.

The 5.5-inch Full HD screen is also excellent, delivering great colour reproduction, good viewing angles and more than enough resolution for enjoying movies and games. Performance is also a strong suit, with the Snapdragon 615 keeping everything moving along comfortably.

While many handsets have promised a brilliant camera experience at an unbelievably low price, the Storm is one of the few that actually comes close to delivering, offering a great overall shooting experience.

Cyanogen is also something of a refreshing experience, with strong options for customisation and privacy guards keeping the interests of the end user front and centre.

We disliked

Battery life could be a little better. Although performance was generally adequate, as other manufacturers continue to up their game in this regard it would have been nice to see either a larger unit, or the ability to replace the existing pack easily.

Although Cyanogen is generally fine in everyday usage, a little more could have been done to tailor the experience for users new to the OS. With a cluttered settings menu offering so many different options, some clearer organisation and division between simple and advanced options would be welcome.

The supplied power cable is also a little on the short side, while it took a little effort to get my existing microUSB cables into the charging port.

Final verdict

With the Swift and the Storm, newcomer Wileyfox has caused quite a stir this year, producing two handsets that are more accomplished than many of their competitors in a number of areas.

The Wileyfox Storm is a good choice for those looking for any or all of good value, plenty of user control and a great camera, although as the lines between the mid and low ranges continue to blur, and with devices like the OnePlus X appearing, it remains to be seen for how long the Storm will be able to stand out from the crowd.

Moreover, Cyanogen OS still has a lot of growing to do. Although the company behind the software has made deals with a number of manufacturers to support their devices, in some cases these relationships have proven to be somewhat fractious (such as with OnePlus), which is to the detriment to the end user, certainly when it comes to long-term support.

For the moment, however, the Wileyfox Storm is close to the pinnacle of what can be achieved at the £199 price point without carrier subsidies, with only the average battery life really letting the device down.

Keep an eye on Wileyfox – the future will certainly be interesting.

First reviewed: October 2015

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