Vodafone Smart II Budget-Friendly Android Smartphone Announced

UK mobile operator Vodafone recently announced its plan on releasing a follow up unit of its famous budget-friendly phone. Vodafone Smart II will serve as an upgrade of its handset released almost a year ago that received thousands of good feedback and reviews. This time around, the company is planning to release a better model stuffed with many cool features and that includes a faster processor, bigger screen, better camera, etc. As a replacement, Vodafone Smart II’s specs are higher than the first model and this has already been expected considering it couldn’t be called as a replacement if it has to come with the same specs and all.

Hardware. Vodafone Smart II will come with 800MHz processor which is now typical for majority of cheap and budget-friendly entry-level smart phones in the Android world. Considering it will operate on an Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS, the processor is just enough to ensure smoother user experience. While we don’t know the amount of RAM this device would receive, we have a good reason to believe it wouldn’t go down 384MB at the least. But I also admit that getting 512MB of RAM for this phone would surely be a treat.
Display & Camera. Vodafone confirmed reports that Smart II will be getting 3.2 inches display, almost half an inch bigger than the size of the previous version which only got 2.8 inches. But while the size surely did improve the technology didn’t but at least this time Vodafone’s device will be getting HVGA capacitive touchscreen featuring 480 x 320 pixels resolution or around 180 ppi pixel density. The camera also improved dramatically and this device gets 3.15 megapixels, way better than the 2MP camera from the previous version. This time around, there will be a light-emitting diode (LED) flash with 4x zoom capability. It surely not the best camera you can get but it’s the best Vodafone can give for its cheap device this year.
Battery. Vodafone also hinted that Smart II will be getting a fairly powerful batter that could power up the device for up to 8 hours of straight talk time, although it didn’t release the specs. While we know Gingerbread OS is already dated, its power consumption is actually one of the factors that you can be proud of. According to an unofficial study, Gingerbread OS consumes at least 20% lower than that of the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and it is because of the lack of features that can be found in the latest version of Google’s mobile platform.
In a bid to keep people ready and acquainted with its newest device, Vodafone also announced that buyers will get a setup guide, USB cable, battery and charger, hands-free headphones, 2GB memory card and the main unit out of the box. Vodafone will market this device for just £70 without a monthly contract. There is no specific date as to when this handset will be released but many believe it should be within the month of June. If it’s true then we should wait a little before we can see it in action.