NOA 4.5" smartphone

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A very good budget smartphone

I like this phone.  I was sent it for review and at this price I suspected it may be poor quality tat, but it's a very good budget phone.  It's a little low spec, but it's robust, it  works very well and I think it is excellent value.  (At the time of writing it costs around seventy quid.)

When reading this review, please bear in mind that I am in late middle age and that my use may not reflect yours. I don't game, tweet or upload lots of photos, for example; I use the phone for calls and texts, music, email, taking some photos, catching up on radio programmes and occasional TV and a little web browsing. Also, I'm no expert on lots of technical specification and so on, but for what it's worth:

It's very nicely packaged and I think the phone itself is attractive; it's in white plastic and has nice styling.  It seems robust, it's easy to set up by installing the removable (and therefore replaceable) battery.

The 4.5" screen is very good to my eyes.  It's clear and sharp with decent colours and it's reasonably tolerant of viewing angle. although it isn't great when viewed at an angle and you do need to keep it pretty straight on to you. Also supplied with the phone are a spare screen protector, a user manual, an adequate pair of earphones, a mains charger (with an EU-type plug, so you'll need an adaptor) and a micro-USB lead - all in white with some rather garish orange trim.

Everything I need works very nicely for me - the phone runs Android 5.1, all the functions I want are simple and pretty intuitive, and it seems pretty quick. The internal memory is 8GB which isn't huge, but it's adequate and you can expand it with a micro-SD card. (I use a 32GB card and it works fine).  It is dual micro-SIM and there are three slots so you can install two SIMs and an SD card, which not all dual-SIM phones have. 

(Note that this works on 4G network FDD-LTE 100/1800/2600/800MHz, Band 1/3/7/20.  You will need to check that it will give 4G on your network.)

In use, this phone is fine for me. Everything I want just works. The battery lasts for several days with my light use (although I carry a little power bank just in case). Music played through speakers this small always sounds pretty terrible to me and this is no exception, but through headphones or via Bluetooth the sound is excellent and the music player is fine. Bluetooth is simple and stable up to a decent range. The cameras aren’t brilliant at 8mp and 5mp, but they're adequate for everyday stuff. Playstore and a reasonable selection of apps come pre-installed, and syncing via my Google account was very simple. Data transfer with my laptop is simple and pretty quick and other functions also seem very good.
 
In summary, this is a very decent-quality budget phone which does everything I want.  If you want a high-end, high-spec phone you'll need to look elsewhere and spend a lot more, but this does the basics well, seems robust and works well for me. I am very happy with mine and can recommend it warmly, certainly to fellow non-techies who want a decent, simple smartphone which just does the job.