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Vodafone has a new super-cheap smart phone for your consideration — the Smart 3 is an Android mobile that costs less than 100 quid.
Packing a 4-inch display and a 5-megapixel camera, the Smart 3 is priced at a reasonable £95 on pay as you go, available to snap up from Vodafone’s website.
The Smart 3, a sequel to last year’s Smart 2, is powered by Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. That’s not the latest version — an honour that belongs to version 4.2, also called Jelly Bean — but it’s pretty close.
Whenever I see a cheap Android phone revealed I immediately look for the catch, as there are usually a few hardware corners that manufacturers cut in order to offer a bargain basement price.
Happily in this case there don’t seem to be any particularly severe cuts. The 4-inch display for instance has a 480×800 pixel display, which is a healthy resolution, and should keep everything on-screen looking reasonably crisp.
The processor, Vodafone says, is a 1GHz affair — presumably that’s single-core, but I’ve asked for clarification. That’s not a particularly high clock speed, so you might see the Smart 3 straining a bit when you fire up more intensive apps.
Vodafone won’t have built the Smart 3 itself, instead it will have been bolted together by another manufacturer, like Huawei or ZTE. I’ve asked who was behind the Smart 3, and I’ll update this story when I hear back.
Update: Vodafone tells me the processor is indeed single-core, and that the Smart 3 is made by Alcatel.
If you’re shopping around for cheap Android phones, you’d be wise to examine our round-up of the best budget blowers out there.
Are you intrigued, or not bothered? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook wall.
