We live in the age of smartphones right now. If you don’t have a mobile phone that can surf the internet, play games,organise your entire life, and act as a top of the line camera, you are seen as a caveman. And you might be fooled into thinking that something so advanced can’t be bad. Hell, since most smartphones run the same apps and use the same basic hardware, you may think there isn’t much difference between them at all outside of design.
Well if you did think that, you would be quite wrong.
Smartphones are a lot like TVs, and not just because they now both allow you to watch TV shows! Just as TVs can all hide small (or large) faults, so can smartphones. The problem area seems to be budget smartphones. Top of the line models simply can’t afford to be anything other than spectacular, but as the price drops, so do the standards those phones are held accountable to it seems.
So here are a few smartphones from 2014 who fell a little short of the mark:
Nokia X
We’ll start with a brand you may be familiar with. Nokia ruled the early days of mass market mobile phones with the Snake toting 3210, but it’s popularity waned as the likes of Apple and Samsung took over. They are back on a strong standing now however, but they aren’t without a few blemishes. Case in point – the Nokia X. While nice to look at, it was cripplingly slow. So bad was it that Nokia put out the follow up, the Nokia X2, within 6 months, before discontinuing the entire line a month later.
Kyocera Hydro Life
High end waterproof smartphones aren’t common, but there are a few models knocking around in the mid-to-low price brackets. The Kyocera Hydro Life if one such phone, promising that no amount of rainwater will cause it to break down. Only the price you pay for this peace of mind is any semblance of good quality pictures and fast loading times. There are models that handle water just as well with the drawbacks for a similar price.
ZTE Prelude
The ZTE Prelude hits things out of the park in terms of pricing, and doesn’t struggle with 3G speeds. For a budget smartphone, you might think that would be enough, but unfortunately, the Prelude misses on almost all other criteria for a good phone. While the camera may be seen by some as merely an unessential extra, poor call quality is unacceptable.
Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha
To finish, here is another example of a phone that may look nice on the surface, but falls to pieces if you dig just a little under the surface. Alcatel, a French smartphone manufacturer, have produced a phone that looks rivals those in the upper price brackets. But once again, the aesthetics seem to have been priority number one, as everything else is poor. A patchy screen, slow running speeds, and a now obsolete operating system mean that the poor battery life may be a blessing – yes it may be bad, but at least it’ll be dead soon!