[rwp-review id=”0″]
With the smartphone market so thoroughly saturated with an abundance of brands and designs, one doesn’t have to look far to find a smartphone that’s cheap and can perform adequately, the Honor brand of phones comes to mind, most of them retailing for less than AED1500 and providing services you’d normally associate with a far more expensive phone. Here’s where one company based in the United Kingdom attempts to bring that bar lower. Chances are you’ve never heard of the Wileyfox brand, after all there are only two smartphones under its name, the Wileyfox Swift and the Wileyfox Storm. I decided to take the Wileyfox Swift, priced at AED 500, for a run.
Design
With curved corners and edges, the Wileyfox Swift is extremely easy and comfortable to hold. Weighing only 136g, the Swift is also pretty lightweight and as a result doesn’t strain your arm after a long social media workout. It also comes with an “ergonomic case optimized for one hand operating”. Much smaller than the Wileyfox Storm, Wileyfox Swift sits comfortably in even the smallest of hands. With a matte finish at the back, the Swift doesnt slip from my fingertips, like a few others would.
For a budget phone, I was seriously impressed with the quality of the Swift. The front display features a 5″ HD Gorilla Glass, that is relatively scratch proof – unless you forcefully try to test its limits. The Swift also comes with an oleophobic coating, which prevents fingerprints from soiling the screen. But don’t take that as an excuse to use your phone directly after having some fried chicken – I’d recommend washing your hands first. The back cover features the Wileyfox logo, which was a personal favourite, the name of the company in orange, and the camera, which is encircled by a shiny orange ring. This would do well with those in favour of the colour Orange.
Display
At the front of the Wileyfox Swift is a 5″ IPS display with 720×1280 resolution covered by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3. The small screen dimension results in 293 pixels per inch. The Wileyfox Swift also has quite the bright display, brighter than most phones. However, the backlight can appear as too bright when indoors, as the auto brightness features isn’t exactly responsive. I found myself having to adjust the brightness myself when moving through different environments. Furthermore I found that when adjusting the brightness to adapt to night, the screen has a yellow-ish tint, which takes some getting used to.
Software
Based on Android Lollipop 5.1, the Swift uses a Cyanogen OS 12.1, known for its revolutionary personalization features, intuitive interface, speed, improved battery life, enhanced apps and leading security features. Cyanogen allows users to endlessly customize the phone to every need, ranging from UI themes and shortcuts, to lock screens and even audio quality.
Something that really impressed me was the Audio FX feature. It has a 13 preset configuration, allowing you to adjust the sound settings to your liking, and get the best possible sound from the audio. Another feature of the Swift is the improved privacy setting also includes a PIN Scramble feature, that randomly changes the order of numbers on the screen to ensure that onlookers are not able to detect passwords through pattern memorization or screen smudges.
It’s pretty much the normal slice of cake when it comes to the Wileyfox Swift, interface wise: the drop down notification bar looks pretty neat, making a lot of features easily accessible, the menu button is located at the bottom centre of the screen, also sporting the fox head logo, allows you to receive a list of all your apps, and a swipe function to navigate through said apps.
Performance
The Swift has 2 GB worth of RAM and a 64-bit Quad-core 1.2GHz powering it, as well as a 16GB worth of storage space (expandable up to 32GB) which is pretty impressive for a budget phone. During my tenure with the Wileyfox Swift, I didn’t experience any performance drops or stutters with everything running smoothly. However whilst conducting an AnTuTu performance test the Wileyfox Swift score 21,736 which, let’s face it, isn’t great but is accceptable for a smartphone in this price range.
The Swift comes with a removable 2,500mAh battery, which really lives up to the hype. I found myself not needing to charge the Swift as much as I did with my previous iPhone 5, even with constant data usage. The stand-by time for the Swift goes up to 200 hours.
Camera
With an impressive 13MP dual LED flash rear camera (with a S5K3M2 Samsung sensor) and 5MP secondary camera with a wide range of shooting features, it doesn’t fail to impress me. Although there is a lack of camera filters, the preset filters aren’t all that bad.
The camera also features face detection, touch focus, zero shutter lag, panorama, HDR, geo-tagging, auto exposure and antibanding customisation.
The only thing that disappointed me was the HDR feature. I’ve always appreciated the iPhone camera for its HDR camera, and I thought I’d get similar results with the Swift. IT really just brightens up a photo to extremes, making it look rather overexposed. But, playing around with the focus, you can achieve bearable results that doesn’t make you want to use Photoshop Express to try and improve the photo. The HDR shooting feature is also extremely slow. When using the feature, I found myself having to hold the phone in place for a rather long period of time, ending up with me having to lean onto a surface to finally get a proper(ish) HDR photo.
Other filters include Action, Steady photo, Sepia, Posterize, Aqua as well as Night mode.
Verdict
I was pretty impressed with the Wileyfox Swift. I didn’t expect it to be as good as it is, especially since I’m a bit skeptical about Android in general. The first day using the phone was rather slow. Since I wasn’t used to the operating system, I found myself wanting to crawl back to iOS, where I was safe and knew what I was doing. But I slowly adapted to the integrated Cyanogen OS, steadily regaining my confidence with technology. I wasn’t a turtle anymore. I knew what I was doing.
At only AED 499, the Wileyfox Swift can be found on Souq.com!
