All in all, there’s nothing particularly special about the Smart V8. These days, metalwork, this kind of spec sheet and value-added features like fingerprint sensor and NFC are becoming standard at the mid-to-low end. The new handset does have something going for it, though — a pretty competitive price tag.
Vodafone’s pay-as-you-go range is relatively sparse around the £150 mark. You’ve got the £149 Sony Xperia L1, which is less attractive enough on paper to justify the jump to the £159 Smart V8. The closest handset beyond that point is the fairly comparable £199 Huawei P8 lite (2017). The Moto G5 gets a nod too, obviously, as well as the Wileyfox Swift 2, since they can be bought elsewhere for bang on £159. You wouldn’t say either of them are significantly better than the Smart V8, though.
Smart N8
If you’ve set yourself a slightly tighter budget, Vodafone also recently launched the Smart N8, an £85 handset sitting in the crowded low-end of the pay-as-you-go spectrum. It’s more than appropriately specced, with a 5-inch, 720p display, quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek chip, 1.5GB of RAM, 16 gigs of expandable storage, 13- and 5-megapixel cameras, fingerprint sensor, NFC and 2,400mAh battery.
Despite looking a little on the drab side, it’s a decent value device. You could always save yourself a London pint and opt for the £79 Moto G4 Play instead, which recently began receiving Android Nougat, but you would be sacrificing the fingerprint reader/NFC combo. But that’s true of most other devices dipping below the £100 marker at the moment.
Smart Tab N8
While the two smartphones have obvious places in Vodafone’s backroom, the new Smart Tab N8 is where things get confusing. The draw of pretty much all own-brand tablets is ultimate portability, thanks to 4G, at a reasonable cost. I wouldn’t call the Smart Tab N8 very portable though, because it’s massive. It’s not that heavy at 465g and it’s pretty thin, too, with 8.95mm between the glass front and textured, tactile plastic back — it’s that it’s all face.
