Vodafone Smart Platinum 7 preview: OnePlus 3 has a competitor already

When it comes to carrier-branded smartphones, the expectation is rarely high. In most cases, it seems just an effort from the network operators to peddle out cheap, unimpressive devices with their branding on them. Customer experience and device quality, or value for money, comes second. But now there’s the Vodafone Smart Platinum 7 which, on paper, and on first impressions looks to be great value.

Vodafone Smart Platinum 7: Design

There’s a lot to like about the Vodafone Smart Platinum 7’s design. It’s essentially a metal frame sandwiched between two sheets of Corning Gorilla Glass. The glass finish on the back is particularly attractive with its Obsidian-like black colouring and its subtle carbon fibre pattern underneath. It looks like a premium phone. What’s more, the glass has some attractive, subtle curves on the edges.

The metal frame has an understated dark grey finish with angled, polished chamfers running all around the front and back of the device, further adding to the high-end aesthetic. To make space for some front-firing stereo speakers, the top and bottom portions of the frame are slightly thicker, and have colour-matched plastic inserts with dozens of small machined holes to let the sound out.

Solidity is the key word here. With the way the metal frame has been built, the phone feels very durable and strong. But there is a downside to this design: glass is slippery. As is often the case with glass-surfaced phones, it slips very easily from some surfaces, and grip constantly needs adjusting to make sure it stays securely in-hand during use. With a phone as large as this, it’s not the most ergonomic experience.

As for ports and hardware buttons, the phone seems well-equipped. On the left edge is the single card tray with slots for both a nano SIM and microSD. A textured hardware button sits above that near the top corner which, when double pressed, launches the camera and can be used as a shutter button to take pictures. The 3.5mm audio jack sits in the top edge, while the bottom edge plays home to a Micro-USB port. On the right are two very well designed buttons: a long volume rocker and a power button, both of which are large, textured and have an angular design.

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Vodafone Smart Platinum 7: Display

Like the OnePlus 3, the Platinum 7 is a ~£300 phone, which means some compromises had to be made to come in on budget. The screen wasn’t one of those compromises. It boasts a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels, commonly known as Quad HD, and is AMOLED based which means that – as well as being super sharp – its colours are vibrant.

Part of the reason Voda’s decision to use a Quad HD display is that the network operator has launched its own VR headset to be sold alongside the phone. With lenses magnifying every pixel on screen, and being that close to your face, a higher resolution panel was necessary. 

As part of its settings, the phone lets you change the way colours appear onscreen. So, if you want to, you can make it cooler or warmer in temperature, or set colours to be more or less vivid. As it is, out of the box, it seems a very good screen. 

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Vodafone Smart Platinum 7: Camera

While the 16-megapixel camera might not be the most pixel-dense sensor out there, it has enough hardware and software features to keep anyone happy. The PDAF (phase detection autofocus) means it focus on objects really quickly, and the added HDR means colours and light will be balanced no matter how harsh the lighting condition are. And with its zero shutter-lag, pics are captured virtually as soon as the physical camera button is pressed, and saved in a fraction of a second.  

Like many cameras these days, the rear camera protrudes from the back, although credit goes to the designers for making the metal ring surrounding the camera feel so solid. The front camera has 8-megapixels and even has its own LED flash, so your selfies will be sharp and brightly-lit regardless of where you are.

Perhaps more impressive is the plethora of options in the camera’s app. Like a lot of smartphone cameras you can take panoramic photos, slow-mo videos with effects like night mode, HDR and even shoot video in resolutions up to 4K. There is also, surprisingly, a manual camera mode which lets you manually adjust all the important photo capture settings like ISO, shutter speed, white balance and focus. 

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Vodafone Smart Platinum 7: Hardware

As mentioned previously, fitting into the budget category means compromises need to be made. Rather than fit the Platinum 7 with the best processor, huge amounts of RAM and storage, Vodafone went with a top-of-the-line screen. That means compromises were made with the internal components, but that’s not necessarily as bad as it sounds.

Inside, you’ll find the Snapdragon 652 processor with eight cores, sat alongside 3GB of RAM and 32GB of built-in storage (which can be expanded by microSD card). From first impressions alone, it still seems like an overall fast and fluid phone, thanks to the clean and light software. The mid-range processor from Qualcomm is easily robust enough to power any of your day-to-day tasks and only seems to show signs of stuttering when there’s a lot going on, all at once.

Because it has one of the more modern processors from Qualcomm, that means Vodafone was able to equip the device with Quick Charge 3.0 technology too. The 3000mAh battery can charge from 0 to 50 per cent in just 30 minutes, and once fully charged should comfortably make it through a full day (if not two).

As well as all of that, there’s a round fingerprint sensor on the back, which sits completely flush with the glass panel and recognises prints relatively quickly. It’s not quite as fast as those from the likes of Huawei or Oppo, but it detects and unlocks the phone quickly enough that it doesn’t feel slow.

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Vodafone Smart Platinum 7: Software

With many carrier-locked and branded phones, you often find a tonne of apps pre-installed that you can’t delete, and a user interface tweaked so much that it no longer resembles pure Android. With the Smart Platinum 7, that isn’t the case. For the most part, it’s a very clean, stock Android experience.

Of course, there are a couple of Vodafone-inspired tweaks here and there but nothing pervasive or intrusive. Upon first booting up the phone, there’s a brief Vodafone boot-up screen. Then, when setting the phone up, the last screen offers you the chance to download some of Vodafone’s apps from the Play Store. You can un-tick those, if you decide you don’t want them.

Apart from those, there are six Vodafone apps on the device, one of which is the standard SMS/MMS messaging app. Then there’s the Phone+ app which lets you take advantage of Voda’s calling technology by making calls from the web on your desktop. Similarly, Message+ does the same for messaging. There’s a Tips app for getting you accustomed to different features, an Accessories app linking to deals on phone accessories, and the Start app which takes you to a window to download Voda’s other apps.

Of those, four can’t be deleted. As you’d expect, the key messaging app can’t be deleted, neither can Phone+, Message+ or the Start app. However, you can remove the Tips and Accessories app.

In all, given the necessity of those apps to use Vodafone’s services, it’s not a terrible amount of bloatware. Voda could easily have loaded the phone up with every single one of its apps, but it didn’t.

First Impressions

The £300 phone market is getting incredibly competitive this year, and this is yet another phone eager to show that it’s worth the money. With phones like the OnePlus 3, Oppo F1 Plus and even last year’s OnePlus 2 on the market at around the same price (or cheaper), the Platinum 7 is up against some great devices. And that’s with the comparably specced Alcatel Idol 4S still to land.

While it seems as good as some of the other similarly-priced phones available, the only struggle for the Platinum 7 is that it can only be purchased on Vodafone, and it’s locked to the network. You can buy it for either £28 per month on contract or £300 pay-as-you-go.