EE have announced the UK's cheapest yet 4G smartphone - It's called the Rook and costs £49, but only £39 for existing EE customers.
Not even the 2nd generation Moto E is this cheap (to be honest, it's a bit overpriced and not widely available).
EE customers will have to top up by at least £10 to buy the Rook, but at under £50, this is a total bargain.
EE own brand handsets have always been pretty good value. I think that they learned a lot from their acquisistion of Orange with their line up of own brand smartphones such as the Orange San Fransisco.
Vodafone have also been retailing their own branded smartphones for years now, but the earlier handsets did not get good reviews at all, and whilst I think that Vodafone are now selling some much improved handsets, they aren't as reasonbly priced as EE's.
The Rook from EE comes (thankfully!) with Android 5.1 Lollipop on board, and has a 1GHz quad-core MediaTek processor, 8GB of storage, 1GB of RAM and a 5MP camera. It will accept microSD cards up to 32GB in size. The 4" display will be acceptable (and more pocketable than many of the latest handsets).
The 1500mAh battery seems a bit on the small side, but I'm guessing that this is not a device to be watching movies on.
At under £50, this phone is targetted at EE's PAYG customers, and to be honest I am very, very pleased to see that EE are providing such a reasonably priced 4G device at this price point - As the UK networks continue to roll out 4G and charge customers a premium for this service, many areas of the country are still suffering from poor coverage, with patchy 2G and 3G still very prevalent.
I hope that the other networks take note of what EE are offering with this handset - Ok, EE's prices are not the cheapest available, but it's about time that all networks realised that 4G should be widely available to all customers, not just those who are willing and able to pay extra for the use of this part of their networks.
Well done to EE for retailing such a keenly-priced 4G phone!
Not even the 2nd generation Moto E is this cheap (to be honest, it's a bit overpriced and not widely available).
EE customers will have to top up by at least £10 to buy the Rook, but at under £50, this is a total bargain.
EE own brand handsets have always been pretty good value. I think that they learned a lot from their acquisistion of Orange with their line up of own brand smartphones such as the Orange San Fransisco.
Vodafone have also been retailing their own branded smartphones for years now, but the earlier handsets did not get good reviews at all, and whilst I think that Vodafone are now selling some much improved handsets, they aren't as reasonbly priced as EE's.
The Rook from EE comes (thankfully!) with Android 5.1 Lollipop on board, and has a 1GHz quad-core MediaTek processor, 8GB of storage, 1GB of RAM and a 5MP camera. It will accept microSD cards up to 32GB in size. The 4" display will be acceptable (and more pocketable than many of the latest handsets).
The 1500mAh battery seems a bit on the small side, but I'm guessing that this is not a device to be watching movies on.
At under £50, this phone is targetted at EE's PAYG customers, and to be honest I am very, very pleased to see that EE are providing such a reasonably priced 4G device at this price point - As the UK networks continue to roll out 4G and charge customers a premium for this service, many areas of the country are still suffering from poor coverage, with patchy 2G and 3G still very prevalent.
I hope that the other networks take note of what EE are offering with this handset - Ok, EE's prices are not the cheapest available, but it's about time that all networks realised that 4G should be widely available to all customers, not just those who are willing and able to pay extra for the use of this part of their networks.
Well done to EE for retailing such a keenly-priced 4G phone!
