Vodafone 845 review

The Vodafone 845 boasts a Lithium-Ion 1200mAh battery, which, when heavily used, lasted us about 8 hours before it required a bit more juice, however that was with continued use of the browser, viewing of YouTube videos, listening to music, excessive GPS use and live Google Maps wallpapers.

On a normal day you'll get a full day's use out of the device.

Again it goes without saying that the less applications that are in use, the more life you'll get out of the battery. Live Android widgets like Facebook and push email naturally have an adverse effect on the battery life also.

One charge a day is totally necessary, however the battery doesn't charge as fast as some of the competitors, especially when plugged into the PC rather than the mains.

Connectivity

As expected we've got Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, tri-band 2G (900/1800/1900) and HSDPA to 3.6Mbps and HSUPA 3G mobile broadband capabilities, as well as Bluetooth 2.1 and A-GPS. So, all the usual suspects are here.

The Wi-Fi, as on all Android phones, is extremely easy to set up and, like a wily old Jack Russell terrier, will remember everywhere it has ever marked its territory before. With only 3.6Mbps, rather than the now expected 7.2Mbps, 3G mobile browsing isn't as speedy as we'd like.

Occasionally we'd have to restart the phone to have any joy to have any joy loading webpages, even when the connectivity meter was showed that data was being pumped in and out of the phone.

As we mentioned in the maps section, the GPS isn't as solid as we'd hope for, although it will geotag the pictures captured on the 845's camera.

There's also an extremely easy to set-up PC Suite, which will back-up all of your contacts and texts, but only from the SIM card, and storing things on the SIM isn't exactly the Android way these days, we leave that up to Google, for better or worse.

It does sync your Outlook contacts nicely enough, however, but that can be done remotely.

We spoke of this within the internet section, but the ability to use to tether this phone as a mobile broadband dongle is an unexpected bonus.

Applications

The Android Market is the clear second-placed player behind the Apple App Store and is getting better with each passing day.

There may only a quarter of the applications available compared to iPhone owners, but there's been a sharp increase in quality this year, and that is another solid reason to get behind this device.

Google has promised 130,000 applications by the end of the year, but with the inability to save applications on the microSD card it's going to be difficult to load the device with some of the market's better offerings, especially some of the games currently making their way into the market.

The Vodafone offerings we mentioned within the music and internet sections of the review can largely be ignored, but the Facebook and YouTube live Android widgets as well as the Accuweather widget allow 845 owners to give their phone the same set-up as many of the top-end Android devices at a fraction of the price.

Obviously the processing power isn't there to match, so the functionality and user-friendliness isn't quite there, but this is another example of the 845 trying to be the best it can be.