Vodafone Smart N9 review

Interface and reliability

• Lightly modified Android 8.1 Oreo
• Level of Vodafone bloatware not quite as bad

Vodafone’s smartphones have always elicited mixed emotions on the software front, and the Vodafone Smart N9 is no different.

On the one hand you always get a lightweight, close-to-stock and up to date version of the Android operating system. On the other hand, Vodafone does tend to insist on pumping its phones with bloatware, from ugly widgets to pointless apps.

On the first point, you’re getting Android Oreo 8.1 here. We could name some very expensive phones that still aren’t running this version.

It’s a largely faithful take on Google’s popular OS, with the same crisp icons and menus. You get a familiar app tray, which can be raised with a dedicated virtual button or a swipe up from the bottom of the home screen.

One handy addition is the addition of a shortcut to your favourite app by swiping left from the home screen. You could set it to bring up your email, for example, or the clock app if you’re constantly setting timers and alarms.

Given that Vodafone used to devote this entire screen to its Tips app, this is clear progress. We still pine for the Google Now days, but as Google seems to have abandoned it in favour of Google Assistant we can’t really hold Vodafone to account for its absence.

Speaking of Google’s voice-activated personal assistant, it doesn’t seem to be listening out for your prompts as on other budget phones. You can use it, but you’ll need to tap that microphone button on the Google widget at the top of the main home screen to access it, or else press and hold the virtual home button.

On the matter of bloatware, Vodafone appears to have scaled back on the level of carrier fluff with the Smart N9. The messaging and caller apps are stock Android efforts rather than the network’s ugly alternatives, which is genuine progress.

Conversely, My Vodafone is essentially a big network account and FAQ app, while the aforementioned Tips also gets its own app icon, and is actually pretty useful for introducing beginners to Android. We’re not mad on either, but we can see that they might have a use.

The Start widget over on the second home screen is just an eyesore, though. This chunky pane pushes a bunch of Vodafone services and help topics, which seem to wander beyond the realms of the absolutely necessary.

In its defence, the pre-installation of these services is part of the reason Vodafone’s phones are so cheap in the first place. All can be easily removed, too.

Movies, music and gaming

• Big, bright screen shows media well
• Headphone jack and tinny speaker
• 16GB of storage is not enough

We put the Vodafone Smart N9’s media chops to the test with a range of media types, from Amazon Video movies to the new YouTube Music app and a whole range of games. The overall outcome was generally okay, particularly for a phone of this price, albeit far from perfect.

Visual media looks good on the N9’s big, bright, 18:9 display. That said, it’s worth pointing out that you won’t be seeing Full HD video in its native glory, which is definitely noticeable.

While games make better use of that 18:9 aspect ratio, they don’t run all that well. 3D action games like Shadowgun Legends and even the brilliantly optimised Guns of Boom were stuttery despite defaulting to low-detail mode.

Audio is adequate, rather than accomplished. The sole speaker on the bottom of the phone isn’t particularly crisp or bassy, but it does at least get plenty loud - if sometimes ear-piercingly shrill.

You’re far better off using the top-mounted headphone socket for your music needs - a feature that will pretty soon be a USP for budget phones like this, you feel.

Talking of beloved but increasingly marginalised audio technology, we’re pleased to see that Vodafone has once again included an FM Radio app here. Plug in a set of earphones and you’ll be able to tune into the airwaves wherever you are in the world, without any data requirement.

When it comes to storing that media, you’ll need to make use of the Smart N9’s microSD slot pretty sharply. With just 16GB of internal storage - 6GB of which is taken up by Android - we found ourselves running out of space within a week.

Specs and benchmark performance

• MediaTek 6739WA isn’t a good performer at all
• Benchmarks unimpressive

We hinted at it in the previous section, but the Vodafone Smart N9 is not a strong performer. In fact, we’d suggest that the single biggest thing holding it back from loftier things is its sheer sluggishness.

That can be put down to a few things. First and most apparent is the MediaTek 6739WA chipset that’s at the phone’s heart. It’s a low-end chipset in every way, with four Cortex-A53 cores running at 1.3 GHz.

Combined with just 2GB of RAM - an improvement over the Vodafone Smart N8’s 1.5GB, but still shy of Android’s comfort zone - it doesn’t make for smooth handling. We’ve already pointed out that gaming performance isn’t good, but it affects even general performance.

Booting up apps and loading up web pages comes with a clear pause, camera performance is slow, it takes ages for the fingerprint scanner to unlock the phone - even menus like the app tray stutter mid-animation.

Our Geekbench 4 benchmark tests reflected this underwhelming perception. An average multicore score of 1,628 is far from impressive, though it does manage to pip the Vodafone Smart N8 on 1,484. That’s not really saying much though.

It should be clear that we’re not holding the Smart N9 against flagship phones here. Head up to the £150 to £200 region and you’ll find extremely fluid handsets that will do everything well, such as the Moto G6 Play, which scored 2,394 points.

Of course, that’s still a lot more money than the £109 Vodafone Smart N9. If you’re shopping at this price point, £50 to £100 can be a massive gap to bridge, but the performance gap is even more noticeable.