WileyFox Swift 2: A new champ of the 'for around £150' market

British startup WileyFox has made the best "for around £150"* phone since the first Moto G shook up the market for low-cost smartphones back in 2013. There are two models, the Swift 2 at £159 (list) and dual SIM Swift 2+ at £189 (list), both the same size. I tested the "Plus size" here. Both variants have a fingerprint sensor …

[Dabooka]

It's all in the details

"The £189 "Plus" variant buys you a larger display, 32GB of internal storage, and a 16MP main camera."

Except it does't does it, it gets you 3gb/32gb vs 2gb/16gb and a 16MP camera against a 13MP. Screen size stays the same at 5".

I've seen some ropey reviews about this handset, as I've been putting off getting a new handset and am torn between this and a G4. One review has the 430 being a quad core FFS. This is a real problem trying to get subjective reviews for me, loads of details wrong or omitted. No mention of it only having a 720 screen res? USB3? Rapid charge? Come on....

So, this or a G4?!

[Dave 126]

Re: It's all in the details

I'm assuming you mean the Moto G4, and not the LG G4 - or indeed the Apple G4 Cube? :)

[Dabooka]

Re: It's all in the details

@Dave126

You surmised correctly sir!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's all in the details

Am in a similar position, considering buying either this or the G4+.

The other recent review and comparison seems to crown the G4+ as the winner, mainly due to superior display resolution, better battery and faster charge.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/2476733/wileyfox-swift-2-plus-vs-moto-g4-plus-review

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's all in the details

Did you really just post a link the The Inquirer on El Reg? That's ballsy...

[Timmy B]

Re: It's all in the details

This or a G4? Neither. Get a oneplus 3T when they are out in a little bit. I like my oneplus 3 loads. A little bit more money but well worth it. If the extra money is the issue - one of these. I never was happy with my LG.

[Richard 81]

Re: It's all in the details

@Timmy B: But will it be £150-£200? If not, it's not in the same class as this thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's all in the details

Anyone know if the A3, T3 or G4 have replaceable batteries? Otherwise, anything else sharing the value-for-money bracket, which does?

I'd have grabbed a few of these for Christmas presents if they hadn't glued in the batteries.

:-(

[Steven Raith]

Re: It's all in the details

Honestly, I had similar qualms about the Nexus 4 (who's battery might as well be glued in - it's not exactly a quick swap job), but went for the plunge not long after launch anyway.

I've only replaced it in the last few weeks after the touchscreen went a bit flaky. So the better part of four years.

After the first few weeks, I simply stopped thinking about the battery; if you are worried about running out of charge halfway through the day, USB power banks are cheap and portable and arguably safer than having a soft-wall LiPo cell in your backpack/pocket etc.

Replaced it with a Hauwei P9 Lite because I'm cheap as all fuck, and it's not a bad thing itself, although I really, really miss the 'plain jane' android interface; the hauwei one is 'ok' but it's not as straightforward. Why can't I swipe down with two fingers to get to the system shortcuts, damnit?

Anyway, enough rambling.

Steven R

[Roland6]

Re: It's all in the details

Agree it is all in the detail.

Recently I've had cause to research the use of a smartphone as cycle/bike computer, which dropped me into this problem, asking questions such as:

Does it support OTG, Bluetooth 4.0/Smart, ANT2+, GPS...

Does it support a reasonable number of bluetooth sensors eg. heart rate monitor, cadence, speed, power, plus headset for hands free music/calling.

Etc. etc.

This made me realise that we now at the point where the smartphone has gone beyond being simply a 'smart' phone, it was now in some use cases more of a cost effective, highly mobile compute and display platform; just that both manufacturers and reviews have yet to wake up to the market change...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's all in the details

I was looking into same things - went for the Moto G4 16Gb Dual Sim.

The 1920x1080 screen and the dual sim plus SDCard won the day.

13MP camera works fine, storage not a prob with 128GB SD, only use it for talking to people and playing music, videos, odd photos.

Best phone I've had so far, no problems at all (actually there was no USB charging cable but whatever).

[VinceH]

Re: It's all in the details

"The £189 "Plus" variant buys you a larger display, 32GB of internal storage, and a 16MP main camera."

Except it does't does it, it gets you 3gb/32gb vs 2gb/16gb and a 16MP camera against a 13MP. Screen size stays the same at 5".

Icon for the review saying that, because it even says the screen size is the same at the start of the review: " There are two models, the Swift 2 at £159 (list) and dual SIM Swift 2+ at £189 (list), both the same size."

That aside, however, I have a WileyFox Storm - the larger of their original models - which I bought when they were first available. I have two regrets:

1. At the time, I wanted a bigger screen than my previous phone (the Samsung Galaxy S3) - and it didn't take long for me to realise that, no, I only thought I wanted a bigger screen. In practice, it's a pain because it doesn't fit in the ideal pockets of any of my jackets. So I want a smaller screen again.

2. The non-replaceable battery. I found the battery life was crap at the start - but somewhere down the line an update improved it - but over time it's gone crap again. I now tend to keep a spare charger in my laptop bag, because on days when I make a lot of use of the phone as a phone I find that without the charger the phone might not last the day.

So I may be in the market for a new phone because of both of these points - but point 2 means I will definitely steer clear of anything with a battery that can't be replaced. Lesson learnt.

[fleddy]

Re: It's all in the details

Swift/Storm... Replacable/non-replacable battery

I bought the Swift (a year ago) because of the replaceable battery and have been trying to get a pair of spare battery... non available anywhere and WileyFox has no plans to sell them !

Ironically they have plans for a replacement battery for the Storm ;(

I was a very happy Samsung Note user and had 3 spare batteries. Otherwise Swift is great and I don't regret not having the extra size/bulge in my trousers :)

[Dominic Shields]

Re: It's all in the details

I have a spare battery for my Swift, I bought it from the Wileyfox website under "Store" - "Power and Cables" https://www.wileyfox.com/store/power-and-cables.html

[dajames]

Unfortunately microSD card capacity is limited to 64GB.

Is it? Did you try?

If it supports 64GB it must be supporting SDXC, as SDHC only supports cards up to 32GB, so it ought to support cards up to 2TB. I would guess that it will actually work with the larger cards now available (I've seen up to 256GB advertised) but that WileyFox don't claim that because they haven't tested it.

That's just a guess, though. It'd be nice to see a reviewer actually try it.

It's also worth stressing that (unlike the case with the original Swift) the use of a micro-SD card is not possible with a second SIM installed, which rather spoils the point in my opinion.

[Dabooka]

I agree

It's overly common isn't it, but I'm sure many of us have pushed the boundaries of supported card sizes with a high degree of success.

[phuzz]

The only way to find out that the SD-card slot is shared with one of the SIM slots is through reviews, because there's no manual included with the phone, there's also no manual on Wilyfox's website, or anywhere. (In fact, there's still no manual for the original Swift either.)

Personally I didn't need the manual, but my brother picked one up the other week, and it took quite a bit of trial an error for him to find out that he'd need to get a new SIM if he wanted to use an SD card.

So, Wilyfox are lacking in the documentation department, ie, they have no documentation at all.

[Charles 9]

"If it supports 64GB it must be supporting SDXC, as SDHC only supports cards up to 32GB, so it ought to support cards up to 2TB. I would guess that it will actually work with the larger cards now available (I've seen up to 256GB advertised) but that WileyFox don't claim that because they haven't tested it."

I've seen SDHC slots that balk after 8GB. I suspect there is some actual logic needed to address beyond a certain point, so if it can't go beyond 64GB, it may not possess the logic needed to beyond that point.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Fat32 will support up to 2TB, I am sure that the better file systems used by SDXC will support far, far more.

BTW, I have a Clarion car radio that claims only 32GB support, but it happily takes a 128GB card/usb drive when formatted correctly.

Still a POS though, I will never buy Clarion again.

[Dominic Shields]

Yes the MicroSD card limit is wrong and I'm not sure why so many reviewers repeat it, you'd think they'd know this stuff.

I was told that the the shyness about the real limit is to do with licensing and the real limit is much higher than 2TB.

I have the Swift with 64GB card (advertised limit 32GB), someone claims in the Amazon comments to have happily got a 200GB card in theirs.

The mixed reviews elsewhere about the Swift 2 seem to be inspired by some kind of backlash to do with the discovery that these phones are not made in UK and some brand snobbery.

[Milton]

But, the reviews ...

The reviews on Amazon UK by people who've bought and used them are not encouraging. Granting there will always be a few people moaning about anything, but the same problems get mentioned again and again: battery life, screen quality, things breaking, customer support ... and the good reviews include a troubling number of uninformative one-liners.

[Dabooka]

Re: But, the reviews ...

I know, I'm really wanting to feel the love and get this, but I'm worried I'll forever wish I got the G4 instead.

Decisions decisions.... need to decide by lunchtime!

[Ol' Grumpy]

Re: But, the reviews ...

If it helps:

My old man has the G4 and rates it highly - especially the 1080p screen.

I've got an original Swift here and it's been back twice under warranty.

Hopefully Wileyfox have improved the manufacturing quality for the new model.

[Richard Barnes]

Re: But, the reviews ...

If it helps, I have a dual-sim G4 which can also take a micro-SD card. It does the job extremely well, though using dual-sim in conjunction with Android Auto in the car is a little problematical.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: But, the reviews ...

I saw duff user reviews about the original Wiley Fox as well which doesn't inspire confidence in them, which is a shame. The swift 2 plus gets a right old kicking on expert reviews:

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/wileyfox/1405316/wileyfox-swift-2-plus-review-another-mediocre-moto-g4-rival

CM doesn't fill me with confidence either, I'd be looking at the Moto G series.

[Dabooka]

Re: But, the reviews ...

@Doc

It's that review I lined to that classes the 430 as a quadcore, so it kind of makes me think the whole review could be a hatchet job to be honest

[Dominic Shields]

Re: But, the reviews ...

I only see three reviews for the Swift 2 at time of writing, I have had the Swift since it came out after reading about it here and it is nothing short of superb, I find the negative reviews for the Swift on Amazon to positively reek of Dunning-Kruger syndrome and brand snobbery. I have bought four for various people and none have had the slightest issue whereas every negative review seems to say that the phone arrived broken and they never got a replacement.

The battery life moans I simply don't understand at all, I have never once exhausted the battery in less than a day.

[bigbill]

Re: But, the reviews ...

OK, I've had one about a week now and I've been reasonably impressed so far. It feels like a much more expensive phone, fingerprint sensor is quick (and I'm getting used to it being on the back), seems pretty quick (certainly quicker than my old Xperia Z3).

Re. the expertreviews review:

Display - I do wonder whether they're comparing specs here rather than actually testing it as I've had no issues either inside or out.

Camera - maybe this is just me but if I want top quality photos I'll use a proper camera. They seem fine to me.

Performance - again, I think they're just comparing numbers. This is probably one of the more responsive phones I've had.

OS - there may well be update issues in future but that could apply to any Android phone. I'm liking Cyanogen and the higher level of control over apps access. Was worth it for that alone.

Other comments:

GPS - drove into London yesterday and didn't lose signal once. Other phones I've had have often lost it in central London.

OTG - tried it with a USB-C OTG cable and didn't work. The cable was designed for a Mac but I'm assuming it should be standard and therefore the phone doesn't support OTG.

Bluetooth - got it connected to three devices simultaneously with no issues. Supports APT-X.

NFC - yep, works fine.

I've not compared it directly to a G4 but, for me, the extra size of the G4 would probably be a deal breaker. The Swift2 is just about useable with one hand.

[David Harper 1]

Has proper dual-SIM functionality been restored?

Is it possible to disable one of the SIM cards in a dual-SIM Swift 2 via the Settings app? This capability disappeared when my first-generation Swift was "upgraded" to Cyanogen 13, which made it all but useless as a dual-SIM phone, particularly when one SIM is for UK use and the other is for the US.

[Dan 55]

Re: Has proper dual-SIM functionality been restored?

It's an OS problem, not a phone problem. CM13 doesn't have dual SIM switches.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nothing in the price bracket offers one [ a fingerprint scanner ]"

The Moto G4 Plus does. That's £190 iirc.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Moto G4 Plus does. That's £190 iirc.

My Moto G has had only one software update since I got it about two years ago ... are the newer Moto's better in this regard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The Moto G4 Plus does. That's £190 iirc.

I've had the non-plus G4 for a few months. Currently it's on Android 6.0.1, security patch level 1st of July 2016.

They are promising Android 7 though, this quarter I believe.

[fandom]

Re: The Moto G4 Plus does. That's £190 iirc.

I have a third generation Moto G, it downloaded one update when I bought it in July and last month it got another.

It is supposed to get a Nougat update, but I'll believe it when I see it.

[Alien8n]

I think AO was talking about the £150 price bracket. Originally it was supposed to be the only phone costing less than £150 with a scanner, but even at £160 (okay, £159) it's still the only one with a scanner. £30 or £40 doesn't seem much when you look at kit costing £500 + but below £200 it's a pretty big chunk of cash.

[ritch_b]

Not really that Wiley...

Based on El Reg's rather positive review of the original Swift, I took a punt on the plucky little British startup last year and bought one. Sadly, any good points, and there were plenty, were thrown aside by stupid little niggles with the device and, more importantly, WileyFox's absolutely appalling support, although the term support is probably a misnomer, because they wouldn't know support if it walked up and shook their hand.

USB port recessed so far into the device that any connector apart from the supplied (non-standard and considerably longer than it ought to be) wouldn't attach securely? Oh yes. Seemingly trivial, but utterly frustrating beyond words. I wasn't the only one having issues here; BlackBerry charger, Lumia charger, HTC charger, Belkin in-car charger; none would attach. WF's telephone support people rather patronisingly informed me that there was an issue with all my chargers and cables, as theirs was standard, despite the connector being, if memory serves, about 6mm longer than the norm. They generously suggested I should buy one of their chargers, but that they weren't available yet and they'd no idea when they might be.

Battery life? Appalling. In fact, beyond a joke. Six hours of doing very, very little is not, despite what their support people insisted, normal or acceptable. Even the 3 year old S2 still held more charge on its original battery.

I wasn't the only person with these issues; plenty were shouting up at the time. The main issue really was that WF were rude, arrogant and patronising in their responses; untruthful, at times. That's the biggest killer and that's the reason that I'll never buy anything from them again; honesty is, apparently, the best policy, but I don't think WF got the memo...

[Alex C]

Re: Not really that Wiley...

What Ritch_b said really.

I really tried to like the WileFoxSwift 1 but it really was beset with problems - random crashing and bizarre battery life (would go from 30% to nothing quite frequently).

Happily Amazon were very good about taking it back.

I bought mine after glowing el Reg review too and would be rather more sceptical this time.

A pity really as it's a wonderful idea in theory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or if you don't want a fingerprint scanner.

The Samsung A3 (2016) is about the same price, has a decent screen, decent camera....

There are plenty of decent Android phones at around the £150 mark, this is just one of them.

[Alex C]

Re: Or if you don't want a fingerprint scanner.

My colleague at work has one and is delighted with it. It's lighter than my S7 too.

[biscuit]

I want one just because the photos of the food are making me hungry.

[Anonymous Coward]

"[...] the non-removable pack [...]"

I stopped reading at that point.

[Voland's right hand]

Those pics look distorted.

It is fairly trivial nowdays to do some photo rework to sort out fish eye distortion. I am surprised it does not have that at least as an option.

[Dr Who]

Don't know about the new one (and the Cyanogen Inc thing is an issue), but my first Swift which I'm still completely happy with is bloody brilliant.

[Quotes]

Another happy customer

I have an original Wileyfox Swift and I am very happy with it. The dual SIMM is very handy for PAYG - you can keep an existing PAYG number from a previous network and then add another SIMM for PAYG mobile data (Three do 1Mb for 1p). There have been regular system updates and I haven’t experienced any problems using Cyanogen. I agree with the previous comment about the USB connector being set back a bit more than normal, but you get used to it. If something went wrong with this phone I would happily buy another. Well done Wileyfox.

[Matthew Collier]

Spark

Just a note to say that whilst lots of people talk about the Swift (1 & 2), I bought the Spark for my daughter in the summer, and for £89 I can't believe what an amazing phone it is! If you don't care about the absolute latest greatest features in each area, but just competence in all of them, I can't imagine how you could beat the Spark for VFM! (it has dual SIM + MicroSD but I haven't tested it with both SIMs in operation).

Seems fast and responsive in most regards, the pictures it takes seem decent (if not the best, but, did you see the price!? ;) )

The CM OS plus the price/feature set was the reason it got bought, so that I could lock down the apps better than vanilla Android. Seems worth that alone for a fully working CM OS build!

HTH!

If the Swift 2 is £60 better than the Spark then it'll also be fantastic VFM!

[Sir Gaz of Laz]

"Nothing in the price bracket offers one [ a fingerprint scanner ]"

Elephone P9000 £185 on Amazon UK right now, with Prime delivery. Offers said fingerprint scanner as well as 1080p screen and 4GB of RAM and wireless charging.

I'm very pleased with mine - no issues since I've had it and a few OTA updates already, including the security patches.

Bargain of the year for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just ordered a Xiaomi Note3 Special Edition (work on all UK 4G networks), for £120, IT has a finger print scanner, and far better specs than this WF phone - which, after all, is an off the shelf, budget Chinese model with a new back plate on it - it may even be an old Xiaomi phone based on the spec sheet.

[elliotpage]

I have one of these! It was very nice for the 23 hours I had it until it slipped out of my hand and the screen imploded as it hit the floor.

Using the Wileyfox replacement service was a bit of a pain as the site appears to be unable to cope with sudden popularity. Waiting on the return now.

[Anonymous Coward]

"good local support"

Eh, no.

I had an original Swift and it was a great phone until I trapped it in the hinge of a cinema seat at the start of August. I pre-ordered a Spark+ based on the "mid August" dates in their April press announcements and then heard NOTHING. Nothing to say my order was ready. No explanation when the release date passed. No timely reply when I asked if there were delays. The only contact details on their website were for their support email address. I found a returns address on the order confirmation so at the end of August wrote to there to cancel the phone. Bought a G4 from Argos on my way home from work the same day.

THEN I get an email saying they're having delays meeting initial orders. (Especially annoying when it looked like it was available on Amazon)

THEN I get an email saying the phone has dispatched (we're now four weeks after ordering). If I want to cancel it I'll have to accept the delivery and then send it back.

I finally got a full refund 4 weeks after the supposed release date and 6 weeks after ordering. I have a G4 I'm more than happy with.

It's a shame because I loved Cyanogen on the Swift, but their Customer Service was a joke.

[sorry, what?]

Something smells...

Fox poo? I must say the review made the phone sound really interesting. It was only when I read the earlier comments here that I paused (or is that paws'd?) to wonder how unbiased and accurate the review was.

[The New Turtle]

I know of just a couple of people who had the earlier Wileyfox phones. General conclusion was they were badly made, unreliable, much slower than expected from the spec and Wf were horrendous to deal with over warranty issues. This might be a lot better, but as pointed out above, the G4 & G4 plus are very close in price and known-good performers, so if I wanted an android at this price point, that's where I'd go.

[Bassey]

Xioami Redmi 3S Prime

The Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime is available for about £125. It has almost identical specs to the £189 version of this with fast charging and a 4100mAh battery thrown in. And it arrived from Gear Best with an English ROM and all the google stuff. Been using mine since early August and it is fantastic value. Although, I must admit, some of Xiaomi's default choices in terms of battery saving are a bit "aggressive" to put it mildly. Like, turning GPS off whilst using SatNav if you haven't touched the screen for over 1 minute. Easily rectified in the settings but I can imagine some less technically minded people reaching for the industrial shredder.

[BongoJoe]

SD Card

I have the Swift (not this new version) and I am not impressed when I was informed that I couldn't use my SD card for memory (I have dual SIM) and the same happened to my wife who was only using one SIM.

This resulted in us both nothing having anything like as much memory available as we had the day before the 'upgrade' so that didn't please us much.

She's now put her Swift to one side and has now bought a Galaxy S7 Edge. There are a number of issues with this new Swift which concern me; first is that the screen display doesn't appear to be an improvement, I am dubious about the SD card memory given our recent experiences. And, lastly, which is an issue with the company themselves; they never honoured our Cashbacks on our previous purchases of these two phones despite sending documentation and all follow-up eMails have been ignored.

I am looking for a new phone and, so far, with my experiences and this review I feel that this isn't going to be it as this feels just a little like too much of the same.

[Anonymous Coward]

Removable batteries and storage

While I support companies who undercut the big boys (I've had two Oneplus devices)

...

I'd pay double for removable battery and sd card storage.

[Tom Paine]

Delivery woes

I bought one a couple of weeks ago after reading the review of the Swift 2 here on El Reg. Sadly I can't comment on how I found it. Although it specifically says on the FAQs at http://www.wiley-fox.co.uk that "our shipping package fits through a letterbox", they use a courier called "UKMail" who disagree with that, and also lack the nouse to hand it to a neighbour or leave under the dense hedge beside my front door. They tried again the ext day with the same result, then gave up and left me a note saying it could be collected from a depot miles from where I live. (I don't have a car.) It's going back to the vendor, I'm without a phone for another two weeks, and another British firm disappoints before I even get to open the damn box. "hashtag sad face" as the kids, apparently, say these days.

PS why two reviews of the same device in a couple of weeks?

PPS It appears not to support proper 4G, which is a bit shit as it was supposed to be replacing a three year old Blackberry Z10 that _does_ support full-blown 4G. And very nice it was, too.

[John Arthur]

Re: Delivery woes

Having had UK Mail leave a car battery a couple of hundred yards from my house in a neighbouring farmer's field with no attempt to deliver to the house I sympathise with you. If I order anything big or valuable these days I ask first if they use UK Maul and then cancel the order if the answer is yes.

[Mage]

Attempted Apple Marketing

It sounds like good value from a UK orientated company.

The marketing style, lack of documentation and lack of support is worrying.

" WileyFox talked how it had added "17 steps to the production process, two rounds of diamond cutting CNC" and made the device using "aviation-grade aluminium"."

That's all fairly meaningless, even if 100% true.

[Dan 55]

Original Swift and Storm suffered compass problems

I believe updates tried to address them but I never ended up with a reliable compass on my Storm.

Also the Storm's autofocus can be quite slow. Again, updates tried to fix it but they didn't seem successful.

And now with Cyanogen Inc having problems I don't think they'll ever be properly fixed.

So if if something isn't working on purchase I wouldn't hope too much for an update to sort it out later.

[BongoJoe]

Re: Original Swift and Storm suffered compass problems

Oh yes, the compass.

Either I am standing at the south pole and north is all around me or I an standing on a massive electro-magnectic doo-dah, or I have a WileyFox Swift.

[alpine]

Xiaomi Redmi 3S

Android 6 ( its Miui fork), 3GB, 32GB, dual sim, lte, 13Mpixels rear camera, Snapdragon octacore 430. £159. Brilliant phone and probably made in the same place as the Swift.

[Vlad]

That garden needs some work....

and I don't know why the Spacehopper is apparently so happy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: That garden needs some work....

I'm more concerned by the bubbling volcanic sludge-in-a-pan. Could be food, dirty washing, a domestic crack factory, even a dismembered policeman's remains being boiled in acid.

[Gerry 3]

Steer clear of Wileyfox !

The original Wileyfox Swift isn't a proper dual SIM phone. Only one SIM can use 3G which is a massive let down if both your SIMs are 3G only (e.g. Three in the UK) because for one SIM you'll forever be told the network is unavailable.

No instructions came with it so I'm still finding by trial and error how it works and trying to stop it spying on me and doing all sorts of untoward things behind my back.

Similarly, I wasn't impressed by the bundled Truecaller app which breaches the Data Protection Act by snaffling other people's private details from your Contacts list and making this available to all and sundry without their knowledge and without their permission.

It could have been a really great phone, but unless and until Wileyfox change their ways I'd steer well clear of them. The fact that the battery is no longer removable does not inspire confidence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Steer clear of Wileyfox !

Three (UK) do 4g now. They have for a while. Coverage is decent near me ( in the frozen north ) too.

[Gerry 3]

The second SIM is only 2G

The problem remains that the second SIM can only handle 2G, so even with 4G coverage you still can't have two Three SIMs active at the same time.

You can switch the designated 'clever' SIM from one socket to the other but this is laborious and takes quite some time, and you would still lose incoming calls from the SIM that is not active.

[G R Goslin]

Google Garbage

I presume that like all the Android I've met up with, the thing has, or attracts more Google Garbage, that I've no wish to use and no means of deleting. On my current phone, more than half the memory seems to be used for these. If I want to add another app, I have to delete something I've added, in order to make room for it, And as the Google Garbage bloats, I have to delete my stuff to make room for the updates.. Iv'e moved all my data files to the SD card, and I'm still stuffed for capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

So many other other options

The alternatives.

[Zed Zee]

Second SIM slot only available only if you don't use SD Card.

Your review is very poor. You do not mention a very important (flawed) factor in Wiley Fox phones, in that they provide a second SIM slot only if you do not use an SD Card.

[Dave Bell]

A suggestion for a test

I know some of these things are getting a bit old, no longer the white heat of modern technology, but I like the idea of seeing what works. I bought a second-hand Google Nexus because there were non-obvious problems with things like the magnetic sensing, and controlling my cheap phone for Google Cardboard was a struggle.

Well, we're past the cardboard cut-out stage, and you can get decent plastic phone-holders that work for specific models. Though it looks as though the idea is starting to fade.

It would still be a good thing to know whether it matches the Google standard for the magnetism sensor. Does that magnet on the Google Cardboard holder work? Or does it match some other phone? Is the sensor in the right place to work?

Another test: I know Pokemon Go is past the peak, but does it work? Maybe you can think of some other augmented reality game that would be a better test, but look at what a smartphone has to be able to do to make that game work.

As it is, all we get are a few pictures. And, really, that's a pretty simple problem. I've gotten better results with 80-year-old technology. What do those pictures really tell you about the Smartphone?

[x 7]

I hope this has a better screen than the original batch of Swifts. Mine has the softest, scratchiest glass imaginable and now looks like its been brillo-padded. Not good

[Allonymous Coward]

This comments section has pretty much made me decide to replace my 2013-era Moto G with a G4 rather than a Swift or Swift 2.

So not an entirely wasted read even if the article itself is a bit hagiographic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wiley Fox battery life

Just to answer those who grumble about the battery life on the original Swift, and some days it's fine, some days it's crap. And others say What's the Problem? It's OK....I bought a Swift partly based on last year's review. The battery life got worse and worse. Until I pinned down the problem to the default or "encouraged" email client, Boxer. Was using over 65% of all the battery. Removed, and changed to K9, and battery expiring went from 6 hours or less to well into the next day, or even of all of it. Happy. It's a good phone. Suspect same issue on the Storm as well.

[Dominic Shields]

Re: Wiley Fox battery life

Agree about Boxer, I removed it after a week because its rubbish, not the fault of the hardware but difficult to see why anyone likes this app