Wileyfox is one of the few British smartphone makers in the world, and they announced their newest models this week. The Spark, Spark+ and Spark X all sit at the lower end of the market, with the cheapest model costing less than £100. Let’s see how they stack up.
Spark & specs & design
The Spark is the cheapest phone Wileyfox have ever made, retailing for just £90. That’s around the cost of last year’s Moto E, but you get a whole lot more here: a 5-inch 720p IPS screen, a quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek CPU, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of expandable storage. There are also a pair of 8-megapixel cameras (front and rear), dual SIM slots and a 2200mAh removable battery.
It’s a lot of phone for £90, and the design doesn’t disappoint either. We’ve got a solid polycarbonate build, with a pleasant grainy texture, orange accents and an inlaid fox logo on the back. The phone feels well built, according to Engadget and Android Police, and it’s quite light too at 136 grams.
Spark+ & software
The mid-range model (and the one that will be right for most people) is the £115 Spark+. This model offers the same design as the Spark, but comes with double the RAM (2GB) and storage (16GB). The camera on the back also gets an upgrade to a 13-megapixel sensor.
With more RAM at its disposal, performance should be less of a concern here. The phone (and the other members of the Spark family) run CyanogenOS 13, a light and highly customisable version of Android based on 6.0 Marshmallow.
Spark X & release date
The high-end model is the 5.5-inch Spark X. As well as a bigger (but still 720p) screen, you also get a more capacious 3000mAh battery. The other specifications are the same as the Spark+. The price tag for the larger phone is suprisingly modest, at just £130.
It’ll be interesting to see how these phones will be received when the first reviews come out in a couple of weeks. The phones are available to pre-order today via Wileyfox.com and Amazon, and they should start shipping next month.
What do you think of the new Wileyfox phones? Let us know in the comments below!