EE’s new Harrier smartphone offers a 1080p screen, 13MP camera and octa-core innards for just £200
An early contender for 2015's ultimate budget handset
The £150 Moto G has long been the best budget phone money can buy, but EE’s new Harrier handset has flown in to steal that crown with an impressive spec sheet and a tempting price tag.
At £200 for a pay as you go model, when it comes to specification it bests the Moto G in every regard. For starters, it’s rocking a larger 5.2in 1080p screen (competitive with some of 2015’s flagship devices, such as the HTC One M9), as compared with the Motorola’s 4.7in 720p affair.
The camera is also a step up spec-wise, offering a 13MP sensor versus the 5MP sensor in its Motorola rival. Megapixels aren’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to picture quality (and we’re reserving our judgement until we’ve actually tested the device), but we expect to see greater detail in shots snapped with the Harrier.
Android 5.0 Lollipop is powered by a 2500mAh battery, 2GB of RAM and Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz octa-core Snapdragon 610 processor – which should offer more get-up-and-go than the Snapdragon 400 in the Moto G.
While the price tag is £50 more than Motorola’s offering, it’s a pretty decent jump up in specs and screen size, which could be enough to tempt existing/potential EE customers to fork out a bit extra. It’s also available for free, on a £22 per month contract.
That said, its pricetag skirts perilously close to that of the excellent OnePlus One, which starts at £229 and is finally available to all and sundry. It’ll be interesting to see how the Harrier performs in that company.
If £200 is a little dear then there’s also the Harrier Mini.
It offers a much more Moto G-like 4.7in 720p display, 8MP camera, 1GB of RAM, a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 410 processor and a 2000mAh battery for £100 on a pay as you go tariff, or free from £17 a month.
Both the Harrier and Harrier Mini offer Wi-Fi EE’s Wi-Fi calling service, which lets customers send texts and make phone calls as normal over Wi-Fi, even if they’ve got no cell reception at all.
Stay tuned for Stuff for full reviews of both devices.
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But wait, there’s more
And finally, in a continuation of the bird theme, we have the Osprey 2 and Osprey 2 Mini, both of which serve up 4G data connections for up to ten Wi-Fi connected devices each.
The former has a whopping 5150mAh battery which should be good for 15 hours of streaming and doubles as a battery pack for your mobile. It can be snapped up for free on a £15 per month 2GB plan, or £70 on a pay as you go plan with 6GB of data.
The Mini variant is available on the same pay monthly plan, or can be bought for £50 on a pay as you go plan with 6GB of data.
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Esat Dedezade
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