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Vodafone Smart 3 is a 4-inch Jelly Bean phone, for £95

Vodafone's sequel to the Smart 2 costs less than 100 quid and has Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on board.

Luke Westaway Senior editor
Luke Westaway is a senior editor at CNET and writer/ presenter of Adventures in Tech, a thrilling gadget show produced in our London office. Luke's focus is on keeping you in the loop with a mix of video, features, expert opinion and analysis.
Luke Westaway
2 min read

Vodafone has a new super-cheap smart phone for your consideration -- the Smart 3 is an Android mobile that costs less than 100 quid.

Packing a 4-inch display and a 5-megapixel camera, the Smart 3 is priced at a reasonable £95 on pay as you go, available to snap up from Vodafone's website.

The Smart 3, a sequel to last year's Smart 2, is powered by Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. That's not the latest version -- an honour that belongs to version 4.2, also called Jelly Bean -- but it's pretty close.

Whenever I see a cheap Android phone revealed I immediately look for the catch, as there are usually a few hardware corners that manufacturers cut in order to offer a bargain basement price.

Happily in this case there don't seem to be any particularly severe cuts. The 4-inch display for instance has a 480x800 pixel display, which is a healthy resolution, and should keep everything on-screen looking reasonably crisp.

The processor, Vodafone says, is a 1GHz affair -- presumably that's single-core, but I've asked for clarification. That's not a particularly high clock speed, so you might see the Smart 3 straining a bit when you fire up more intensive apps.

Vodafone won't have built the Smart 3 itself, instead it will have been bolted together by another manufacturer, like Huawei or ZTE. I've asked who was behind the Smart 3, and I'll update this story when I hear back.

Update: Vodafone tells me the processor is indeed single-core, and that the Smart 3 is made by Alcatel.

If you're shopping around for cheap Android phones, you'd be wise to examine our round-up of the best budget blowers out there.

Are you intrigued, or not bothered? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook wall.