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The unusually named Elephone Vowney is yet another OnePlus 2 challenger from China, and in the same vein aims to offer top-end specifications at a rock-bottom price.Unlike the majority of Chinese phones, however, the Vowney includes NFC connectivity, which will potentially make it more attractive to those on Western shores.The recently reviewed Elephone M2 marked something of a departure for the Chinese manufacturer, with it offering a premium all-metal construction that was a little at odds with the bargain-basement £120/$180 price point.
Sadly, this isn’t the case here; the Vowney is mainly made of plastic. The rounded rear panel – which isn’t removable – is entirely plastic, while two thin strips of brushed metal can be found on the sides. The camera lens sticks out a little, giving the phone a width of 8.9mm at its thickest point.
The volume controls are located on the right-hand side of the device, and two SIM card trays are positioned along the left-hand edge. One of these trays doubles up as a microSD card slot, or can be used with a nano-SIM. The other tray will accept only a micro-SIM card.Directly below the camera is the fingerprint scanner. It’s a marked improvement over the one on the M2 thanks to a larger contact area, which improves accuracy.
However, it isn’t quite in the same league as the scanners features on handsets such as the Nexus 5X and Samsung Galaxy S6. Although the failure rate isn’t nearly as bad as that experienced with the M2, on occasion the unlock process will require a second tap of the finger.Below the 5.5-inch display is what at first appears to be a capacitive “Home” button.
In fact, it’s an LED light that pulses – or “breathes”, according to Elephone – when you have unread notifications or the phone is charging.In an age where most budget to mid-range phones have 1080p screens, Elephone has bucked the trend, equipping the Vowney with a pin-sharp 2,560 x 1,440-pixel resolution IPS LCD screen.
Measuring in at 5.5-inches from corner to corner, this gives the phone an impressive pixel density of 535ppi. The decision to include such a high-resolution screen on a smartphone is questionable, since it’s near-impossible to spot individual pixels on a 1080p screen. But there’s no denying that the display here is excellent, especially when you consider this is a £230/$345 handset.
The display is incredibly bright – perhaps a little too bright by default, so you’ll want to turn on the adaptive brightness setting almost right away – and features solid viewing angles. In my opinion, the only downside is the fairly large black border running around the perimeter of the screen.
Elephone has wisely chosen to ship the Vowney with an almost entirely stock version of Android 5.1. Note that there’s no Google Now launcher and the setup process isn’t as detailed, but otherwise it’s largely free from bloatware. You get a backup application, a wireless update checker, FM radio and Elephone’s own app. Other than those, you’re left with a largely blank canvas with which to work – which means there are some gaps in the phone’s functionality that you’ll have to fill yourself. There are a few quirks to speak of, the most pressing of which is the fact that the phone constantly displays an NFC icon in the notifications area. This isn’t usually present on other Android devices that have NFC enabled, and I couldn’t find a way of suppressing the notification outside of turning the feature off entirely – which is hardly the ideal solution.
On a more positive note, contactless payments are supported by the device – although, at the time of writing, there were no examples available in the UK to test this feature. Elephone has announced plans to adopt Android 6.0 Marshmallow, come the launch of its P9000 later this year. I asked Elephone if the Vowney would receive a Marshmallow update and was told that plans have yet to be confirmed, but the company is working on it.MediaTek’s Helio X10 64-bit octa-core processor is arguably the best yet produced by the chipset maker, offering processing parity with the likes of the Snapdragon 810 and Exynos 7420, which power the HTC One M9 and Galaxy S6 respectively.
Clocked at 2GHz, the chip inside the Vowney provides blistering performance, despite having to push all of the pixels on that dense 2K screen. The fact that the phone is equipped with a whopping 4GB of RAM certainly helps. The extra memory means moving between applications is near-instantaneous, and lag as a result of multitasking is rare.Benchmarked on TrustedReviews’ usual suite of tools, my positive impressions were reinforced.
On Geekbench 3, the Vowney returned a single-core score of 859 and a multi-core score of 4,733 . The latter places the phone in the same ballpark as the Galaxy S6 and betters the recently released Nexus 5X. However, both of those phones boast better single-score results. Running 3DMark’s Ice Storm Unlimited – a benchmark tool designed to scrutinise the 3D muscle of a phone’s graphics processor – delivered a score of 11,304, which although behind the Galaxy S6 (around 16,000) remains a decent result.
Despite having all those pixels to push, the Vowney is excellent for 3D gaming, with titles such as Real Racing 3 running without a hitch. The loudspeaker on the Vowney is located along the handset’s bottom edge, which means if you place the phone top-end down into your pocket, you should be able to hear it ring even in busy environments. In reality, the speaker here could have benefited from being a little louder.
I missed a few calls when I was out and about because I simply couldn’t hear the ringtone above the noise of traffic. A volume-booster setting can be found in the options menu, but it has the unwelcome drawback of causing audio to distort, so I chose to leave it switched off.Call quality is generally good, with clear incoming and outgoing voice audio.
As is the case with the loudspeaker, the earpiece isn’t as powerful as I’d like. Even with the call volume ramped up to maximum, there were times when I was struggling to hear the other person in noisy environments. In terms of quality, however, the images fall short of what you’d expect from a sensor with this kind of clout. At first glance photos look detailed, if a little dull in terms of colour and contrast.
But zooming in reveals a dot-like pattern, presumably a result of the compression used.Elephone claims the camera’s phase-detection autofocus enables it to capture a shot in around 0.3 seconds. In practice, the sensor is hampered by sluggish software, which is slow to react to movement. The ability to track moving objects is a neat bonus, but hardly something that’s unique to the Vowney.
Features such as gesture control, face detection, anti-shake and HDR are becoming more and more commonplace on Android phones these days and can hardly be considering selling points. The native camera app on the Vowney is a little disappointing, since it lacks any notable embellishments.
There’s no manual focus control or support for RAW image files, for example. The front-facing 8-megapixel camera is more agreeable – it’s perfect for selfies and video calls. According to the promotional materials, the Vowney is capable of 4K 30fps video recording, but at the time of writing it could muster only 1,920 x 1,088. Presumably this feature will be added in a future software update.
The massive screen is ravenous when it comes to power consumption, and the high resolution puts added strain on the processor, which also results in soaking up more juice. Careful use will see you make it through a day before having to charge, but it’s painfully obvious that Elephone has had to resort to a 4,000mAh battery simply to keep the Vowney ticking over.The battery is topped up using a micro-USB connection rather than the fancy new USB Type-C port that we’re seeing far more of on new Android devices.
There’s no fast-charging capability here, so expect to wait around three hours for your phone to go from zero to 100%.However, as a whole, the package doesn’t quite work. Build quality feels inferior to the cheaper Elephone M2, and while the fingerprint scanner is an improvement over the previous device, it still isn’t as accurate as those on rival handsets. The same can be said of the camera. Considering that the Vowney is packing a 4,000mAh power cell, battery life too is disappointing.
So while the Vowney could be viewed as a solid purchase for the price, slightly more expensive smartphones such as the OnePlus 2 and Nexus 5X will be a better choice for most buyers.