Wileyfox Spark Plus

Building a budget smartphone that stands out from the crowd has never been harder. From Honor to HTC, BQ to ZTE, a veritable horde of different players are shoveling handsets of varying quality into the hungry hands of a waiting public.

Of these, Wileyfox quickly became a front-runner, at least in the UK, with the great value Wileyfox Swift and Wileyfox Storm. 

But a year has passed since these launched, and the competition has only become fiercer, with price wars raging. What was powerful and well-priced in 2015 now looks antiquated and weak.

With the newer Wileyfox Spark range, priced at a minimum of £90, the firm hopes to reclaim a little lost magic, while undercutting its competitors significantly.

There is a fine balance to be struck between cost and quality however, so has the Wileyfox Spark Plus, at £120, sacrificed a little too much to be worthy of consideration?

Key features

• CyanogenMod gives choice of visual themes
• Aspects of interface are also highly customisable

If there’s one thing that’s immediately obvious about this device, it’s that the USP is not the hardware, but rather the software: CyanogenMod.

In day to day use, there are a few differences between Cyanogen and stock Android. The basic home screen looks identical, but moving to the app list reveals a difference.

Instead of the usual left to right swipes to move between different groups of apps, there's an alphabetical list (like that found on Windows 10 Mobile). Underneath this there is a quick scroll, allowing the user to easily jump to the letter of their choice.

Cyanogen also plays host to a powerful theming engine, with a marketplace for downloading new themes. The available options are currently quite limited, but the ability to change the look of the interface on the fly is still a nice feature to have.

And it’s not just the appearance that you can tweak. Don't like the DPI setting of your screen? There's a switch for that. Want to change the colour temperature of your display? There's a toggle for that. Want to encrypt your phone? You can bet there's an option for that.

Having all this control is of course an enormous boon to the user, but it does come with a price, as there is a great deal of potential to screw things up if you press the wrong thing.

As such, the Spark Plus isn’t ideal for new smartphone users, but the in-built apps do help to make life easier. For those who don't wish to faff about when adding an email account, there is an 'Email' app, which is based on Boxer and really rather nice.

There is also a decent baked-in browser, a Gallery app, FM radio and 'AudioFX' among others.

AudioFX is a reasonably effective digital equaliser, and activating it improves general speaker performance by around 10%. It doesn’t make much difference when listening through headphones though, with the in-built sound chip providing weak bass and iffy trebles.

Lastly, there’s Truecaller, embedded right into the dialler app. This proved to be quite helpful, recognising incoming calls against a user-generated database and alerting you to spam. For those who regularly receive cold, false PPI calls, this could prove to be useful.

Design and display

• A cheap, plastic build
• Reasonably sharp 5-inch 720p screen

Plastic is to be expected in a phone of this price, but even among plastic phones the Wileyfox Spark Plus manages to feel particularly cheap, as this isn't a nice soft touch matt plastic, such as the kind HTC uses on its budget handsets like the Desire 530.

This is a relatively rough, sandpapery material that is grippy but unpleasant to hold, and one that collects fingerprints and oil marks like they are going out of style.

And although plastic is expected, it’s not essential, as for example the metal-clad Lenovo K5 is available for similar money.

The use of plastic certainly keeps the weight down though, with the Plus only coming in at 134.5g. A lightweight device can be a good thing, but in the case of the Wileyfox Spark Plus it ends up feeling, and looking, a little like a toy.

For the money, this is acceptable, but as more rivals are beginning to deliver a full metal construction at ever lower price points, the materials used here are a little disappointing.

Moving beyond the materials, you'll find the ports and buttons in largely expected places. The left side of the Wileyfox Spark Plus is home to the volume rocker, and is otherwise completely flush, while the right of the handset is devoid of features, other than the power button.

The top hosts the 3.5mm headphone jack (a welcome inclusion in this uncertain world). On the bottom of the phone you’ll find the (annoyingly asymmetrical) micro USB port, for charging and data-transfer via a PC.

Compared to 2015's Wileyfox Swift, the Spark Plus has a relatively subdued rump. Here you’ll find the rear-facing 13MP camera with a slight bronze trim, and the bronze 'fox head' logo, along with the subtle 'Wileyfox' lettering above the rear-firing speaker.

The back of the device is fully removable, giving access to the microSD and microSIM card slots. The battery is also removable, giving you the option to replace the battery if you ever feel the need.

Lastly, on the front of the Spark Plus you’ll find the 5-inch 720 x 1280 display (with Dragontrail protection, which is less common than Gorilla Glass, but still tough), the call speaker, a brightness sensor and the 8MP front-facing camera.

A factory-fitted plastic screen protector is also included, although many may wish to remove this as it feels quite unpleasant and sticky after any prolonged use.

For £120, it might be wrong to expect the Wileyfox Spark Plus to be both capable and a potential fashion accessory. But with a number of devices, like the Honor 5C, having metal shells for a similar price (or just a little more), the real value of the handset comes into question.

Though the design of the Wileyfox Spark Plus isn't exactly inspiring, there are a few other features that do it credit. First and foremost among these is the screen.

Although 720p at 5 inches doesn't quite stretch the screen into 'Retina' territory (where individual pixels are invisible to the naked eye), the display is sharp enough for everyday use.

From reading to watching videos, all but the most ardent of pixel peepers should have no issue using this screen for all their multimedia requirements.

Colour reproduction is just OK however. The screen is noticeably warm, making whites a little orange. It does get decently bright though, powering through direct sunlight in most situations.

Interface and reliability

• Smooth general performance
• Not completely bug-free

Having just a 720p screen actually gives the Spark Plus an advantage in one way, as with fewer pixels to push, the MediaTek 6735 SoC (a couple of years old now, and manufactured on a 28nm process) mostly flies.

Backed up with 2GB of RAM and the relatively lightweight (and reasonably well-optimised) CyanogenMod software, general performance is pretty smooth. Navigating through various menus and other parts of the interface feels snappy, and it's well laid out too.

The device is capable of keeping several apps in memory at once, although some more memory intensive options (such as games) will force app closures in the background.

MediaTek has come a long way from several years ago, whereas once its chips were poor bargain-basement fodder, now they have really begun to catch up with Qualcomm in terms of power and performance. However, this comes with a caveat: updates.

If you are the kind of person who wishes to see their device updated continuously throughout its lifecycle, then this may be a handset to avoid. MediaTek is not known for adapting its chips to the latest Android versions, and there is no word yet on whether the Spark Plus will ever be upgraded to Android 7.0 Nougat.

The potential lack of updates also means bugs could take a long time to be fixed, and this isn’t a bug-free device. Our review unit suffered from an annoying one that would force it into a reboot-loop until it ran out of power.

Regardless, the 16GB of in-built storage is welcome, and is far better than the 8GB included in the standard Wileyfox Spark (though far from the 64GB of the reasonably affordable Bush Spira E3X).

There’s also a microSD card slot, which allows for up to 32GB of extra memory, and included cards can be formatted as internal storage, should you so wish.

Benchmarks and performance

• Reasonable benchmark performance for the price
• Iffy call quality

In the CPU-intensive Geekbench 4 benchmarking app, the Wileyfox Spark Plus achieved some predictable results, scoring 602 in the single-core test and 1690 in the multi-core.

The BQ Aquaris M4.5 for comparison, which runs the same chipset but with a weaker screen and less RAM, scored over 200 points less in both instances.

Indeed, this is a much faster phone in general than the Aquaris, providing an overall feel of polish that even more expensive phones often lack.

Wi-Fi and 4G speeds were also generally decent, although we found call reception to be particularly poor in low-signal areas.

Movies, music and gaming

• Weak speaker
• Can run basic games, but struggles with high-end ones

A phone with a 5-inch screen is in something of an odd position for media consumption. Not quite a phablet, yet far from compact, it is neither here nor there.

At 720p, the Wileyfox Spark Plus doesn't have the most pixel dense screen, nor does it have the best speakers or a powerhouse chipset, but for the most part it’s OK.

Audio reproduction is perhaps its weakest area. The single rear-facing speaker is in a poor position (audio should ideally never be blasting away from your face), and it fails to pump out sound to acceptable levels.

The trebles are tinny, and the bass is non-existent, and unfortunately this carries over to the headphone performance. The in-built audio chip is anaemic at best, audiophiles would be best to look elsewhere.

As for video playback, with its small battery and screen the Spark Plus isn’t great for movie marathons. For the odd YouTube video, it’s adequate, but for those looking for the best performance in this price range, there are definitely better options.

Games, for the most part, run well on the phone. Although it struggles with more intensive titles such as Dead Trigger 2 and Asphalt 8, it runs the likes of Crossy Road with ease. This isn't quite an A10 Fusion-sporting iPhone 7, but it gets the job done.

Battery life

• 2200mAh battery drains rapidly
• No fast charging

With a 2200mAh battery included, we didn't have great hopes for the longevity of the Spark Plus, and unfortunately our fears were well founded.

Starting at 7:00am, with Bluetooth headphones playing music and some website reading through a 50-minute commute, by 12:00pm we'd be on 62%, which would then drop to a paltry 10% following a similar journey home.

This was with the phone drawing email on push notifications from 3 accounts, interspersed with a few calls and some social media consumption.

In all, this isn't a device for power users who need a day from every charge. Moreover, while the battery is replaceable, replacement units are sold for £22, which is a significant outlay given the price of the device.

Standby drain wasn't great either. Even with the battery enhancements of Android 6.0 Marshmallow baked-in, the Spark Plus typically lost around 15-17% of charge every night, making plugging in a real necessity. If you want battery on a budget, consider the longer-lasting BQ Aquaris M4.5.

No fast-charging is included, unsurprisingly given the price of the device, with a full charge of the handset typically taking more than 3 hours.

Camera

• Disappoints, even in ideal lighting
• Camera app is easy to navigate

Whether budget or premium, the modern smartphone experience is increasingly hinging around camera performance. And that doesn't just mean the rear sensor, but the selfie snapper too. Today's consumers want the complete package, even when paying a hair under £120.

So, what can the Wileyfox Spark Plus offer? Well, on paper the results are mostly promising, with a 13MP camera on the rear, and 8MP to play with on the front.

Beyond the megapixel count, no great claims are made regarding the specifications of the camera. As such, with no information to go on such as aperture or autofocus, the only real metric for the camera's quality is, shock its performance.

Unfortunately, the performance is fairly pants. In good conditions (no harsh light on a sunny day), the colour produced by the Spark Plus is muted, and dynamic range less than stellar. What's worse, is that sharpness is poor across the frame, with detail produced being soft and mushy.

At 100% zoom, it has the unpleasant 'oil painting' effect that used to dog cheap cameras in the 2000s. In other words, the noise reduction is too aggressive and quite sloppy. Autofocus too is quite jittery, just about coping with static scenes but struggling with any sort of movement.

For sharing at low-resolutions, this may be OK, but even at this price point there are better options available camera-wise, such as the Moto G4 Play.

The selfie sensor doesn't really fare any better, blowing out highlights easily and smearing fine detail a little too judiciously.

On the plus side, camera operation is mostly quite smooth. Although the autofocus is generally inaccurate, it locks on reasonably quickly, and snapping pictures is lightning-fast in most instances.

Navigation is also much improved in some areas, compared to previous versions of the camera app (which is created by Cyanogen).

Moving between video, single shot mode and panorama modes is simple, and there are toggles at the top to move between the back and front camera, toggle flash modes, move to settings and to jump to a more advanced mode.

This allows white balance and more to be altered, and also offers a bewildering assortment of scene modes, many of which seem to be a little too obscure to be useful. Through this, HDR can also be toggled (although it makes little difference).

There is little to write home about with regards to video either, with the results being choppy and over-exposed.

Overall, for roughly £30 less the BQ Aquaris M4.5 offers mostly better image quality, as do many competitors at the £120 mark (including, oddly, the ageing Wileyfox Swift). This isn't the phone for you if you want quality imaging.

Camera samples

It's almost a cliché to say at this point, but the budget end of the market is the most cut-throat in the mobile industry. It is where both the margins and the competition are razor-sharp, and some suffer accordingly.

The Spark Plus in many ways takes the place of the older Wileyfox Swift, with similar specifications and an almost identical price point, and yet in many ways it is the lesser of the two handsets.

Battery life is worse, as are the cameras, and the reliability of the software. The Swift may no longer be available, but its shadow is long.

Moreover, devices like the Lenovo K5 and the Honor 5C are offering excellent metal build quality and superior specifications across the board, for little if any more money. Against this, the Spark Plus falters considerably.

This is an unremarkable handset with good performance and a decent screen, but other than that the Spark Plus doesn't seem to have anything to offer, other than to those who are already aficionados of the British-brand. For everyone else, there is better to be had.

Who's this for?

If you are on a very strict budget, and like the Wileyfox brand, then this handset is unlikely to disappoint. Though there are stronger options available for the price point, the Spark Plus is a reasonable all-rounder, if not remarkable in any category.

Should you buy it?

If you have a budget of just over £120, and wish to buy from a firm that designs and operates from UK shores, then it could be worth considering.

But as the Wileyfox Spark Plus can be bettered for similar money, it’s safe to say you probably shouldn’t buy it, unless you have an odd attachment to the brand.

First reviewed: December 2016