The fact the £199 Harrier is available on EE’s 4G network is exciting not only because it’s fast, but because later this year the phone will also benefit from EE’s Wi-Fi Calling service. This eliminates mobile signal problems by allowing you to route calls and texts over Wi-Fi, without you even realizing it’s happening. At this price, you can’t expect a premium build. On the plus side, the bezels are extremely thin, the phone is reasonably slim for a budget model and also lightweight, and the 5.2in full-HD (1920x1080, 424ppi) screen is fantastic under £200. With an IPS display, the EE Harrier offers realistic screen colors, decent viewing angles and it’s usefully bright.
At 5.2in – large but not too large – it’s also a great fit for watching movies and viewing photos, which isn’t often something we can say about phones at this price point. (Gaming, not so much, but casual games will play fine on the Harrier.) EE has made an effort to spruce things up, with a brushed-metal effect rear (it’s still plastic) and a gold camera surround; as an own-brand phone you’ll also find a silver EE logo on the back cover. The slightly curved rear and rounded corners make the Harrier fit naturally in the hand, too. But a few things give away this phone’s mid-range price. First and foremost, it’s entirely plastic, and that brushed-metal-effect rear does little to conceal the fact. The removable cover adds to this cheap feel, with the Harrier creaking a little in use. Given that the battery is not removable, we’d have preferred to have seen a side loading tray for the Micro-SIM and microSD card, and a fixed rear.
The button placement is bizarre. Unusually, EE Harrier is far more comfortable to use in the left hand than it is in the right. Held in your left hand, the thumb falls naturally over the power button and fingers over the volume rocker; held in the right hand, the distance between the two is simply too great, and all the steps EE has taken to make the phone comfortable to use in one hand quickly become forgotten as you struggle to adopt the awkward hand contortions necessary to operate the Harrier. Sadly, for EE, this reviewer is right-handed, but lefties will love it.
At 5.2in – large but not too large – it’s also a great fit for watching movies and viewing photos, which isn’t often something we can say about phones at this price point. (Gaming, not so much, but casual games will play fine on the Harrier.) EE has made an effort to spruce things up, with a brushed-metal effect rear (it’s still plastic) and a gold camera surround; as an own-brand phone you’ll also find a silver EE logo on the back cover. The slightly curved rear and rounded corners make the Harrier fit naturally in the hand, too. But a few things give away this phone’s mid-range price. First and foremost, it’s entirely plastic, and that brushed-metal-effect rear does little to conceal the fact. The removable cover adds to this cheap feel, with the Harrier creaking a little in use. Given that the battery is not removable, we’d have preferred to have seen a side loading tray for the Micro-SIM and microSD card, and a fixed rear.
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| EE Harrier Smartphone |
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| UK EE Harrier Smartphone Review |
Hardware and performance
On the inside, the Harrier is equipped with a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB storage, which can be expanded via a microSD slot – and you’ll want to do so. Having installed our benchmarks less than half the capacity was available (and they really aren’t that big). A 2500mAh non-removable battery keeps it all going. That sounds like a reasonable specification for a mid-range phone, but during testing we found that the Harrier would take a second or two to think before doing whatever you had asked of it, whether that was launching an app or opening the Settings menu. Remember, though, that this is a £200 phone.
We’re used to reviewing super-fast handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy S6, which cost three times the price, and what seems like an interminable wait to us an average user wouldn’t batter an eyelid at. For that reason, we also measure performance using several benchmarks. In our benchmarking of the Harrier, we found performance similar to that of Chinese phones such as the ZTE Blade S6 and S6 Plus, Doogee F1 Turbo Mini and Bluboo X6. Some of these devices are significantly cheaper than the Harrier, but while you might save money buying phones from China (the EE Harrier is also made in China, but sold in the UK through EE), you could also get hit with additional customs charges, and if you need to return a faulty device you could have trouble. By buying direct from EE, you should be able to get any problems sorted relatively quickly and easily.
In Geekbench 3, which measures processor performance, the EE Harrier recorded 640 points in the single-core test, and 2042 in the multi-core one. That makes it a little slower than the ZTE Blade S6 (2420) and S6 Plus (2095), but faster than the Doogee F1 Turbo Mini (1947) and Bluboo X6 (1940). Comparing it to some other phones with which you may be more familiar, it’s slower than an LG G2 (2271), but faster than the HTC Desire 816 (1503) and new Moto E 4G (1463). Importantly, it’s much faster than EE’s previous own-brand 4G phone, the Kestrel, which recorded 1152 points (at half the price, mind). Next up is SunSpider, which measures JavaScript performance (and in which a lower score is better). We run this benchmark in Chrome to ensure a fair test across phones, and saw 1275ms for the Harrier.
That places it very much in Microsoft Lumia or Windows Phone territory, with the 640 scoring 1201ms, the 735 1217ms, the 435 284ms and the 535 1295ms. In comparison to Android phones, it’s in the Huawei P6/P7 and HTC Desire 610’s domain – not amazing, but by no means atrocious (the Sony Xperia Tipo still wins that award with 5781ms). A new test for us is AnTuTu, in which the Harrier recorded 29,154 points. We have few inhouse results with which to compare this, but according to other results in the AnTuTu database that makes it faster than the original HTC One (M7), but slower than the Nexus 5 and LG G3. Graphics performance comes next, for which we use GFXBench 3.1. In the T-Rex test, EE Harrier recorded 15fps, which is slightly faster than the Kestrel (14fps), and on a par with the HTC Desire 610, LG G2 mini and Sony Xperia M2.
In Manhattan we saw just 6fps, which is the same score we saw from the new Moto E 4G. This phone hasn’t been designed with gaming in mind, but you should find it capable of handling casual titles. Finally, we measure battery life performance, and for this we again turn to Geekbench 3.0. As with AnTuTu, this is a relatively new test to the PC Advisor lab, and we have few scores with which to compare the Harrier’s performance. However, of the scores we do have, the phone turned in by far the worst performance with 1424 points (03:33:20). Even its little brother, the Harrier Mini (see page 34), performed better, with 2163 points (05:24:10).
While you might assume this difference could be put down to the lower-spec hardware on the Mini, the phone that scored the highest in this benchmark was the Samsung Galaxy S6, which has a much higher resolution screen, significantly faster hardware and only 50mAh extra in the battery department. With moderate real-world use, the Harrier should get you through the day, but expect nothing more beyond that. Smart battery options let the Harrier automatically turn off Wi-Fi and data connectivity when the screen is off. You can set this to occur only between certain ‘offpeak’ times, such as overnight when you don’t want to be disturbed, or to happen all the time. However, if you want people to be able to get hold of you, that’s perhaps not the best idea. The Harrier can also show you which apps might be causing excessive battery drain.
We’re used to reviewing super-fast handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy S6, which cost three times the price, and what seems like an interminable wait to us an average user wouldn’t batter an eyelid at. For that reason, we also measure performance using several benchmarks. In our benchmarking of the Harrier, we found performance similar to that of Chinese phones such as the ZTE Blade S6 and S6 Plus, Doogee F1 Turbo Mini and Bluboo X6. Some of these devices are significantly cheaper than the Harrier, but while you might save money buying phones from China (the EE Harrier is also made in China, but sold in the UK through EE), you could also get hit with additional customs charges, and if you need to return a faulty device you could have trouble. By buying direct from EE, you should be able to get any problems sorted relatively quickly and easily.
In Geekbench 3, which measures processor performance, the EE Harrier recorded 640 points in the single-core test, and 2042 in the multi-core one. That makes it a little slower than the ZTE Blade S6 (2420) and S6 Plus (2095), but faster than the Doogee F1 Turbo Mini (1947) and Bluboo X6 (1940). Comparing it to some other phones with which you may be more familiar, it’s slower than an LG G2 (2271), but faster than the HTC Desire 816 (1503) and new Moto E 4G (1463). Importantly, it’s much faster than EE’s previous own-brand 4G phone, the Kestrel, which recorded 1152 points (at half the price, mind). Next up is SunSpider, which measures JavaScript performance (and in which a lower score is better). We run this benchmark in Chrome to ensure a fair test across phones, and saw 1275ms for the Harrier.
That places it very much in Microsoft Lumia or Windows Phone territory, with the 640 scoring 1201ms, the 735 1217ms, the 435 284ms and the 535 1295ms. In comparison to Android phones, it’s in the Huawei P6/P7 and HTC Desire 610’s domain – not amazing, but by no means atrocious (the Sony Xperia Tipo still wins that award with 5781ms). A new test for us is AnTuTu, in which the Harrier recorded 29,154 points. We have few inhouse results with which to compare this, but according to other results in the AnTuTu database that makes it faster than the original HTC One (M7), but slower than the Nexus 5 and LG G3. Graphics performance comes next, for which we use GFXBench 3.1. In the T-Rex test, EE Harrier recorded 15fps, which is slightly faster than the Kestrel (14fps), and on a par with the HTC Desire 610, LG G2 mini and Sony Xperia M2.
In Manhattan we saw just 6fps, which is the same score we saw from the new Moto E 4G. This phone hasn’t been designed with gaming in mind, but you should find it capable of handling casual titles. Finally, we measure battery life performance, and for this we again turn to Geekbench 3.0. As with AnTuTu, this is a relatively new test to the PC Advisor lab, and we have few scores with which to compare the Harrier’s performance. However, of the scores we do have, the phone turned in by far the worst performance with 1424 points (03:33:20). Even its little brother, the Harrier Mini (see page 34), performed better, with 2163 points (05:24:10).
While you might assume this difference could be put down to the lower-spec hardware on the Mini, the phone that scored the highest in this benchmark was the Samsung Galaxy S6, which has a much higher resolution screen, significantly faster hardware and only 50mAh extra in the battery department. With moderate real-world use, the Harrier should get you through the day, but expect nothing more beyond that. Smart battery options let the Harrier automatically turn off Wi-Fi and data connectivity when the screen is off. You can set this to occur only between certain ‘offpeak’ times, such as overnight when you don’t want to be disturbed, or to happen all the time. However, if you want people to be able to get hold of you, that’s perhaps not the best idea. The Harrier can also show you which apps might be causing excessive battery drain.
Connectivity
A key selling point of this phone is its 4G connectivity. At £100 that would be impressive; at the £200 the Harrier costs, it’s a nice extra – not all phones at this price have it, but neither is it a surprise, and especially not in an own-brand EE handset. One of the perks of buying an EE phone, though, is Wi-Fi Calling. This is not yet available to the Harrier, but it will be later this year. Wi-Fi Calling is a god-send if you often find yourself without mobile signal, allowing the Harrier to route your calls and texts over a Wi-Fi- rather than a mobile network. You won’t even notice the difference, and the minutes and texts you use simply come out of your monthly allowance. In other respects all the usual connectivity bases are covered.
There’s 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC but, unlike many Chinese-made phones, the Harrier is not dual-SIM. On paper, the 13Mp camera fixed to the rear of the Harrier is excellent. It has an LED flash, and a gold camera surround makes it all seem a little bit special. It can capture 1080p (full-HD) video, and there’s also a 2Mp selfie/Skype camera at the front. Very few camera controls are available, but you do get smile-,voice- and touch-activated capture, plus a countdown timer. You can select Auto, Night or Panorama modes, while HDR is on or off, and no real-time filters are available. The results, as you can see in our test shots below, aren’t bad. But you’ll want to switch on HDR (as seen in the second shot), and even then detail is lacking. Colours are natural, though, and for the money the results are acceptable.
We also ran a video test using the primary camera, but found the footage to be jerky. When it comes to its operating system, the Harrier runs a very plain implementation of Android Lollipop, and even uses the Nexus launcher. There is, however, a lot of bloatware slapped on top, and none of it can be uninstalled. Additional extras include Lookout, My EE, Amazon Kindle, Local, Music and Appstore, Deezer and Games & Apps. By the time we had installed our benchmarks, just 7.89GB of the Harrier’s 16GB of storage was available.
There’s 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC but, unlike many Chinese-made phones, the Harrier is not dual-SIM. On paper, the 13Mp camera fixed to the rear of the Harrier is excellent. It has an LED flash, and a gold camera surround makes it all seem a little bit special. It can capture 1080p (full-HD) video, and there’s also a 2Mp selfie/Skype camera at the front. Very few camera controls are available, but you do get smile-,voice- and touch-activated capture, plus a countdown timer. You can select Auto, Night or Panorama modes, while HDR is on or off, and no real-time filters are available. The results, as you can see in our test shots below, aren’t bad. But you’ll want to switch on HDR (as seen in the second shot), and even then detail is lacking. Colours are natural, though, and for the money the results are acceptable.
We also ran a video test using the primary camera, but found the footage to be jerky. When it comes to its operating system, the Harrier runs a very plain implementation of Android Lollipop, and even uses the Nexus launcher. There is, however, a lot of bloatware slapped on top, and none of it can be uninstalled. Additional extras include Lookout, My EE, Amazon Kindle, Local, Music and Appstore, Deezer and Games & Apps. By the time we had installed our benchmarks, just 7.89GB of the Harrier’s 16GB of storage was available.
Verdict
At £200, EE’s Harrier offers 4G connectivity, a great 5.2in full-HD IPS screen and the promise of Wi-Fi Calling. For many that will make it an excellent deal. But a number of issues prevented us getting too excited about this smartphone: there’s a load of bloatware, relatively sluggish performance, unremarkable battery life, some awkwardly placed buttons, a plastic build, and the camera performance isn’t great.
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