At a Glance
Expert’s Rating
Our 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 people 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.
Best Prices Today: EE Harrier
With 4G connectivity and a large full-HD screen under £200 the EE Harrier is excellent value. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to get excited about this smartphone . Find out why in our EE Harrier review. Updated on 02/7/15 with our video review . Also see: Best cheap 4G phones .
Sold exclusively in the UK through EE, the Harrier is available free on contracts from £21.99 per month, for which you’ll receive 500 minutes, 500MB of data and unlimited texts. We’re also told you can buy it in store on a PAYG basis for £199.
The fact the 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 realising it’s happening. It’s just a shame Wi-Fi Calling wasn’t available to the EE Harrier at launch. Also see Best smartphones 2015 and best Android phones 2015 .
The Harrier is joined by the cheaper Harrier Mini, which replaces the Kestrel , another excellent value 4G phone from EE. But the Harrier is a completely different bird to the Mini, and while they look the same they have a very different squawk.
The Harrier’s larger 5.2in screen is a key selling point. This IPS panel is very bright with realistic colours and strong viewing angles. It’s usefully large without bordering on phablet territory, and reasonably slim bezels and a slightly curved rear mean the phone still feels good in the hand.
More importantly, though, this is a full-HD (1920×1080, 424ppi) panel, which means it’s very clear and an ideal display for watching videos and viewing photos. Full-HD is still far from standard for a cheap 4G phone.
The Harrier’s got bigger wings than the Mini, too, with an octa-core Snapdragon 615 chip clocked at 1.5GHz, a generous 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage (plus microSD support), a 2,500mAh battery and a 13Mp rear camera. Performance should be good.
Trouble is, it’s not. While the Harrier is a capable smartphone and will be fine for many people in daily use, it’s not the benchmark results but the amount of time we were left hanging around when trying to do just about anything that irked us most in using this phone. In launching apps or even just waking the screen we found ourselves waiting several seconds for the Harrier to respond.
The design could do with a little something else, too. There’s nothing exactly ‘wrong’ with the Harrier’s looks, but it’s very functional, and boring. EE has tried to spice things up with a brushed-metal-effect rear cover, silver EE logo and gold camera surround, but we’re not fooled: this is still very much a plastic smartphone, and it feels like one.
So while there’s lots to love about the EE Harrier, there are also a few things we definitely don’t love. Let’s have a more in-depth look at the EE Harrier.
EE Harrier review: Price and UK availability
The EE Harrier is available now, in-store at £199 or free on contracts from £21.99 per month. At this price you’ll receive unlimited texts, 500 minutes and 500MB of data. Once Wi-Fi Calling becomes available for the Harrier that will also be included in your package.
EE Harrier review: Design and build
At this price you really 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 screen is fantastic under £200.
With an IPS display, the EE Harrier offers realistic screen colours, 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 EE 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, the 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.
EE Harrier review: Hardware and performance
The EE 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 in our experience with the EE Harrier we found it 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 Geekbench 3, which measures processor performance, the EE Harrier recorded 640 points single-core, and 2042 multi-core. 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 EE Harrier. That places the Harrier very much in Microsoft Lumia or Windows Phone territory, with the 640 scoring 1201ms, the 735 1217ms, 435 1284ms and 535 1295ms. In comparison to Android phones it’s in the P7 and HTC Desire 610 ‘s domain – not amazing, but by no means attrocious (the Sony Xperia Tipo still wins that award with 5781ms). You can compare the Harrier’s performance to all other phones reviewed by PC Advisor in our article What’s the fastest smartphone 2015 .
A new test for us is AnTuTu, in which the EE Harrier recorded 29,154 points. We have few in-house 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 the EE Harrier recorded 15fps, which is slightly faster than the Kestrel (14fps), and on 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 quite capable of handling casual titles.
Lastly 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 EE Harrier turned in by far the worst performance with 1424 points (03:33:20). Even its little brother, the Harrier Mini, 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 ‘off-peak’ 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.
EE Harrier review: Connectivity
A key selling point of this phone is its 4G connectivity. At £100 that’s impressive; at £200 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. You can check out some other great-value 4G phones in our Best cheap 4G phones article.
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 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. If you need a dual-SIM phone, check out our dual-SIM buying advice .
EE Harrier review: Cameras
On paper, the 13Mp camera fixed to the rear of the EE 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 quite jerky.
EE Harrier review: Software
Specs
EE Harrier: Specs
- 5.2in full-HD (1920×1080) IPS display, 424ppi
- 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor
- 2GB RAM
- 16GB storage
- microSD slot
- 13Mp rear camera with LED flash, 1080p video recording
- 2Mp front camera
- Android Lollipop
- 4G up to 150Mb/s
- Micro-SIM
- Wi-Fi Calling coming soon
- 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
- Bluetooth 4.0
- NFC
- 2500mAh non-removable battery
- 74.5×8.9x147mm
- 145g
- Geekbench 3.0: 640 single-core, 2042 multi-core
- SunSpider (Chrome): 1275ms
- AnTuTu: 29,154
- GFXBench 3.1: 15fps T-Rex, 6fps Manhattan
- Battery life (Geekbench 3.0): 1424 (03:33:20)
Best Prices Today: EE Harrier
Author: Marie Black, Global Director of Content Operations, Foundry
Marie is Global Director of Content Operations at Foundry. A Journalism graduate from the London College of Printing, she’s worked in tech media for 20 years. These days she is focused on refining editorial processes and workflows, and on our evergreen, transactional and custom content strategy.
Recent stories by Marie Black:
- Best eSIMs 2026: Top eSIM plans for travel, business & home use
- Is WhatsApp down? How to check and fix WhatsApp
- Pay £1 for mobile data on your next trip abroad
At a Glance
Expert’s Rating
Our Verdict
For a cheap phablet the Bluboo X6 has a lot going for it. It’s reasonably fast compared to its similarly priced rivals, it supports 4G and dual-SIM functionality, and the large screen is useful for browsing the web and viewing media, if it’s not particularly high-res. It has a few quirks, and we’re not keen on the fingerprint scanner or software customisations, but at £90 you really can’t complain.
Best Prices Today: Bluboo X6
The Bluboo X6 is a 4G LTE Android KitKat phablet with a fingerprint scanner that costs just £90 from Geekbuying . Shipped from China you should also take into account import duty, however ( read up on our grey-market tech buying advice ). Is it a deal? We find out in our Bluboo X6 smartphone review. Also see: Best phones 2015 and best Android phones 2015.
The specification is competitive, given the low price, with a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek processor, 1GB of RAM and dual-core Mali-T760 graphics inside. It’s considerably faster than the similarly priced Moto E 4G , but there are several reasons – including its size – that might lead you to prefer that phone.
As well as 4G LTE support and dual-SIM functionality – with one SIM tray doubling as a microSD slot – you get a 5.5in IPS screen. The quarter-HD resolution is low for a screen of this size, but it does promote longer battery life, and Bluboo claims up to two days with normal use. The screen has curved edges, which look nice but still don’t lie flush with the screen bezels. We found the Bluboo X6 prone to picking up fingerprints, too. See all Android phone reviews .
The Bluboo X6 looks good for a budget phone. It ships with a smart case not too dissimilar to the LG G3’s Quick Circle case, with a silicone rear cover and a front flap that has a circular window through which you can see a clock face.
The X6 is built entirely from plastic, which keeps down weight, but it’s obvious that this isn’t a premium phone. The removable rear panel – plus 3000mAh removable battery – is a nice touch, though, and available in blue or white it has a grippy, chequered texture, plus an anodised pink camera surround.
The cameras themselves are a strong point on this budget phablet, with 13Mp and a dual-LED flash at the rear, and an 8Mp selfie camera at the front. It’s capable of recording full-HD video at 30fps, too. Also see: Best phablets 2015 .
Running Android 4.4 KitKat, Bluboo promises an OTA upgrade to Lollipop. The implementation differs from vanilla Android only in its screen icons, which adopt the form of curved tiles. Some are sufficiently different that we found them confusing, such as the link the Google Play Store, which is here a red tile with a white house icon. Fortunately, you can change all this by switching the theme.
Gestures are also supported, including a double-tap to wake the screen, a letter M to play music, or a wave of the hand to trigger the camera. These aren’t customisable, but there are plenty to choose from. There’s little else in the way of preinstalled bloat, and of the X6’s 8GB of storage around 6GB is available.
Bluboo X6 review: Design and build
Bluboo’s X6 is a plastic phone, a black slab with a silver plastic edge. It doesn’t look like a premium device, but you would be surprised by its £90 price. The plastic build also keeps down the weight, and at 167g the X6 is light for an 8.8mm-thick phablet. Also see: Best cheap 4G phones 2015 .
The rear cover is thin but clips on tight. It’s removable, too, giving access to an also-removable 3000mAh battery and dual-SIM slots. One of these doubles as a microSD slot, although Bluboo doesn’t specify how much storage it can accommodate (many budget phones allow just 32GB).
Available in blue or white, the rear cover features a chequered design that aids grip in the hand. With a 5.5in screen and an 8.8mm-thick body this is a large phone, although its slim bezels to the screen’s left and right make it just about manageable in a single hand.
Around the edges you’ll fins two speaker grilles at the bottom, a volume rocker and power switch on the right side, and a Micro-USB charging port and 3.5mm headphone jack on top. A 13Mp camera is on the rear, surrounded by a pink anodised aluminium ring and supported by a dual-LED flash.
At the front is a 2.5D Arc screen, which basically means it is curved at the edges. This has a nice effect, but it doesn’t lie flush to the case. The top and bottom bezels are larger, with a physical home button at the bottom that builds in a fingerprint sensor. It’s a nice idea in a £90 phone, but using swipe- rather than touch input it’s a real pain to use. And while this scanner isn’t too great at picking up our fingerprints, the display is.
The screen itself is an IPS panel. While colours are realistic and it’s usefully bright, a quarter-HD resolution of 960×540 is pushed almost to its limit on a 5.5in screen. The X6 has a pixel density of 200ppi, which isn’t horrendous but it’s not as sharp as we’d like. For web browsing it’s fine, but for viewing media you might prefer an HD display. The large panel is useful in this regard, mind.
The Bluboo is supplied with a smart case, which reminds us of the LG G3’s Quick Circle case. A silicone shell clips on to the rear, while a front flap features a circular cutout through which you can see the clock.
Bluboo X6 review: Hardware and performance
When you’re paying £90 for a smartphone, you can’t expect blistering performance. However, in many of our benchmarks the Bluboo impressed us, and we certainly found it faster than its rival Motorola Moto E 4G at this price point. Its performance is due to the phone’s MediaTek MTK6732 SOC, which integrates a 1.3MHz ARM Cortex A-53 quad-core CPU and Mali-T760 MP2 dual-core GPU, plus 1GB of RAM. Also see: What’s the fastest smartphone 2015 .
In Geekbench 3.0 we measured 654 points in the single-core test, and 1940 points multi-core. Other 5.5in phablets we’ve tested such as the ZTE Blade S6 Plus are faster, but at this price point it’s faced with rivals such as the Moto E 4G and the X6 floors them. In the real world performance is adequate, but it’ll take a second to launch most apps.
Performance was also good in GFXBench 3.0, which tests the graphics performance. The Bluboo recorded 25fps in T-Rex, and 13fps in Manhattan.
SunSpider is our third test, and to ensure a fair comparison we always run it in the Chrome web browser. Here the Bluboo recorded 1327ms, which isn’t bad for a cheap Android. In the phone’s preinstalled browser, however, the X6 managed 1016ms. This is often the case with the phones we review (a lower score is better in SunSpider).
Our final test is the battery life measurement built into Geekbench 3.0. We’ve not long been running this benchmark, so have few results with which to compare it. However, the Bluboo recorded 2946 points, and seven hours 22 minutes. To put that into perspective, its time recording is on par with the 2015 Moto G , but its point score falls just below the Kingzone Z1 , another Chinese 5.5in phablet.
The battery is rated at 3000mAh, but don’t expect to find advanced features such as quick- or wireless charging, or even an ultra power saving mode. See all smartphone reviews .
Storage-wise you get 8GB built in, with around 6GB available, and if you don’t need the second SIM slot you can insert a microSD card. (Bluboo doesn’t specify the maximum capacity supported.) This is Android, too, so expect to be able to make use of all manner of third-party cloud storage services – Google Drive is preinstalled for you.
Bluboo X6 review: Connectivity
When you’re buying a phone from China you should always check the frequency bands to ensure it will be supported by your UK mobile operator. The Bluboo X6 supports GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz, WCDMA 900/1900/2100MHz, and Cat 4 FDD-LTE B1/B3/B7/B20.
Other connectivity specs include Bluetooth 4.0, single-band 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, GPS and A-GPS, and USB OTG . While there’s no NFC there is HotKnot, which is MediaTek’s alternative.
If you’re not using the second SIM slot as a microSD slot you can take advantage of dual-standby dual-SIM functionality. This is a dual-standby dual-SIM phone, for more details on what that means see our dual-SIM phones buying advice and best dual-SIM phones 2015 . The X6 takes two Micro SIMs.
Bluboo X6 review: Cameras
For photography the Bluboo X6 is better than it has any right to be at this price. As is often the case with the Chinese phones we review, there’s a 13Mp camera at the rear and an impressive 8Mp at the front. It’s not all about the megapixels, but we were impressed with the photos and test video we captured on the X6 (it’ll record 1080p at 30fps). A dual-LED flash is also useful for improving low-light performance. Also see: Best selfie phones 2015 .
Bluboo X6 review: Software
The X6 runs a slightly customised version of Android KitKat, and it’s not one we’re particularly keen on. The key difference between vanilla KitKat and what we have here is the X6’s use of themes. Having spent a lot of time messing about with Android phones, we’re used to seeing familiar icons for such things as the Google Play store. When we don’t instantly recognise them it’s confusing, and makes the phone unintuitive in use.
Four themes are installed on the Bluboo X6, and not one of them is what we’d consider normal. The default theme switches the Google Play icon to a red tile with rounded corners and a white house icon; the only thing giving away its purpose is the legend below. The themes will change the wallpaper and icons, but you can also separately customise the wallpaper and lock screen. But not through the Settings menu. Themes and wallpaper customisations are instead made through the Theme manager, which is found in the App menu. Or you can toggle between them using the Switch theme shortcut, also in the App menu.
And this is a bit of an, erm, theme with the Bluboo X6. The X6 supports several useful gestures, but you don’t switch them on in the Settings menu. Instead you look in the Apps menu for the appropriately named ‘Direct’ and ‘Smart wake’ apps. The former is short for Direct Call, and lets you turn on the ability to instantly call contacts when viewing a contact or a text message and lifting the phone to your ear. You can also swing the phone to answer an incoming call, which seems a little bizarre, but perhaps less bizarre than waving your hand across the proximity sensor to capture a photo (it could make your subject smile, we suppose).
In Smart wake you’ll find the ability to wake the screen with a double-tap or unlock it with a swipe upward. Several characters can be drawn on to the lock screen with the screen on standby to launch certain apps. Drawing an ‘m’ begins playing music while ‘v’ triggers video; less obviously an ‘e’ opens the browser and ‘c’ opens the dialer (no, not the camera). It’s only a shame that you can’t customise their function.
Some people like finding little surprises in the software, and those are exactly the sort of people who will appreciate the Fingerprints app (also missing from the Settings menu). That excitement will wear off quick when they realise the scanner actually doesn’t work very well, though. Still, we wouldn’t expect much from it at this price.
The Bluboo X6 supports wireless updates, and Bluboo promises an upgrade to Android 5.0 Lollipop, which is not at all a given with cheap smartphones.
Follow Marie Brewis on Twitter .
Specs
Bluboo X6: Specs
- 5.5in quarter-HD (960×540, 200ppi) IPS screen
- Android 4.4.4 KitKat (with OTA upgrade to Lollipop coming)
- 1.3GHz MediaTek MTK6732 SOC (1.3MHz ARM Cortex A-53 quad-core CPU + Mali-T760 MP2 dual-core GPU)
- 1GB RAM
- 8GB storage
- Micro SIM
- dual-SIM dual-standby or single-SIM + microSD
- GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz, WCDMA 900/1900/2100MHz, FDD-LTE B1/B3/B7/B20 Cat 4 LTE
- 5Mp front camera
- 13Mp rear camera, dual-LED flash, 1080p video at 30fps
- swipe fingerprint scanner
- Bluetooth 4.0
- 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, single-band
- GPS
- A-GPS
- HotKnot
- no NFC
- OTG
- FM radio
- smart case
- removable 3000mAh battery
- 77×158.7×8.8mm
- 167g
- one-year warranty
- Geekbench 3.0: 654 (single-core), 1940 (multi-core)
- SunSpider: 1016ms (preinstalled browser), 1327ms (Chrome)
- GFXBench 3.0: 25fps (T-Rex), 13fps (Manhattan)
- battery life (Geekbench 3.0): 2946 (07:22)
Best Prices Today: Bluboo X6
Author: Marie Black, Global Director of Content Operations, Foundry
Marie is Global Director of Content Operations at Foundry. A Journalism graduate from the London College of Printing, she’s worked in tech media for 20 years. These days she is focused on refining editorial processes and workflows, and on our evergreen, transactional and custom content strategy.
Recent stories by Marie Black:
- Best eSIMs 2026: Top eSIM plans for travel, business & home use
- Is WhatsApp down? How to check and fix WhatsApp
- Pay £1 for mobile data on your next trip abroad
