EE Harrier review

Battery Life

The Harrier’s 2,500mAh battery doesn’t last as long as the Harrier Mini’s, but that’s partly down to it having to power a bigger, higher resolution screen. Still, lasting 10h 40m in our continuous video playback test with the screen set to 170cd/m2 is impressive, and the Harrier Mini only lasted 13 more minutes under the same conditions. This compares well with other smartphones, beating both the HTC Desire 820 and One M9 by more than an hour.

As own-brand handsets go, we’re pleased to see EE keep the number of pre-installed apps to a minimum. The irritating fullscreen widgets can be removed, and everything you need as an EE customer is found inside the My EE app. This lets you check how much data, minutes and texts you have left each month, as well as top-up, buy add-ons and access the EE store. Likewise, EE’s recently launched Wi-Fi calling service, which lets you make and receive calls over Wi-Fi if your signal drops out, will be available to use directly from the dialler later this summer.

Camera

The Harrier’s 13-megapixel camera is pretty decent for a £200 phone. Colours could be a tad muted in our outdoor shots, but there was plenty of detail present and only large areas of sky showed any obvious signs of noise. Zooming in at full resolution revealed grainy textures and harsh edges, but this was a minor complaint overall. We wouldn’t recommend shooting in HDR, though, as this actually reduced the amount of detail by blurring finer areas of brickwork together, and shadows looked unnaturally bright. 

^ Colours were a little lacking in vibrancy, but otherwise the EE Harrier produces very component photos

^ However, turning on HDR mode made images look unnatural and actually destroyed a lot of the finer detail

Indoors, the Harrier coped well when there was plenty of light present, but turning off our external lamp quickly made objects appear very blurry and riddled with extra noise. Turning on the flash helped slightly, but our white background still looked very grey and noise was present throughout.

^ Indoors, the Harrier produced similarly muted but perfectly acceptable shots when there was plenty of light available

^ Switching on the flash is a must for shooting in low-light, but expect colours to look relatively cool and grey

Conclusion 

For £200 phone on Pay-As-You-Go, the EE Harrier is great value. It offers a lot more than the Moto G 2nd Gen for only £50 more, and you won’t find anything else faster for the money. Contracts are quite expensive, though, as the cheapest starts at £21.99-a-month for 500MB of 4G data, 500 minutes and unlimited texts. For only a few more pounds each month, for example, you can get a Samsung Galaxy S5, which trumps the Harrier in almost every way. The Harrier is a good buy on PAYG, but those looking for a contract should look elsewhere. Also check out our regularly-updated Best Smartphones and buying guide.