With a name like ‘Smart Speed 6', Vodafone clearly have confidence in the MediaTek MT6735M CPU, which is paired with 1GB of RAM. We will look at both synthetic benchmark scores as well as real-world usage of the Speed 6.
After previously reviewing the First 6, with a slower MT6572M CPU and 512MB RAM, the jump in performance was immediately noticeable. Apps opened rapidly, games (Stick Hero, Temple Run 2) ran well and OS animations were nice and smooth. I found there was the occasional incident where the keyboard would freeze up, or the device would take several seconds to respond to a press on the home buttons. On the whole, though, everyday performance is very good for the price.
When it came to the benchmarks, I was rather surprised. That is because the Speed 6 actually trumped the Prime 6 with its Geekbench 3 scores – the Prime 6 costing £30 more and packing a Snapdragon 410 CPU.
Despite this, the Prime 6 proved the more powerful device in the Ice Storm Unlimited test, by a fairly significant margin. The obvious conclusion to draw from both tests is that the processing power of the Speed 6's MT6735M CPU is greater than its graphical power by some way.
Finally, the name ‘Speed 6' also lends itself to the idea that we can expect fast mobile data speeds. On Vodafone's 4G network, that is certainly the case with download speeds in the region of 40mbps.