EE Harrier and Harrier Mini: network launches low-cost phones of its own

Using wi-fi calling and coming bundled with an EE connection, the Harriers are better than the cheap price might imply

Mobile phone network EE is continuing to innovate with its own brand phones, and sticking with the bird theme to its naming. The company has announced two phones which boast a feature which many users will appreciate.

As regular Independent readers will know, the mobile phone reception in my house is like that of a Faraday cage – nothing gets in or out. And I’m not alone – poor mobile reception at home is not as rare as it should be, and it’s very annoying. Wi-fi calling solves this at a stroke.

It routes mobile phone calls through your home wi-fi network instead of the regular mobile GSM towers. There are boxes which can act as tiny mobile masts, but wi-fi calling builds the technology into the smartphone.

You need the right phone and the right network. The latest iPhones on EE can perform this trick, but it’s a feature that’s rare among lower-priced handsets.

The Harrier and Harrier Mini change all that. The phones, manufactured by BenQ for EE, are absolutely at the affordable end of the market. The Harrier Mini is the smaller of the two – though its 4.7-inch screen is the same as the iPhone 6, so this is not a small phone, really – costs £99.99 on pay-as-you-go or free on 4G tariffs as low as £16.99 a month. That tariff includes 500 minutes of calls, unlimited texts and 500MB of data.

And the phone is well-equipped in other features, too, with an eight-megapixel rear camera that you might not expect on such a budget handset. It’s designed to take good pictures in low light situations.

The larger phone costs £199 on pay-as-you-go and is also well-specced for the price, including a full HD 5.2-inch display and 13-megapixel rear snapper. Both handsets run the latest version of Android software, Lollipop and the design, though not sumptuous, looks far from cheap.

If you’re desperate to get wi-fi calling, note that though the phones go on sale next Tuesday, the feature will go live in the summer when an update is delivered to the handsets.

And, of course, you do need to have wi-fi that can service the phone, so if your place has a wi-fi weak spot, it may not be perfect. Mind you, EE says it will work with internet speeds of just 2Mbps.

I’ve tried EE’s wi-fi calling on an iPhone 6 and it works brilliantly. Call quality was crisp and clear, until I ventured into the one part of the house where the internet signal was sketchy. Even so, it was a big improvement.

Note that you can’t start a call on wi-fi and carry on with it when you leave the house – when the wi-fi is out of reach, the call drops. One final wrinkle – the Apple Watch doesn’t recognise wi-fi calls in the same way that it does regular ones, so it doesn’t ring on the watch, just on the phone. But as the Watch only goes on sale from tomorrow, this is doubtless something that will be addressed.