General

Wiko is France’s second largest smartphone manufacturer and also one of Europe’s fastest growing mobile brands after only 3 years in business – this is impressive, all things considered!

Wiko is also trailblazing in markets like Kenya where they launched back in September 2014 with an exciting range of smartphones like the Rainbow (which I reviewed here) as well as others like the Highway.

Therefore, I was super excited when they reached out to me a few weeks ago to do a review blog post of the latest addition to their smartphone line-up for Kenya – The Getaway.

The first time I set my eyes on the Getaway which launched in Kenya on Monday the 16th March 2015, I have to confess that I was taken aback by how stunning it looked! As in it seemed much better (visually?) than the Rainbow and even the Highway (and the Highway is no slouch!).

The overall finish of the Wiko Getaway is quite remarkable given that its retailing for an impressive Kes. 20,999.00 in Kenya and it certainly looks like great value for money. But as they say, never judge a book by its cover – the proof is always in the pudding and thats what the last few weeks have been when I put the Wiko Getaway through its paces. The Getaway did not disappoint and I am really pleased to do this review, as below.

Specifications

• 5 inch HD display, 1280×720 pixels with Corning Gorilla Glass

  

• Quad Core 1.3Ghz Processor, Cortex A-7
• 13MP back facing camera, 5MP front facing camera
• 1080P Full HD Video (1920×1088 pixels)
• 1GB RAM, 16GB ROM
• Micro SD up to 32GB
• Android 4.4 Kitkat
• Dual SIM or Micro SD & SIM

Pros

• 

  Super premium finish in an aluminium frame that is ultra slim at only 7.22 mm

• A large 5 inch HD screen with Corning Gorilla Glass which means its super tough and resistant to damage
• Its a Dual SIM but at the same time can be used as a Single SIM with the same extra slot doubling up as a Micro SD slot which is really innovative
• Comes with an 8GB Micro SD card free of charge!
• Comes with Android KitKat 4.4
• 16GB Memory was a major plus above the Wiko Rainbow and meant a Micro SD card was really optional and not mandatory
• Really fair price!

Cons

• Battery life was modest given that its only 2000 mAh?
• The HD screen was good enough but could be better with a higher resolution?
• Although the main camera was a major improvement from the Wiko Rainbow I found that it was prone to blurring images as well but to a significantly lesser degree
• The second SIM slot being a Nano SIM rather than a Micro SIM is inconvenient as these are not readily available in Kenya and one has to get their SIM ‘chopped’ down to this size

Design

The first thing that grabs you about the Wiko Getaway is the really slim aluminium frame. It has a really fine contoured design with a thin bezel and well defined chamfered edges. At the same time, the design is unibody meaning you cannot access the innards of the Getaway in the same manner many premium smartphones are made these days like the Apple iPhone and HTC One.

Speaking of the HTC One, the Getaway seems reminiscent of that smartphone in that it has a lovely ‘base’ at the bottom of the phone which has a brushed aluminium design detail – it looks and feels gorgeous giving it a high-end look and feel.

This does NOT come across as a smartphone that you would buy for only Kes. 20,999.00 – it looks like it would cost twice as much! In addition, some of the design language of the Wiko Getaway seems to borrow from the Apple iPhone 5 generation in how the aluminium frame wraps the device but also the back seems reminiscent of the simulated ‘leather’ look and feel that Samsung had on the Galaxy Note 3 (which to be honest I am not crazy about but does seem to work somehow?).

Ultimately, most consumers will love the Wiko Getaway as it looks and feels really premium. I cannot count the number of times people would ask me what sort of phone it was and where they could get one after taking a closer look at it. The Getaway is a real head turner – nuff said!

Features

Out of the box, the 5 inch HD screen Wiko Getaway as mentioned earlier comes with Dual SIM slots of which one doubles up as a Micro SD slot as well. I found that its hard to go through the trouble of getting a SIM card ‘chopped’ to the Nano SIM size so as to get the ‘dual purpose’ slot working.

So, to be honest, I actually opted not to use the Dual SIM feature at all for the duration I had this phone. That being said, I did slot in a Micro SD card and this gave me loads of space to put on music, photos and movies which was especially handy for those moments when travelling or working out when I could access this extra content easily and in almost limitless manner

The Wiko Getaway comes out of the box with usual accessories such as headphones, charger, etc which worked for me quite well. However, the headphones were quite basic and felt somewhat dated in the way that iPhone headphones do compared to Samsung headphones these days? I also feel that Wiko should have provided a flip cover free of charge but this was not included but can be bought as an accessory.

Performance

I managed to load all my usual Android mobile apps on the Wiko Getaway and at no time can I say that I struggled to get them to work. Everything was ‘slick and smooth’ to the extent that I was impressed at just how capable it was in terms of how it worked for me as a smartphone ‘power user’.

I used the Wiko Getaway as a replacement to my current staple of a Nexus 5. In this respect, I found it worked well with the exception of the fact that once your used to Android Lollipop, Android KitKat does start to feel dated and somewhat clunky by comparison? Bearing in mind that a whole load of Android devices are still NOT yet on KitKat its a good thing that Wiko are able to release their smartphones only one step behind from Lollipop?

I am keeping my fingers crossed as to whether Wiko will give users the option to upgrade to Android Lollipop? This in my opinion may never happen given my past experience with many Android devices coming out of China.

Display

The 5 inch HD display was decent and of the same resolution as that of the Wiko Rainbow at 1280×720 pixels. This was good enough for most of my requirements but its always somewhat surprising that such an HD display seems somewhat ‘blurry’ when compared to some of the higher resolution mobile screens out there based on technologies like Super Amoled as seen on Samsung smartphones.

This is will never be an issue for most users I imagine but it does show that there is still room to make displays better on the likes of the Wiko Getaway in later iterations (assuming that there will be more iterations of the same I imagine?). Then again, this is smartphone that costs a very fair price of Kes. 20,999.00 so one should not expect too much.

Camera(s)

The main camera on the Wiko Getaway is a 13MP camera which in my experiences takes really sharp pictures under a variety of conditions. The only caveats I could find though were that it was not always fast in responding and also seemed prone to blurring when the phone was not that steady? That means at times I took a number of shots and then picked the best ones for Instagram, et al.

I also used the impressive 5MP front camera to do a number of selfies and in this regard I found that it was really capable barring the fact that I am yet to acquire a selfie stick! I have provided a few pictures here that show how good the camera is on the Wiko Getaway in general.

Battery

One area where I had beef with the Wiko Getaway was the battery life? I found it to be quite inadequate on a number of occasions when I needed to go for a full day without having a top-up charge. Given that the Wiko Getaway functions on a relatively modest 2,000 mAh battery I am not surprised that the battery life was lacking.

I imagine that this was one of the compromises that had to be made given how incredibly slim and light this smartphone is and clearly some aspects of the phone could not be made better as a result.

However, I have come to the conclusion that for as long smartphones are a way of life battery life will probably(?) always be a major area of contention for most consumers until they find a technology approach that solves it permanently.

Bottom Line

I could go on and on about the Wiko Getaway but basically this is a smartphone that I would give a solid 8/10 for most aspects such as the design, the overall performance, camera, video, etc.

One has to remember that the Wiko Getaway as a smartphone represents premium quality an an affordable price in so many areas that I would say that its a no-brainer to go out and get one.

It also means that it appears Wiko is actually getting better at making high(er)-end devices meaning that they are going to eat some of the lunch of the better established mobile device manufacturers going forward – mark my words!