Emporia RL1 – Festival Phone or Mobile for the more Mature

Smartphones eh? Sometimes they can just be too clever for their own good. The Vodafone Emporia RL1 follows the mantra ‘beauty in simplicity’.

Ignore all that chat about apps, video calling, touchscreens and the rest – the Emporia RL1 does what phones should do best: make calls.

The RL1 would easily fit into the Bauhaus design school with its classy style and simplistic yet modernist lines.

Instead of talking about what the RL1 lacks here’s a quick run-down of what if features.

The Emporia has a great clear and bright 1.8-inch screen complete with adjustable text size, and when there’s an incoming call the built-in torch flashes at you. Not only will this prevent missing calls when you’re locked away in a noisy environment or recording studio both of those features may be ideal for your older relatives.

As a back-up the RL1 has an extra loud speaker and good vibrations. The thing is, avoiding a call may become difficult and no one will believe that you missed their call 😉

Apart from the screen the rest of the face of this phone is taken up by the ridiculously straightforward keyboard. The keys are big enough for even the most sausage-fingered of you and are labeled so clearly even I can read the numbers without wearing my glasses!

The Emporia RL1 does have some extras though – an alarm clock, a calculator and a birthday reminder tool.

Before you dismiss this as a phone for the olds – the Emporia RL1′s battery will keep going for more than eight days on standby on a single charge! You can natter solidly for 180 minutes before you have to recharge it.

Torch and no need to constantly recharge it? Sounds like a festival phone to me!

The charger isn’t your regular USB cable – The RL1 comes with a charging cradle which can be wall-mounted or desk-based.

The other way in which the Emporia RL1 is an ideal festival phone is that it costs just £60 on pay as you go.

For that it can stay in your rucksack ready for the next muddy music outing 🙂