4G smartphones are still in their relative infancy in Australia and are usually reserved for high end models. Telstra is aiming to provide a lower cost option with its new Frontier 4G smartphone, the first 4G smartphone in Australia to be sold on prepaid. The price comes with a few drawbacks though, including a highly reflective screen and an often sluggish user experience.
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Expert Rating
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User Rating
Pros
- Competitive price
- Largely standard Android UI
- Decent battery life
Cons
- Highly reflective display
- Sluggish performance
- Thick design
Bottom Line
The Telstra Frontier 4G is the first 4G smartphone in Australia to be sold on prepaid. It offers a largely standard UI and decent battery life, but the competitive price comes with a few drawbacks including a highly reflective screen and an often sluggish user experience.
Bland design, reflective screen
The design of the Frontier 4G is about what you'd expect from a phone at this price point.
The Frontier 4G is a Telstra branded device that's manufactured by Chinese OEM ZTE. The company has produced various smartphones for Telstra in the past, including the Smart-Touch 2 and the original Smart-Touch. ZTE also manufacturers Telstra's own branded, 4G-capable Android tablet, the Telstra 4G Tablet.
The design of the Frontier 4G is about what you'd expect from a phone at this price point. It's constructed largely from plastic and features a black, soft touch finish on the back and a glossy, faux-chrome finish on the sides. A gloss black bezel surrounds the screen with touch-sensitive back, home and menu keys sitting below. These keys are relatively responsive but we wish they were backlit as they can often be hard to see in the dark.
The Frontier 4G has reasonable ergonomics, but is a little thick at 11mm.
One nice addition is an external antenna port that allows users to boost the mobile signal.
The Frontier 4G isn't the most stylish phone on the market but its design is straightforward and provides reasonable ergonomics. The 149g weight helps provide a solid feel but the device is rather thick at 11mm. All ports and buttons are in expected places, including the top mounted power button and headphone jack, and left mounted volume rocker and micro-USB ports.
One nice addition is an external antenna port that allows users to boost the mobile signal if required. Combined with a Blue Tick rating that denotes recommended coverage in rural and regional areas of Australia, the Frontier 4G is clearly well targeted to customers who live in the bush.
The back of the Frontier 4G has a soft-touch plastic that makes it relatively comfortable to hold.
Sadly, the Frontier 4G's 4in screen is one of the most reflective we've come across. The TFT panel is reasonably bright but offers poor viewing angles and is almost impossible to read in direct sunlight. The 480x800 pixel resolution also means that the screen can't render text as well as higher resolution rivals, though that's to be expected at this price point.
Largely stock Ice Cream Sandwich
The Telstra Frontier runs the 4.0 'Ice Cream Sandwich' version of Google's Android operating system which is surprisingly very close to a "vanilla" UI. Many previous Telstra smartphones were heavily customised and often bloated with pre-loaded apps and services, but the Frontier 4G is a welcome change. It uses the standard Google icons and topography, so the user experience is similar to a stock Android device like the Google Nexus 4. Motorola's new RAZR HD and RAZR M smartphones received similar treatment, so it's good to see Telstra scaling back on custom skins.
The Frontier 4G's screen is very reflective and hard to see in direct sunlight.
The Frontier 4G stutters during basic tasks such as locking and unlocking the screen and swiping through home screens.
The TelstraOne app and a range of widgets come pre-loaded on the Frontier 4G, along with a file manager, an FM radio, a notepad, a sound recorder, a world time app, the X-Office suite and a TouchPal keyboard. Thankfully, the latter is optional so you can revert to Google's standard Android keyboard. The most notable customisation is a lock screen called Mi-EasyAccess. This enables you to unlock directly into six apps of your choice, in addition to holding the icon to unlock into the home screen. However, the long press required is too slow and the unlock animation quickly becomes annoying.
The Telstra Frontier 4G is quite sluggish during day-to-day use. While we weren't expecting hugely impressive performance at this price point, the Frontier 4G stutters during basic tasks such as locking and unlocking the screen, swiping through home screens, opening and closing apps and even opening and closing the app drawer. First smartphone buyers may not notice this slowdown too much but if you've used a moderately fast Android phone in the past, you'll be left disappointed with the speed of the Frontier 4G.
Telstra has assured us the phone will be upgradeable to the latest 4.1 "Jelly Bean" version of Android in the coming months, so this may provide a welcome speed boost. The telco says the update is "in the works" and that it has "worked very closely with ZTE" to deliver the latest Android software, but has not confirmed an availability date.
Mediocre camera, decent battery life
The rear camera takes average quality photos with high levels of image noise.
The Telstra Frontier 4G has a 5-megapixel rear camera and a VGA front-camera for video calls. The rear camera takes average quality photos with high levels of image noise and a lack of clarity marring most of our test shots. Colour reproduction is reasonable, however, and detail levels aren't the worst we've seen on a camera phone.
The best feature of the Telstra Frontier 4G is obviously the fact that it connects to Telstra's excellent 4G network in Australia. The speeds you manage to achieve on Telstra's 4G network will depend on a number of factors including congestion, location and time but we managed to achieve download speeds of up to 26 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of over 20Mbps on the Frontier 4G. The phone is also compatible with HD Voice, though you'll obviously need to to be talking with another compatible phone on the Telstra network to reap its benefits.
A photo we captured with the Telstra Frontier 4G (click to enlarge).
The Frontier 4G comes with a 1785 mAh battery which lasted almost a full day during our review period. Less intensive users may be able to squeeze a full day of use out of the Frontier 4G before needing a recharge but like most 4G phones, making use of those faster data speeds quickly drains the battery.
The Telstra Frontier 4G is available now for $299 and can be paired with a range of Telstra prepaid plans.
Related content
• Our brand strong enough to sell 4G smartphones: Telstra
• Telstra plays nicely with Android app purchases
• Telstra 4G Tablet review
• Telstra: 4G will serve 66 per cent of Australia by mid-2013
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Chris
1
Great Phone for the money and easy to use
Gordon McWilliam
2
Waited for it to come into store and purchased it straight away....Went bush to see how good it was...Mmm..the signal was very poor against my HTC..Installed patch leed and made not a lot of differance in the signal..Returned it ot the shop and they sent it away for testing..They ended up sending me another new 1...Since then i have given it to a friend to test it on his farm etc...He was very impressed by it,, he then went out and purchased 1..
Mitch Paterson
3
I'm a new Telstra Frontier owner! As 4G mobile it is fast, but thats about it. The camera quality is poor, The internet teathering creates a new conection everytime I connect it, i'm up to conection #92, The Telstra One app does not show your data usage if prepaid i'm using the 24x7 app, The antenna plug size is unknown to everybody nore can I buy one to suit, I cannot find screen protectors or mobile covers for it through Telstra or on ebay or the rest of the net for that matter!!! Not happy, my advice buy a HTC Velocity 4G, my son has one it's great and all the accessories are easy to find! "Big thumbs down for the Telsta Frontier" If Telstra is going to sell a mobile the should go on sale the same day, my New Mobile will be all scrached and recked by the time these items are avalible!! Mitch from Geelong VIC AU.
Carol Teitzel
4
I agree with Mitch, my husband & I aren't happy with our new Frontier either, we specifically purchased this particular handset to take as it has an external antenna, we have been very misled with this knew handset as to how good we were told it is. We neither can purchase accessories for it & have looked everywhere just like Mitch.
I have been a Telstra customer for a very long time & have never really had any issues until now, I think Telstra should compensate us with a knew handset, something we can buy accessories for so we can look after these handsets as these phones have cost us $299.00 which is a bit of money for a normal working person to have to outlay.
At the moment I am not a very happy Telstra customer either & would appreciate a response.
Beeonline
5
Not being able to find screen protectors is my main concern. What I am impressed with is signal strength. I'm in a very poor reception area in northside Brisbane. A real black hole for all carriers. Signal strength is improved greatly from previous Samsung Omnia which was crap.. Despite comments from others here ,external antenna patch lead IS readily available, and it boosts signal further. I find I am not needing to use the external antenna.
Bev
6
We have external antenna connections that fit this phone as they also fit our old Samsung phones. Patch leads are the same as Samsung SGH-A412.
Bonnie
7
you can buy universal screen protectors, i didnt even need to cut it. i found a cover at a mobile phone shop at casuarina darwin downstairs in food court, it wasnt associated to any brand, but i havent been able to find anything else
Lyn
8
Where can I get instructions for the telstra fronteir 4G
ardz
9
Its on the phone the blue help app in the home screen
Jim
10
You can download user manual for this phone at:
http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/endata/mobile/Austria/Austria_Instruction/201207/P020120731522850098754.pdf
Pavla
11
Can anybody find some case for this mobile??? I have been in 10 shops - no luck, I searched on Ebay - no luck :( :(
Aless
12
I bought a cheap,properly packaged, and attractive book style cover in a market in Hong Kong in January that fits the Frontier.It was labelled as fitting a Samsung Galaxy II. It's a little bit bigger than the phone but the rear camera 'hole' is in the right place if the phone is clipped in correctly.It has a magnetic catch and the brand is "Kalaideng". Hope this is helpful.
Kerri
13
I live rurally and require a phone that can take a patch lead. Can anyone tell me where on the phone the areial port is. Our previous samsumg galaxy had one which was under the cover and not easily accesible which led to problems with the port coming off of the mother board of the phone. Will we run into the same issues with this telstra phone??
Jane Richardson
14
All I want is a user manual so I can take time to browse and use this phone to the best advantage
Beeonline
15
Kerri,
Patch lead attaches under pop up plug on bottom right back of phone
I previously used Samsung Omnia (piece of crap) & I was always worried about damage using patch lead.
I work & live in an extremely bad reception area & have always had signal strength problems with a range of phones & carriers. The Frontier gives the best results so far & I now don't bother with the external antenna which was a great help with previous phone.
Kerron
16
Does anyone know if the clockface and App Icons can be removed from the Home Screen?
Dom
17
Great phone. BUT unable to find a hard cover or even any kind of cover to fit. I
Can anyone suggest anything. It's
Dom
18
Great phone. BUT unable to find a hard cover or even any kind of cover to fit. I
Can anyone suggest anything. It's
Ceri Ross
19
Has anybody else had problems with very poor photo quality - not happy with the camera on this phone at all
Rhonda
20
I also have just purchased a Telstra Frontier (from a Telstra store) and I am not happy either. I was not told by the staff that I would not be able to purchase a cover or a screen protector for this phone. I have tried several place both in person and online all to NO avail. NOT A HAPPY customer
Carol Jorgensen
21
I am not impressed as when I purchased my phone from the Telstra Store in Kadina, SA, I was told that I would be able tp purchase a cover from another store or on-line. I have had the phone for 3months now and have been into heaps of other shops plus on-line with no luck. If only Telstra staff were more knowledgable about their products a lot of time and energy could be saved.
Phil
22
Bought one because it had a Telstra Blue Tick yet get no signal at all anywhere in the house or outside. Never known such poor signal reception. Yet to try taking it back to JB HiFi - would have been simpler if I had bought from Telstra at same price.
Seeing other post guess that reception you get is just a matter of luck!