Wileyfox offers smartphones considerably cheaper with ads on the lock screen
Wileyfox offers two smartphones with Add-X through its own website. That is an advertising service that displays advertisements on the lock screen. The phones with Add-X are much cheaper than their ad-free counterparts.
When activating a smartphone with Add-X, users must enter their date of birth and gender. The lockscreen ads are personalized based on that information. According to the manufacturer, the ads do not get in the way of notifications and widgets and can be removed from the screen with a single swipe. The data usage of the ads would be no more than 20MB per month.
Wileyfox is asking £120 for the Swift 2 Plus with ads. That is £60 cheaper than the regular price of the device. Converted, the price with advertisements comes to 136 euros, the smartphone is for sale without advertisements in the Benelux at web shops from 171 euros.
The Swift 2 Plus is a mid-range model with Snapdragon 430, 3GB ram and 32GB storage. The device has a 5″ screen with a resolution of 1280×720 pixels and runs on Android 7.1. The Wileyfox Spark+ is also offered in the United Kingdom with Add-X. The price is then £70 instead of £120. This is a budget model with MediaTek-soc, 2GB ram and 16GB storage.
According to Engadget, Wileyfox will also offer the Spark X and the Swift 2 with lockscreen ads. However, those models are not yet available to order on the Wileyfox website. The Wileyfox smartphones with ads are sold through the manufacturer’s UK website, Amazon.co.uk and other UK web stores where Wileyfox phones have already been sold. It is possible to order the devices from the Benelux.
Customers who change their mind after purchase and prefer not to see ads can have the Add-X software removed for a fee of £40. Wileyfox then pushes an ota update to the phone which removes the software. Users who do that, in some cases still pay less for the device than if they would buy the regular version.
Another manufacturer that offers hardware cheaper by displaying ads is Amazon. The online department store offers a discount on, for example, e-readers and tablets, but the price difference is much smaller than at Wileyfox.
| Spark+ | £120 | £70 | Unknown |
| Spark X | £140 | £80 | €219.49 |
| Swift 2 | £160 | £100 | Unknown |
| Swift 2 Plus | £190 | £120 | € 125,- |