Hands on: Orange San Francisco 2 review

We've often wondered how there can be such a disparity in price between the decent high end phones, and the handsets that cost a fraction of the price, but deliver a comparable experience - and the Orange San Francisco 2 looks set to further complicate matters.

With it's large WVGA screen, 800MHz processor and around £100 to buy, we're already very impressed with this re-badged ZTE Blade 2 - but how does it fare under use?

The first thing you'll notice is the San Fran 2 looks a lot like a Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo - so much so, that if it weren't for the in your face labelling, we'd have trouble telling them apart.

The chassis is decked out in black plastic, and looks pretty premium in the hand - well, apart form the slightly cheap San Francisco II labelling at the top, which makes the phone look a little like a cheap knock off.

There are two cameras present here too: a 5MP rear offering, and a VGA front option, plus with ISO, contrast, sharpness and more to play with, there are far more settings than we could possibly have hoped for on a phone of this cost.

The innards might not be the best on the market, but they certainly seem to do the job - during our testing we found very little evidence of freezing or slowdown, which you'd expect at this price point. Things did lack the snap of higher end devices, but the lag was consistent throughout the phone, showing Orange and ZTE have done some decent processor optimisation.

Sadly there's no way to get rid of the reams of Orange programs included on the phone... this means you're stuck with the likes of Orange Maps and Wi-Fi. That said, things like Signal Boost are superb, with a simple connection to your router the only thing needed to make sure you've got signal.

And if you're that bothered about the Orange bloatware on board, then you can buy the Blade 2 on its own... but it will cost you a lot more, so we think you can learn to live with unused icons.

The internet over Wi-Fi is buttery smooth and showed no hint of slowdown in our tests, which was impressive. This phone reminds us more of an HTC Desire in the way it works, and it's certainly more up to date and cheaper than that phone ever was.

There are some points that niggle - for instance, the messaging keyboard is too cramped on the 3.5-inch screen, and the Swype-like offering underneath wasn't accurate at all when we tried it out. You'll get used to it, but there's a lot better on the market.

Similarly calling was a pretty basic experience - while it did it all fine, the San Francisco 2 wasn't the quickest at setting up or connecting calls, although we're looking forward to giving this an extended test to really check it out in other scenarios.

Early verdict

Is the Orange San Francisco 2 the best phone on the market? No, not by a long way. But for most people, the whole 'money is no option' argument doesn't come across when it's time to buy a new phone, and pound for pound, the San Fran 2 seems to be, once again, one of the bargain buys of the year.

We love the level of creativity that's gone into the design of the UI - for those that have never owned a smartphone, the idea of being able to draw on the screen and open an app is brilliant - and something we're surprise more smartphones don't do.

The build is slightly cheap, the logo odd and the keyboard a little cramped for our tastes... but if you're looking for a budget Android phone, we think our full Orange San Francisco 2 review is going to show that this is the phone for you.

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