T-Mobile boasts budget smartphone for less than £100

T-Mobile officially unveiled a fresh self-branded blower this morning, putting Android smartphones in pockets for under £100. The T-Mobile Vivacity rocks up with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a 3.5in capacitive display, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 5Mp camera and an iPhone-esque - silver band around the sides, I ask you - design. T-Mobile …

[Lockwood]

Rounded corners?

It'll never be allowed to hit the shelves!

[Tom 15]

Or...

I bought my girlfriend an Orange Monte Carlo... Orange had it for £130 including £10 credit. They were also giving away a £25 pre-paid debit card with it and I got £20 off through Quidco.

Total cost for a 4.3" Android phone: £75

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't you get a Galaxy mini

running android for £89.99 from Tescos ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not bad

But can it be unlocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

iPhone 4 design rip off. I don't think Apple will like that.

[Anonymous Coward]

512MB

As someone that has a smartphone with 512MB of phone storage (HTC Desire) I can tell you that it is far too low to be of decent use. You could put a terrabyte sd card in the phone and it still wouldn't be enough for apps because most of them still dictate that they need to be installed onto the phone memory. Even apps that can be installed to sd still take up a portion of the app footprint on the phone memory too. 512MB is just not adequate if you want to get any decent use out of it. I suppose the positive aspect of having such a low amount of app storage space is that the phone battery only lasts a few hours so you wouldn't be able to use apps anyway.

[Piro]

Hard to find the exact specs

But I imagine it's once again a hopeless ARM11 affair, clocked at either 600 or 800MHz.

Cortex A8 class is the very minimum requirement I consider to be necessary for a phone now..

[LPF]

Say what you liek about apple..

But without them, most phone designs would look crap still!Android was going to be a blackberry knock off until the iphone turned up!

[Piro]

Possibly true

But at the same time, I'd rather have some more buttons.

I'm kind of miffed that no HTC has proper buttons on the face anymore. Just capacitive junk. Annoying.

[Allicorn]

> Say what you liek about apple..

I would, but I can't think of anything.

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm

wonder if it''s just me who thinks the iPhone 4 is a very dull and boring design?

And yes, I think this cheapo copy is dull and boring too.

[AdamWill]

no, it wasn't

"Android was going to be a blackberry knock off until the iphone turned up!"

No, it wasn't. That's simply a myth. http://www.osnews.com/story/25264/Did_Android_Really_Look_Like_BlackBerry_Before_the_iPhone_

[zxcvbnm]

San francisco ii

Surely its just their version of the san francisco 2/ zte something? Same company as orange now sharing the same phones.

[Paul Shirley]

Yep, looks identical in spec, just a new case and a different crapware infestation. Not too surprising though, Orange are the other half of Everything Everywhere.

I believe that means an 800MHz ARM6. The OSF was good value a year ago but the markets moved on and this is poor, ARM6 is just far too slow. ZTE have lost the plot. Unfortunately these will probably fly off the shelfs and give a lot of punters a very bad impression of Android.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay..

Something else for Apple fanboys to think is rubbish compared to their beloved fashion accessory (they are too stupid to understand a £100 Android phone and a £400 Android phone are not the same thing).

[Anonymous Coward]

The big question is

Does this phone mute itself during calls like all the cool flagship Android phones do nowadays?

Think it's a requirement for Android 4 compatibility.