Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

After struggling with the N900 for close a Year i bought now the Orange San Francisco Android Mobile. This Mobile Phone costs in UK 99 Pound and its really Amazing. The Specs are close to the N900 (600mhz Processor) but it does have a 400x800 Super AMOLED Screen with a amazing Touch feeling.

So after Spending over 600 Euro for the N900 i spended now around 150 Euro for this and finally iam Happy at all. Its like i hoped the N900 would be. Maybe somebody else have this Device too? I would like to hear your opinions.

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

Splitter!!

Can I have your old N900 then?

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

I've going to be getting the same phone on orange once it comes out in white - but i'll still be keeping my N900 (san francisco as a secondary device).

The blade is no where near as good as the N900 - it might be 600Mhz, but the processor in the N900 is MUCH MUCH better (N900 also has a WAY better dedicated GPU!), the camera in the N900 is better, there's no TV-out on blade, no infrared. no h/w keyboard, single rubbishy speaker (I mean it's crap!) and no FM transmitter.

On the bog standard orange rom it's stupidly slooooowwwwww. Need to flash it to rom from modaco to make it work.

And in terms of software the N900 obviously trumps it.

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

Nice little phone. Got one for the wife to replace her noddy Nokia 5230 with the dodgy earpiece (same issue as the 5800).

Flashed with a non-Orange ROM from the usual place. Very nice piece of kit (choose wisely as wifi support is a bit iffy).

Avoided Froyo for the moment until I can be assured that it's more stable. Right now there is little point as (from a purely subjective point of view) the only benefit would be the addition of Flash10.1 - dead in the water given this is ARMv6.

Battery life is relatively shite at 1 day, but there again, this is the way of the smartphone.

Can be overclocked, but renders it fairly unstable. As a kick-about phone though - worth splashing out 100 notes though.

Edit:

FTR, wouldn't dream of replacing my N900 with this. The Maemo beast is just far too open and accessible to go back to something constrained in this manner. I'll admit, it takes a certain breed of person to want to use the N900, but in the right hands, it's the perfect device.

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

Processor speed means nothing.

The CPU in the Blade is an ARM11 processor, I believe. Also, N900 GPU destroys it.

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

I got one too. Saunalahti, an Operator in Finland practically gave them away for free.

Now my N900 is idling on the table unused....

Android 2.1 (just put 2.2 on it) feels incredibly smooth.

Nokia, I am disappoint.

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

ZTE Blade has the best price/quality/BangForBuck ratio on the smartphone market at the moment. Almost impossible to get in Finland. Sold out everywhere. It's also a good peak at what Android hardware ecosystem will look in 12-18 months from now. Chinese manufacturers like ZTE, Huawei and G5 are going to storm that market.

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

There's quite a few ZTE Blades on the second hand market (huuto.net). Many probably got the Saunalahti deal just for the halfpriced unlimited 3G deal,and are ditching the phone they got for free.

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

I have been using Nokia E50 (company phone) and N810 combo for a coouple of years. My battery died and I went to Verkkokauppa.com to buy a replacement battery. Unluckily I got a Monday piece and I had to return it. Then I just decided to check out the phone section and ended up getting the Blade with Sonera contract (I'm using company's SIM anyway).

So far the ZTE Blade has been absolutely brilliant. It beats the E50 and N810 combo every way except the construction is weaker in Blade (what did you except for that price?). After more than 10 years of Nokias I bought something else. And probably won't buy another Nokia in near future for the same reasons that you probably have heard here many times...

But MeeGo still interests me and it would be fun to see MeeGo in ZTE Blade :)

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

Got one for the wife after she dropped her previous phone down the loo. Got an unlock code for free through android.modaco.com.

Great phone, especially considering the price. Battery life is about a day but that seems about average for android phones.

I don't think the wife would at all interested in running Qt 4.7.1 examples, scp-ing to her phone or running vi from a terminal for a laugh, so I consider the phones to be aimed at different people :)

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

I just ordered one of these. Because it's cheap, and my N900 is broken.

I really did pick it for the pixel per dollar count, but not until I found that it has unofficial Gingerbread support. I just am not willing to pay £400 for an Android phone at this time, especially considering how much these £100-150 will get you.

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

The zte skate would be cool if @ the same price of zte blade. 805 MHz processor probably Cortex A8, Gingerbread, 4.3 Capacitive touchescreen...

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

Mmm. I've been using it for a few days, and upgraded it to CM7 Gingerbread 2.3.3. I really miss the N900 task switcher/real multitasking, I really miss the stylus and I really miss the qwerty. While I can live with the onscreen keyboard, switching drives me crazy. I am going to look into task switcher apps.

There are other things that seems to be better, like a lower chance of deleting/moving shortcuts and widgets when an non-screenlocked phone is in the pocket, a more finished feeling in the menus, etc. Oh, and the price. I think it's a lot of phone for the price.

At first I thought the ZTE was too light to feel sturdy, but I quickly got used to that. I just wish they hadn't put the chrome details at the sides.

Google Goggles seems cool.

Re: Zte Blade aka Orange San Francisco
 

I bought one of these as a development phone and have flashed the Modaco FroYo ROM to it. It was only ever meant to be a bog standard Android device just sufficient for testing on but I have been playing around with it for a week and I must say I'm quite stunned.

I realise the N900 has a better CPU and GPU chipset and various other bits that this doesn't have, but frankly I'd actually consider switching to it having used it! The OS is smooth, the screen is responsive at virtually all times (compared to an N900 overclocked to 850MHz), it looks nice too. The range of meaningful applications you can get from the Android Market and the third party app store is immense and "fart-apps" aside the sheer weight and range of choice truly outweighs that available for the N900.

I am a developer, I do like to fiddle with the phone and make it do hacky things and so on and so forth, but frankly and to my great surprise this phone has blown my N900 clean out of the water for me.

For £90 over the ridiculous £600 that I paid for the N900 frankly there is no contest. It may not been so hackable but it sure works a whole lot better than any Nokia that I've ever had in the 15 years that I've been a Nokia user.