Low-budget mobile phones appearing on retailers’ shelves is pretty common this time of year. Post-Christmas but pre-Mobile World Congress seems almost a lag time in the mobile phone industry as manufacturers save their flagship models, if not introduced during the CES in January, for the MWC in late February.

Whilst the Orange San Francisco 2 is, indeed, an inexpensive mobile phone, there is very little “cheap” about what it can do.

By the way, the Orange San Francisco II is also known as the ZTE Crescent. Thought you might like to know that, just in case.

Overview

If you are familiar with the original San Francisco smartphone, the specifications and features below may not knock your socks off: A few updates and expansion highlight the differences, but when the base model was so good, little short of an earthquake will impress you.

For those of you not familiar with the original SF mobile phone, take a look at the new, updated model that you can find for £99.99 on PayGo plans or £10.50 on a two-year contract.

Both the technology and the price of the Orange San Francisco 2 mobile phone compare with the HTC Wildfire, the Huawei Blaze, the Motorola Atrix 2 and a few others.

Specifications

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Dimensions: 117 x 58.5 x 10.6 mm / 120 g
Display: 3.5 inches / TFT capacitive touchscreen / 480 x 800 pixels
Operating System: Android 2.3 Gingerbread
Speed: 800 MHz
Memory: 512 MB / 512 MB internal
Battery: Talk: up to 4.5 hours / Standby: up to 240 hours.
Camera: Rear: 5 MP, / 2592 х 1944 pixels / autofocus / LED Flash. / Video: VGA. / Front: yes, VGA.
Connectivity: 2G: GSM 900, 1800, 1900 / 3G: HSDPA 900, 1900, 2100 / Data: WiFi: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, WiFi hotspot / GRPS / EDGE / HSDPA / HSUPA

Features: Stereo FM with RDS. GPS with A-GPS Support. MP4 / H.264 / H.263 audio player; MP3 / WAV / eAAC+ audio player. Google package. YouTube, Picasa, Google Talk. SNS integration.

Additional comments: Only two WiFi bands, but the WiFi hotspot capability makes up for it.

Overall opinion: Not too shabby for a cheap mobile phone!