Orange San Francisco phone – any good?

Are these phones any good as a budget Android phone or a complete POS?

My Nokia X6 is gradually dying after just 6 months and looking to replace it with a internet capable phone before i can upgrade.

Short answer, yes.

They’re a budget phone, but in terms of ‘bang for your buck’ they’re fairly unbeatable at the moment. For reference, they’re better than the Wildfire, and cheaper.

Thanks Cougar. That’s good to know as i was looking at the Wildfire but was put off by reports of freezing/crashing.

Do you have any experience of the battery life on the San Fran? Number of reviews say a day at most, from new.

To be honest, if you use any smart phone a lot, you get a days useage.

I get a couple, sometime 3 if Im not using mine much and have screen brightness down to low.

but for a cheapo phone, its fantastic. Great screen, capacitive screen, lots of memory, easilly unlocked to a network that won’t rape you for data charges.

Fantastic for the cash, you’d need to seriously spend £300 to get something significantly better. Ownly real shortcomings are a poor 3.2m camera no flash really.

Thanks Jujuuk68. Another negative i have read is the installed Orange apps slow it right down – is that the case?

My son bought one a fortnight ago and is massively impressed by it. He thinks it’s a bargain – smart phone with a very responsive screen and was only £99. I think he’s on the Dolphin pay-as-you-go scheme that gives him free internet for a tenner top up a month.

The first few days he had it the battery ran down in the day but that was because he spent all day playing games on it.

Watch out there, Kunstler, that pay-as-you-go Dolphin package seems like a good deal but is limited to the utterly ridiculous monthly download limit of 100mb. I can imagine that that’s quite an easy limit to break wide open!

San franciscos are great for the money. Don’t use the obvious orange homescreen but swich to the standard android one that’s available, that improves the speed considerably. This has been typed with one, thus the shoddy punctuation. Very much recommended. There are plenty of bits of information on the internet about this phone ranging from general tips to rooting the phone.

They have now stopped using Amoled screens which is a shame, but still good for the money.

will it work at altitude or in deep snow?, you know what it’s like in our part of the world!

Good point RD. Maybe should look for something more suitable for extreme conditions……

I don’t think he was aware of that limitation dandelionandmurdoch. It is a pitiful amount of bandwidth. He’ll have to make sure he connects to wifi where he can.

Here ya go, boys:

http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/Samsung-b2710%5D

Video (in Russian) of dudes driving over it in the snow, and more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ5UUcO7xiU%5D

Fave bit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WJ5UUcO7xiU#t=332s%5D

Tough enough? If only it had wifi it would be the best phone ever but then I guess if you’re using it in situations where you need it to be rugged, that area is probably not covered by a Starbuck’s hotspot…

Was just about to get one, but this thread has me pondering the San Francisco now! Any current owners know if it has GPS?

Any input from the daytime forum dwellers?

Apparently it has GPS