Orange San Francisco user reviews

Noobiedude 17 August 2011

Comment: how do you get the custom roms to upgrade and is up grading it and rooting it illegal because if rootings like jail breaking then it could be illegal as jail breaking is

Paige Stagg 15 August 2011

Good: N/a

Bad: N/a

Comment: good phone, good price.. BUY IT ;)

Leszcz 29 July 2011

Good: Display, Speaker (surprisingly), Custom Stable 2.3.4 Roms, Size, accurate GPS

Bad: Camera is crap, battery life average at best, design

Comment: This phone is unbeatable in its price range, with a screen with a higher pixel density than both galaxy s and htc desire the only real let down was the camera. 600mhz CPU is not fast but you won't get anything faster for this price. Though it could be more overclock-able as my old 528 MHz htc hero could be overclocked to 768mhz while this one struggles to go from 600 to 710.
With lately released custom 2.3.4 roms for it, I'm really surprised how fast it is (I'm talking about upgrading from custom 2.1, not even mentioning stock). It obviously won't handle heavy graphical tasks without any lag but all the menus and basic apps work really smoothly with all animations turned on. Plus the GPS works, and it wouldn't on any rom I tried on my old HTC Hero.

If I had more money I would've bought HTC Desire or Galaxy S, but by buying this one I definitely got my moneys worth.

von dutch 5 July 2011

Good: amazing, high resolution, responsive, capaitive oled touchscreen, decent battery life,sturdy, all this for under £100!

Bad: slightly laggy in intensive tasks, obscurity means it's very hard to find a case for it, i managed to get an exspect tough case though.

Comment: brilliant phone. i wouldn't complain if it was twice the price.

Greenstone1212 30 April 2011

Good: Screen, Android 2.1, Camera and size

Bad: Speed, Accessory availability and Orange Branding!

Comment: I adore this phone but the speed makes it crash frequently. The camera is great in bright situations and with patience. Better than the wildfire by far and the screen is AMAZINGly crisp and clear and the same size as the iPhone! the thickness in my opinion is just right. The bad thing is that it crashes a lot and that when you are looking for a case or screen protector you are going to have to go to Ebay because you wont find anything in the store except universal ones which you cut to size!

Chantelle Lisseman 19 April 2011

Good: It's cheap, light and small so you can take it everywhere :)

Bad: It doesn't tell you how to send songs. in booklet it says you have to highlight song and apparently an options bar comes up saying send this song via bluetooth which is s load of crap cuz i have tried it and it doesnt work

Comment: I would advise people who want to buy it, not to buy it as it:
- Freezes alot when your on the internet
- it likes to reboot itself quite alot
- You can't send music via bluetooth
- there are certain song files which you cannot play as the phone doesn't support those files
- you can only play MP3 songs
- it is a resistive touchscreen which is bad as sometimes it goes on to something you dont want it too
- when your trying to end a call the screens backlight seems to always fade so you cant get onto screen to end call
- it sometimes likes to turn itself off
- you can only access internet either when you have credit or if you are connected to your WI-FI router at home
- signal strengh is always bad. never get a good signal
-sometimes it doesn't let you unlock the phone so it takes ages to get use too
- chips really easily if dropped on floor
- cameras rubbish the colour isnt bright enough
- android keyboars takes ages to get used to as when your trying to text someone it decides to click on a different letter to the one you choose
- android keyboard freezes quite alot whilst typing
- sometimes sends blank messages for no reaason

SO I WOULD ADVISE PEOPLE NOT TO BUY THE ORANGE SAQN FRANCISCO!!! AND IF ANYONE KNOWS HOW TO BLUETOOTH MUSIC ON THE SAN FRANCISCO THAN EMAIL ME BACK !! :)

Alex Fudio 18 April 2011

Good: cheap, light, small enough, ergononic

Bad: orange crapware, no flash, some random applications are not available, low headphone volume, bluetooth music stream jumps a lot

Comment: i cannot recommend this phone enough, as for £89 it is unbeatable. actually it is unbeatable but only once you replaced the orange crap-ware with a custom mod. 2.2 stable release are out (and 2.3 stable will be out soon at the time of this review. )
the phone is lovely to work with, battery lasts about 24 hours of average use.
on the bad side:
no flash
headphone volume is not very loud (the internal speaker is thou, great for navigation)
bluetooth music streaming is not great (the sound jumps a lot)
no camera flash
some random applications (like firefox) are not available on the market for this handset..

i've been debating whether i want to buy a nexus s or a desire HD. I bought this handset as a stepping stone, to see whether i would like android over IOS.. but i felt in love with this.. given its few shortcomings i can't bring myself to justify the extra hundreds of £ for those phones.
not only that. the size, the shape, the weight make this phone the perfect handset to carry around or even run with. and if it breaks? just get a new one..

nergelag 7 April 2011

Good: Just about everything

Bad: Haven't found anything yet

Comment: I can't understand the negative comments. First of all battery life - I charged the phone to full on Sunday night. I've done a reasonable amount of browsing and my son has used it for Angy Birds for a good 2 hours. The rest of the time its been on standby, with Wifi switched on. The battery was down to about 20% by the end of the day on Thursday. Other people might be fussier, but I don't see this as low battery life. Secondly what it does. This is my first smartphone, so I might be easily impressed, but I'm absolutely stunned with this phone and what it can do for less than a hundred quid. It seems fast and capable, the screen is crisp and clear and of course there is a world of fun to be had with the endless apps in the Android marketplace. I don't find the Orange branding very offensive, although as others have said its easy to remove. In summary if you want a cheap, capable smartphone with a big screen get this one.

Pr1964 21 March 2011

Good: Amazing for £99 android 2.2

Bad: Battery life, camera, original orange rom and limited processor power.

Comment: As a budget android phone it's unbeatable.
Speaker is better than the htc desire yes the desire!
Screen LCD is almost as good as the desire far better than the wildfire.

But it has shortcomings due to the processor ie iplayer will not run.

The battery life is also poor.

But as an entry level android phone early in 2011 it's unbeatable.

Can also be unlocked for free see monaco.

Cideway 15 March 2011

Good: Price

Bad: Original Orange bloatware

Comment: At less the 100 pounds this in my opinion is one of the best bang for buck smart phones out there. The original Orange installation with Android 2.1 really limits this phone with only 150mb of internal storage really limits this phone. Once I upgraded it to a custom 2.2 mod this phone really came into its own, removing all the orange rubbish really sped the phone up and improved the reliability, and allowed more apps to be installed with Apps2SD. All in all i cannot recommend this phone enough, though I will qualify that be saying you really need to install a custom ROM, wither do it yourself or get a techy friend to do it.