I recently purchased an orange San Francisco (ZTE Blade) and I have to say it’s a brilliant device for the price.

What really sets this device apart from the competition is it’s the best display i’ve seen on a phone at this price point, it remains clear and crisp and the touch tracking is pretty good.  My only gripe with the screen is it’s a fingerprint magnet.

The SF supports multi-touch including pinch to zoom in the webbrowser aka iphone style which makes browsing on it a lot easier than other android devices.

The Device ships with a orange customised 2.1 Rom, however after a quick visit to Modaco soon sorts that out. They have some nice 2.1 roms or you can opt for the 2.2 ALPHA rom, which apart from a few teething problems is relitively stable.  I prefer to get rid of operator customisations so didn’t even bother trying the stock ROM.

The phone Generally remains fast and  responsive, although I have had a couple of moments where an App appeared to become unresponsive for a moment or two (A good example of this is spotify when it’s syncing offline playlists) and the audio could be louder, however both points can be forgiven given the price point.

If you want a Decent Android Handset but don’t want to sign your life away for the next 2years and don’t want to break the bank then the San Francisco should be given serious consideration, don’t like orange? Not a problem the SF can be unlocked fairly easily.

I had planned to attach some more pictures to this post, but I’ve since discovered I’m really terrible at photography 🙁

Above: ZTE Blade running Launcher Pro – wallpaper