Three have just released an Android handset called the ZTE Racer at a quite staggering price of around £100 on Pay-Go. For the money, it seems that you get a phone with HSDPA (obviously, since it's Three), A-GPS and various other bells and whistles, and it's Android so you get Google integration and plenty of apps to download and install.

It seems a pretty good deal - but it also seems rather too good to be true. The only time I've previously heard of ZTE has been in terms of their very cheap Three pay-as-you-go phones which are basically junk, by all accounts. I can only imagine that many, many corners have been cut with this device to pack as many features as it does into the price.

Has anyone been brave enough to be an early adopter of one of these and can tell me what it's really like to use? And does it support 3's free Skype service - there's no mention of it on their website.

Perhaps it's because I am used to more expensive phones, but from looking at a review, the somewhat low-res screen and resistive touchscreen would steer me away.

Three seem to be selling a (refurbished) HTC Hero for £160 - and it too now runs Android 2.1 (if/when 3 make it available to their phones). I believe that's a much better phone.

The low-res screen was my biggest misgiving, too. At present I'm using a fairly basic Nokia, and pushing it to its limit by trying to use push email and Skype on the thing.

With Android being a general operating system which runs on all sorts of phones, would having a 320x240 screen be akin to setting your Windows screen resolution to something like 800x600, having to constantly scroll?

There's certainly a lot less screen real estate. Perhaps it's just the reviewers and the cameras they use, but text appears to be incredibly blocky/granular, as if they aren't using a particularly good 320x240 screen.

I would personally look for something better if the budget can stretch.

Hot on the heels of this post comes a CNET review of the ZTE Racer. It's almost as if I planned this: http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-pho...view-50000108/

I'm sure the camera they've taken the pic with isn't great, but it unflatteringly exposes the screen for what it is - a cheap, low-res QVGA thing that's going to turn no heads.

However, I'm encouraged by the fact that they've mentioned the call quality - my biggest complaint about my existing phone (garbled, whooshy speech) is specifically addressed in the review:


That, to me, is more important than a million pretty HD pixels that would never be used for anything more taxing than reading emails. So I'm still leaning towards getting it, but waiting for more reviews (and preferably real-world users' views) before doing so.

Your pretty much fine with this resolution on a Android phone. If you are coming from a fancy phone then you may want to think twice. I had a go of one this afternoon and didnt see any issue with the screen size. Its not as responsive as the more expensive models, but for me thats not a massive issue, unless you have actually used something that is actually better.

What about T-mobile pulse??? £150 or £99 if you catch on to one of t-mobiles one day only deals.

My partner got one when the one day deal of £99 was on, it has a capacitive screen and i upgraded it to the 2.1 OS via the t-mobile hungary site i think it was. Not a load of memory for apps after the update, but there a plenty of people working on the apps2sd thing??? and also the android dev wizards are working on 2.2 (unofficial)

It aint a bad phone plus you get 6 month internet with it for free on pay as you go.

The only thing i would say about it is that is slows down a bit every now and again, you cant work it like my htc desire, but saying that i have had the two phones side by side and both phones where exactly the same speed for things like flixster, shazam, google maps.

I think for the price its decent, plus there are supposed to be plenty of ways to unlock it for nothing if t-mobile is not for you.

Also dont even look at the t-mobile pulse MINI, it looks way cheaper than the standard pulse, two t-mobile stores lied through there teeth saying that the PULSE was a discontinued product and that the mini had replaced it, so ignored them as they where literally trying to shove the mini down our throats and ordered the PULSE online, non in stock after placing order so rang t-mobile, they said that they had no intentions of discontinuing the PULSE as they have trouble keeping up with demand, hence out of stock but that they where getting a shipment within a week sure enough phone came a week later.

I would say the pulse is a better phone than the ZTE racer.