The Orange San Diego hits the shops on 6 June. The phone previously known as the Santa Clara may sound like a cheap own brand blower, but it's actually the first Intel-powered smart phone -- which has one major drawback.
The Orange San Diego is interesting for phone fans because it's not just another cheap and cheerful own brand phone from Orange, like the affordable Orange San Francisco 2. It's Intel's first foray into phones -- and the major drawback?
The Atom x86 chip isn't compatible with all Android apps. Intel told me that the phone would work with roughly 70 per cent of Android apps -- let's hope it's not the good 30 per cent or so that's affected.
But it does pack one other high-end feature that hasn't made it into many phones yet: HSPA+. It's the fastest version of 3G currently available, and only a handful of phones support it. That includes the Nokia Lumia 900 and iPad, and now the San Diego.
Orange says it has upgraded its network to offer faster Internet speeds already. In theory, you should be able to get up to 21Mbps, but in practise you'll only get a fraction of that speed. Orange told me you won't notice a difference in browsing, but it should speed up streaming and downloading and improve latency in gaming.
Along with T-Mobile, Orange is planning to boost mobile data speeds by launching LTE -- also known as 4G -- by the end of the year.
The San Diego hits the beach next Wednesday, 6 June. It'll set you back £200 on pay as you go, which also gets you 250MB of data each month for the first year. If you sign up to a two year contract costing £15.50 per month then the phone is free. If you're an existing Orange customer switching to the San Diego, you'll get extra minutes and texts thrown in too.
Are you tempted by the Orange San Diego? Are you put off by the fact that it doesn't support all Android apps? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.
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Comments 7
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anonymous 31 May, 2012 23:24
"Two month contract"?
I think that's a mistakr you made :)
anonymous 31 May, 2012 23:35
"intel told me" ..... lol
anonymous 31 May, 2012 23:37
is anyone on orange these days?
anonymous 1 June, 2012 07:30
How do the Apps run? on a processor emulator? because existing Apps are compiled for ARM so they won't just run. Emulators are slow, buggy and very problematic. I'd look carefully into this issue before going anywhere near an Intel phone. Also - where are the real consumer stats on battery life? I doubt Intel has closed the gap on ARM with its 1st device.
anonymous 1 June, 2012 07:35
I will probably wait to see what apps don't work. I would only want it for Skype, facebook,twitter,spotify and a few games.
Rich Trenholm 1 June, 2012 08:48
Well spotted, that should have course read two-year contract. Fixed now
_mdwh_ 19 July, 2012 01:02
Applications are not "compiled for ARM so they won't just run". Android applications use a virtual machine (similar to Java), so they run on any CPU architecture, without any performance penalty. The 30% or whatever that won't run is only because some Android software has native code that is compiled specifically for ARM, but this certainly isn't the norm (personally I'm surprised it's as high as 30%, as for most cases there's no need to use native code).