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Orange San Francisco 2 is a new £99 Android phone

If you're going to San Francisco, here's some news that'll put flowers in your hair: the new Android-powered Orange San Francisco 2 budget blower will cost you less than £100.

Orange has officially confirmed the phone and its price after accidentally offering us a glimpse last week. The San Francisco 2 -- or San Francisco II, if you prefer -- is made by ZTE and offers Android smart phone smarts without the usual hefty price tag.

It's a ZTE Crescent, to be precise, with an Orange badge on the front. It's the wallet-friendly follow-up to the best-selling original Orange San Francisco, which is the ZTE Blade with an Orange logo slapped on it.

The San Fran sequel boasts the Android Gingerbread 2.3 operating system, with an 800MHz processor and 512MB of storage inside. Fortunately you can boost that rather meagre memory with a microSD card, up to 16GB. Orange claims 4.5 hours of talkie-chat before you need to charge the battery.

On the outside there's a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen and 5-megapixel camera. You also get GPS, an MP3 player and an FM radio.

Orange has added a handful of its own stuff to the phone. Rubbish tacked-on nonsense nearly ruined the original San Francisco, but some of the Orange-y extras are worth having. They include Signal Boost, which improves your phone signal indoors, and the Orange Wednesdays app for free cinema tickets.

But enough from us -- here's the phone in action.

The Orange San Francisco 2 hits Orange in late November. It'll cost you £99 on pay as you go with a £10 top-up, or it's free on 24-month contracts for £10.50 per month.

Are you tempted by the budget Bay Area blower? Tell us your thoughts about the Orange San Francisco 2 in the comments below, on our Facebook page, or at Google+.

Comments 8

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Gareth Lewis's avatar

Gareth Lewis 17 November, 2011 15:16

I think the original San Francisco was based on the ZTE Blade not the Skate.

anonymous's avatar

anonymous 17 November, 2011 15:50

Yeah The ZTE blade is the Orange San Francisco and the ZTE Skate is the Orange Monte Carlo.

Elliot Bridgewater's avatar

Elliot Bridgewater 17 November, 2011 17:14

The camera (photo and video) on the ZTE Blade/San Francisco was abysmal.

It will be interesting to see if they've improved these on the ZTE Crescent/San Francisco II.

anonymous's avatar

anonymous 18 November, 2011 15:48

and the battery life sucks on the San Fran

anonymous's avatar

anonymous 20 November, 2011 23:43

ZTE blade, getting 3-4 days battery life here using light browsing. Battery life is excellent. Not sure what you were doing / what bloat buggy app you had installed.

Any android phone with a rogue app is going to kill battery. Blade does great if you know what you are doing.

anonymous's avatar

anonymous 3 December, 2011 00:36

If you're getting crappy battery life just get/install SetCPU and set it to ramp right down at night, I get days of battery life like this

Rich Trenholm's avatar

Rich Trenholm 5 December, 2011 12:59

Well spotted folks, we've corrected the Blade / Skate mix-up

anonymous's avatar

anonymous 7 January, 2012 13:37

how can I get this phone,I am in nairobi,Kenya .send me a link of where to buy it online or how to get it here

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