The T-Mobile Vivacity is a new Android smart phone on sale today for under a hundred pounds. It's the same £99 price tag as the Orange San Francisco 2 -- and the similarities don't end there.
The Vivacity sports a 3.5-inch touchscreen and a 5-megapixel camera. It runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread software, so you can customise the phone to your heart's content, adding your own shortcuts and widgets to the home screen and adding all sorts of apps too.
It stores stuff on a microSD card, so you can have up to 32GB of movies, music and photos on your phone.
While it's got the T-Mobile logo on the front, the Vivacity is built by phone-makers ZTE. And while it's got a slightly different design on the outside, inside it's identical to the San Francisco 2. In a way these phones are a metaphor for the relationship between the two networks. On the surface they're separate, but behind the scenes they're the same company, which is rather misleadingly called Everything Everywhere.
If you ask us, the San Francisco is the sleeker-looking of the two, but maybe you prefer the Vivacity's ropey iPhone impression.
The T-Mobile Vivacity is available free on a 24-month contract for just £10 per month, or for £100 on pay as you go. The Vivacity comes in vivacious black or white, and it's available from T-Mobile shops and direct from the network from today.
Are you tempted by the Vivacity or San Francisco budget blowers, or is it better to spend a few extra quid for a more powerful Android phone? Tell us your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.
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Comments 15
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anonymous 25 November, 2011 13:27
Your so so wrong about these being the same phone underneath..
Orange has a 800mhz CPU whilst T-mobile has just 6000mhz...
Orange screen is WGVA (480 x 800 pixels) T-mobile is just QVGA (320×240)..
I could list more differences, but I'm sure you get the drift by now :)
anonymous 25 November, 2011 13:28
Opps i meant...
Orange has a 800mhz CPU whilst T-mobile has just 600mhz...
Sorry for the typo
anonymous 25 November, 2011 14:14
Wrong Anon, the T-Mobile Vivacity does indeed have a 480 x 800 display...
http://www.gsmarena.com/t_mobile_vivacity-4347.php
List more differences? I doubt you could.
Rich Trenholm 25 November, 2011 14:18
Thanks for your feedback, anonymous, but T-Mobile themselves told us "The T-Mobile Vivacity manufacturer is ZTE. While the internal build is the same as the San Francisco II, the external design is different. It offers customers a beautifully designed, great value smartphone"
anonymous 25 November, 2011 17:33
Hi, this is Anonymous#1
To anon#2 i wouldn't trust gsmarena.com with what they say as they have even got the depth of the phone wrong (they say it's 10.5mm - whilst on the t-mobile site it says its 11mm) and GsmArena claim the Vivacty is Quad band, when it is infact Tri band
You wanted to to name another difference? well here goes: the battery life, on the orange website it claims the SFII has:
Talk time:
4.5 hours
Standby time:
10 days
And the T-Mobile site says the vivacity has:
Talk time:
4 hr
Standby time:
200 hr (or 8.3 days)
Only a small difference i know, by a difference all the same.
Rich, thanks for the reply.
I am however surprised at what T-Mobile told you, as they told me (several times) that the screen is a QVGA with a resolution of 320×240. Although (if you could), I'd love you to be able to confirm that it is indeed a WVGA with a res of 480 x 800.
It's also well know that the San Fransisco II has a 800mhz processor and T-Mobile have confirmed that the Vivacity has a 600mhz
Also it's quite well known that the San Fransisco II is a ZTE Crescent re-branded..
And the Vivacity is a ZTE Score, again, re-branded.
Is this not correct ?
I'm certainly NOT trying to cause an argument here, I'm just basing my information on what T-Mobile & Orange themselves have told me and I've had several conversations with them both.
Any concrete proof regarding specs (either way) would be greatly received.
Regards
Russ AKA Anon
anonymous 25 November, 2011 18:09
*UPDATE*
It appears that the specs i got for the Vivacity were the original specs (which the support staff were STILL using as of yesterday - they got the new specs today) but since Orange revealed the San Fransisco II, T-Mobile had a re-think and changed the Vivacity's specs to compete with the SFII in the low-end Android market place.
Seams that is the end of the Saga...
Regards
anonymous 25 November, 2011 22:23
From the device:
Android 2.3.5 GRJ22
Device: T-Mobile Vivacity
Product: P736E
Board: blade2
Brand: ZTE
CPU: ARMv6-compatible processor rev 5 (v6l)
Max freq.: 800 MHz
Min freq.: 122.88
Cores: 1
Adreno 200 GPU
Also:
Front facing camera as well as camera at rear
source: http://android.modaco.com/topic/348955-t-mobile-vivacity-is-a-repainted-osf2/page__view__findpost__p__1851343
Rich Trenholm 27 November, 2011 09:35
Glad we got that sorted out! Look out for our review of the Vivacity coming soon
anonymous 27 November, 2011 14:23
Thanks Rich, Looking forward to it :
Regards
anonymous 28 November, 2011 03:35
looks cheap & nasty !!
anonymous 28 November, 2011 19:38
Looks like you get a search button unlike the Orange one.
One really important question - does the T-Mobile version come with the same or equivalent bloatware like the Orange version?
anonymous 29 November, 2011 17:00
The T-Mobile Vivacity has far less bloatware then the Orange SF/SFII.
TomJ 30 November, 2011 00:19
This looks really plain, the design is boring. Should've made it look like the Google G1, and I'd buy it.
Plus when people complain about orange apps, you just delete them, it's not hard.
anonymous 1 December, 2011 19:22
Unless you're 15 or a woman, since when has looking "boring" been a good reason NOT to buy a phone? Do people ACTUALLY put what a phone looks like before what it DOES? Morons! Anyway, it looks like an Iphone 4 and nobody seems to call THEM boring looking.
anonymous 4 January, 2012 10:49
The vivacity is ruined by the t mobile logo
Prefer the monte Carlo myself