Help Needed! Cheapest HVGA Android phone?

Phibsboro

Hi,

Long story short - I will be teaching a beginner android app development course this semester. I need to get 10 to 20 android phones. Wifi/GPS/Reasonable CPU are required. There is no particular need for them to work on a phone network though it would be ideal if they could be unlocked to any (so the students can try texting/phoning apps with their own sims). But the one thing I would love to get is HVGA, i.e. 480x320. The extra screen real estate over QVGA really helps when you designing apps as a beginner, you are not all the time fighting the constraints of the screen size.

The Samsung Europa on Three is basically the perfect phone for this - only €40 online, unlockable, lovely capacative touchscreen, wifi, gps and can run Angry Birds with no stutter. But its QVGA The problem is that to move up to HVGA seems to raise the price exponentially! The next cheapest I could find is the Samsung Ace at aroung €240.

Is there anything cheaper around? Any advice would be appreciate.

c

Trevor451

How about the orange san francisco?

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/orange-san-francisco-901915/review

It has all the features you want and its something like £100 pounds from the UK (It is sim locked to a network BUT you can unlock it for free)

Phibsboro

Interesting The Blade would be great alright but I am slightly wary of getting it from up north :S If only one of the carriers would take the Blade or Skate here in ROI.

I've ordered a Europa to try it, might just have to do without the extra pixels...