There is a thread talking about unlocking this but i thought it deserved its own one.
The ZTE Blade or the Orange San francisco is about the cheapest (decent) android phone you can buy costing about £99 PAYG. The surprising thing although it defently a budget priced phone, the spec is actually quite good, the 3.5" Amoled capacitive screen being the main selling point. In a nutshell its only downfall its poor camera (It has no flash and it's not great other than that either) - See a full review
here
So I got mine there at the weekend, its my first Android and I have to say I love it!
Buying the phone: The phone is sold exclusively by Orange in the UK and is currently not being sold by any Irish Carriers. So your only option for buying the phone is knowing someone in the UK or going to the North. As its a PAYG you can basically just walk into the shop and pick it up. They cost £99 plus a mandatory £10 top up. Orange offer a Student Discount of 10%. They are also on ebay but are priced around €170 or so.
Unlocking the phone: A Free Unlock code can be got
here. Put your IMEI in, select ZTE, leave the default model as ZTE BLUEBELT
Thanks to slowlydownwards for the link!
Protecting the phone: There isnt actually any dedicated screen protectors or cases for the San Fran, but fear not. Nokia E71 cases fit very well, but will require a some small modification for the usb port and the camera is slightly blocked. Screen protectors for the Samsung i900 Omina area perfect fit.
Modding the Phone (probably not the right phrase) One the first things I did with mine is installed a custom rom to get rid of the Orange bloatware. Here are the steps I followed.
First thing i did was
install the USB drivers
Next thing I did was install the
ClockworkMod
And finally installed the
r4 custom rom by modaco
at this stage you could alternatively install
Froyo Performance Improvements: Installing "Launcher Pro" (DL form market) made a huge difference to the smoothness of the whole experience.
I also upped my VM heap size to 32MB, apparently its better for those hungry hungry apps. Tool can be got
here Other Tips: SIP applications seem to have an issue with using the earpiece speaker (Fring, Linphone and Sipdroid all suffered the same issue, sound coming form loud speaker), but i found a patched version of sipdroid that works as it should. Link
here or try this:
Some of the bad things: Dont have a lot to complain about, but i'm a bit disappointed with game performance. Angry birds runs much smoother on my 2g ipod touch.
If anyone has anything to ask about feel free and I'll do my best to answer.
