T-Mobile Vivacity

Editor's Review of the Vivacity

The T-Mobile Vivacity is the network's first bash at the 'high-end' Android market, and a fuchsia-branded version of the Orange San Francisco 2. Can the handset prove as popular as its Everything Everywhere partner's debut San Francisco handset, or is its overall performance reflected in that budget price-tag?

Design & Build

If you're after a Vivacity you're probably not in the market for an iPhone, but you'll have to at first get over the fact that it looks like an iDevice. At 115 x 58 x 10.5mm its not quite as skinny as its more-expensive rival, but it sports a similar-looking glossy casing, and its plastic chassis makes it nice and compact.

Within the casing you'll find a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen, with a not-to-be-snuffed at WVGA 480 x 800 pixel resolution. Of course, the screen is by no means as impressive as the Super AMOLED effort on the Samsung Galaxy S2, but - of course - you get what you pay for, and its proved fairly bright with decent visibility. As per, this screen comes paired with the usual array of Android buttons (Menu, Home, Back, Search), which proved nice and responsive throughout our testing.

Under the hood of the ZTE-made handset, you'll find a reasonable 800MHz single-core processor, the same as found on the San Francisco 2. This managed to surprise us with its snappy responsiveness and fast web browsing, although the phone struggled to play some games; Angry Birds, for example.

OS & Interface

On the software front, the T-Mobile Vivacity runs Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread, and you're unlikely to see an update to the next version, Ice Cream Sandwich. However, what more can you expect from a 100 pound phone? Thankfully, T-Mobile have left the phone sporting a Vanilla Android experience, besides a unobtrusive My Account application. This is excellent for new users of Google's mobile software, who can avoid the added confusion of an often over-complicated custom interface.

Multimedia & Storage

You may be expecting a 2, at a push 3 megapixel camera on the Vivacity, but you'll be pleased to hear it touts a 5 megapixel rear-facing shooter, complete with LED flash and video smarts. Although we were disappointed by the lack of dedicated camera key, the phone manages to capture good-quality photos in decent light surrounds, but quality drops with the snapper is used with the onboard flash. Luckily, this also comes paired with a front-facing camera, which means you can take advantage of Gingerbreads video call support.

It may be OK at recording video, but the phone struggled with playing back high-quality footage. We found video juddery and slow - no doubt thanks to the 800MHz chipset - although music playback was pretty impressive.

Storage-wise, the phone comes equipped with a measly 512MB of internal memory - which means you'll struggle to use this as your every-day music player. However, T-Mobile include a 2GB microSD card in the box, and the phone can hold up to 32GB of storage in total.

Everything Else

Connectivity on the Vivacity is pretty impressive. The phone may sport a budget price tag, but you'll find both 3G and WiFi connectivity onboard, which make for an all-round smooth browsing experience. Pages looked great on the 3.5-inch screen, although the handset sometimes struggled with the most basic of multitouch gestures.

This excellent connectivity comes paired with an equally-good battery, weighing in at a more-than-ample 1500mAh. We found the phone lasted almost a complete day before it needed more juice, although we'd recommend charging the handset overnight.

Conclusion

Overall, we were pretty impressed with the T-Mobile Vivacity. For 100 quid you'll struggle to find another phone with a 5MP camera and capacitive touchscreen, and it's a fantastic phone for smartphone newbies. However, if you're willing to spend more we'd recommend checking out the Samsung Galaxy Ace or HTC Desire S, which offer-up an all-round more responsive experience.