Orange Monte Carlo review

When you open the Orange App Shop it turns off your Wi-Fi connection automatically, forcing you to use your data allowance to browse its apps – and to increase the chance you’ll use it, Orange has included three separate apps that point to it: the App Shop app itself, plus Games and Ringtones apps. Our advice is to leave it well alone, as Android’s Market has far more choice and variety. The Monte Carlo will let you use Orange’s Signal Boost technology, though, which helps if you get bad reception where you live by re-directing signals over your own Wi-Fi connection.

The Monte Carlo’s big screen is its main draw, but it does hide some inadequacies. First of all, app storage space is limited to 162MB, so even if you move as many apps as possible to the SD card, you will run out of space quite quickly. Secondly, battery life is poor, lasting only 15 hours in our light-usage test, so you’ll need to make sure you charge often. Lastly, we weren’t impressed by the camera; while snaps are OK for Facebook, videos are noisy and full of compression artefacts.

Still, at this price you can’t really complain: although the cheapest 18-month contract we could find is £25 per month, it’s a better idea to buy the Monte Carlo for £150 on prepay. You can even buy it SIM-free: search for “ZTE Skate” (the original manufacturer’s name) and you can find it for £216 with a stock Android installation – making an excellent budget smartphone without any Orange branding.