Orange San Diego review

INTEL ASIDE

Moving away from the processor, the Orange San Diego has pretty impressive specifications given its quite reasonable pricing. The 4.0in display has an unusual 600×1,024 resolution. That’s quite a bit higher than the 480×800 displays seen on the more basic new smartphones, and a touch above the common 540×960 resolution of more expensive OLED models (such as the Motorola RAZR and HTC One S). Top-end models now use 720×1,280 displays, but then the San Diego is a lot cheaper than any of those handsets.

Pictures look sharp thanks to a pixels-per-inch score of 297, that’s only just shy of the HTC One X at 312 and the Apple iPhone 4S at 326. In more practical terms the resolution means you can browse the BBC News desktop homepage in landscape mode and still read the headlines and snippets. Resolution aside, the screen itself is nothing special, with average brightness, contrast and colour accuracy.

The handset has two cameras built in. The front one is a basic example for video chat, but the rear has an impressive eight-megapixel sensor and a super-fast burst mode. The latter is capable of taking up to 10 pictures at up to 15fps – though you can set the speed to suit your needs as at this rate just get multiple images where your subject has blinked. It’s an impressive feat, and outdoes even its more expensive rivals in raw speed.

A resized pixel-to-pixel shot from the San Diego’s camera, with poor detail and focus issues – click to enlarge

The resized shot shows the slight diorama effect – though snaps of people looked fine – click to enlarge

Image quality overall isn’t as good though. Zooming into our test shots showed very heavy sharpening and noise reduction at play, resulting in unnatural-looking, low-detail results. There were also some focus problems, leaving some of pictures looking like dioramas, with varying focus across the frame even in wide landscape shots. It’s not a terrible smartphone camera, but it’s a step behind the best.

The handset is compact for its screen size, at 123x63x10mm and lightweight as well at just 117g. Other features include the now standard micro HDMI port for video output, the camera will also shoot video at 1080p, and NFC for cardless transactions, though there’s no obvious use for this as of yet.