Orange Monte Carlo review

The Orange Monte Carlo is supplied with a 1400mAh battery. This might seem a bit underpowered for driving such a large screen, but the 800MHz processor is less of a drain than faster variants are, and we found the battery surprisingly robust.

For the record, Orange says the battery makes the Orange Monte Carlo good for up to 288 hours on standby and five hours of talk time.

We managed to get a day of use out of it, which we don't always do – it's pretty much bang in the 'morning to night' smartphone range 95% of the market is offering us, so be warned if you're heading off-piste... you'll need a charger.

And we think if you're light with the GPS, Wi-Fi, 3G web browsing and regular processes such as email collection you should get a day and a half between charges. That's quite good going.

Connectivity is plentiful, with HSDPA, Wi-Fi and GPS all here, as well as Bluetooth. We've also mentioned the MediaShare media server, which enables you to listen to music and look at videos and images stored elsewhere over your Wi-Fi network.