TechRadar Verdict
A nice try, but this would be a much better phone if it cost £50 more, which isn't too much more to save.
Pros
- +
Budget phone
- +
Free sat nav
- +
3.5mm headphone jack
- +
Android 2.1
- +
6 months free internet
Cons
- -
Sluggish performance
- -
Low-res screen
- -
Juddery internet
- -
Constant crashing
- -
Slow to wake from sleep
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The problem with all this cool new stuff on mobile phones is that the cost of actually having one keeps going up - £400 is a reasonably low price for a current Android device.
That's where the T-Mobile Pulse Mini steps in - offering a huge swathe of high end tech for a penny under £100.
Android 2.1, GPS, Wi-Fi, 3.5mm headphone jack, 3.2MP camera with Flash, push email - the list goes on, making it a much better phone on paper than its peers, like the INQ Chat 3G or the Samsung Genio Slide.
The Pulse Mini itself isn't too much to look at, as you'd expect from a phone coming in at this price point - not only is it fairly small, it feels pretty plasticky in the hand - solid, but you can feel the budget production from the manufacturer, Huawei.
The screen is also pretty low rent too - we're talking a 2.8-inch display with resistive touch technology on top.
It's a far cry from the capacitive gloss of the HTC Desire or iPhone 3GS, but again, this isn't a phone to compete with those, it's a budget phone that attempts to outdo its price point.
The front of the phone is pretty sparse, as there's only a circular navigational key with a central 'Enter' button, and the call/terminate keys too.
You can configure the latter to push the phone into sleep mode and head back to the home screen - a nice touch and indicative of what can be done with Android with a clear thinker on the design team.
The top of the phone houses the power switch, which some might be used to using to put the phone to sleep - given the phone's small size, it's easy to reach.
There are also three touch sensitive keys just below the screen: Home, Menu and Return, which we're used to seeing on Android phones. Interestingly there's no search key here, which is odd for a Google-powered phone.
Overall, the phone sits well in the hand and is slim enough in the pocket, especially for the price point.
We're a little peturbed by the presence of the stylus, as Android is supposed to be a forward looking OS; a stylus sends us screaming back to the early days of WinMo.
