Orange UK, which technically should be called “Everything Everywhere” after merging with T-Mobile UK, semantics aside, launched an Android smartphone today called the “San Francisco”. It’s built by Orange themselves, so it’s most likely an original design by some Asian company who peddles their wares to large operators around the world who want to customize each and every individual detail as to both nickel and dime the consumer with miscellaneous charges and to increase profits by cutting corners on materials and build quality.
Enough poo pooing a product I’ve yet to see or play with in real life, what does the San Francisco offer? It’s only 11.8 mm thin, which isn’t really thin, but isn’t really fat either. It’s running Android 2.1, with no word as to when or even if it’ll be upgraded to Android 2.2, has a 3.5 inch 480 x 800 pixel screen, most likely resistive, supports up to 32 GB of storage via a microSD card, a 600 MHz CPU that’s probably of the slower ARM 11 variety, 3 megapixel camera, GPS, WiFI, “3G+” which I’ve got no idea what exactly that is, and all that for just 99 British Pounds ($155) on pay as you go.
People today are crying about operators taking fantastic devices, like the Samsung Galaxy S, and then tweaking Android so much that they ruin the experience, so what will people think of this thing? It’s built, from the ground up, by an operator. Now I’m not saying Orange can’t do a good job, but shouldn’t they be spending their money not on research and development costs to build a handset, but instead on improving their network or upgrading the billing system? I’ll never understand why operators take devices that work perfectly well and then raping them, yes I’m using the word rape, with their unoptimized, clunky, terrible software, all in the name of improving margins.