Price when reviewed: £100
Supplier: http://www.t-mobile.co.uk
Reviewed By: Barry de la Rosa
There's no denying that for its latest budget Android smartphone, T-Mobile has turned on the style. It's not hard to see where it got its inspiration from, with the squared-off body, glossy black rear and thing metal strip more than a little reminiscent of the While Apple's phone uses Gorilla Glass at the front and rear, with an aluminium frame in the middle, T-Mobile's handset is a more budget affair with a plastic case that gives the handset a hollow and cheaper feel to it. Give the price discrepancy between the two phones that's to be expected.
Under the case the Vivacity, which is manufactured by ZTE, has a modest specification, with an 800MHz single-core processor and Android 2.3 Gingerbread pre-installed. We're pleased to say that T-Mobile has left the standard Android interface alone, so it's easy to pick up and use.
It's also good to see that the phone isn't loaded with unnecessary applications, with just four T-Mobile apps added to the standard Android ones. They're standard fare for this kind of phone: My T-Mobile gives you help and advice about the network's services; My Services lets you see the free and paid-for services you can activate by calling T-Mobile's helpline; TopApps just lists recommend apps; and the Music Jukebox app is just a link to T-Mobile's online music shop.
Other pre-installed apps include Docs To Go, an office document viewer; Filer, a very basic file manager; Lookout Security, which scans for viruses and can also backup and locate your phone in case it's lost; and Notepad, a basic text editor.
Even though these apps don't take up a lot of room individually, by the time we'd installed updates from Google Play (the new name for the Android Market), there was only 94MB out of the 512MB of internal storage free. Fortunately, there's a microSDHC slot with a 2GB card included, so you've got a bit more space for those apps that support being moved to memory card.
