It’s well-known that in 2009, touchscreen phones are taking over the world. Big ones, small ones, ultra-powerful ones, more fashion-conscious, slim ones. But up till now, there’s never really been what you’d call a super-cheap touchscreen phone. Well, I say up till now, because according to the Boy Genius Report, there now is one: the Orange Vegas.
Hehe, you have to titter at them naming a credit-crunch-busting touchy-phone after most the famous gambling city on the planet…
Still, despite the irony of the name, there’s a lot to really love about the Orange Vegas. Starting with the interface, since that’s all the rage on modern phones, well… ok, granted, it’s not going to worry something like the Palm Pre in any way, shape or form, but it is designed to be simple and chic. The UI on the Orange Vegas is said to have been built specially for Orange, and I believe that claim since, well, I really can’t identify what the hell it’s running on. It doesn’t look to be Symbian, Windows Mobile, or Android, which doesn’t leave many options left. Maybe Linux, I suppose, but I’m really dying to find out.
Now, the other specs aren’t that brilliant. You get a 1.3 megapixel camera (so, no Sony Ericsson Idou, either, then), and GPRS (what, not even 3G?), although you do get Bluetooth, and a memory card slot that’ll take up to 4Gb cards.
But then, none of that matters, because just you wait till you see the price. On pay as you go (and bear in mind, this is without contract subsidies, and it’s a touchscreen phone, for god’s sake), the Orange Vegas costs just £48.50!
Sweet zombie jeebus, how in the name of all that’s holy can they even afford to make it??? Ok, granted, it doesn’t even come close to being as powerful as my X1, but consider that my X1 cost about TEN TIMES AS MUCH, sim-free, when it was launched.
Crikey, I never thought I’d see the day when a touchscreen phone would be an impulse buy!
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May 7th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
[...] too long ago, I did a post about the Orange Vegas, probably the cheapest touchscreen phone ever to come to the UK. And you may remember that I quite [...]
June 9th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
CAN U GET GAMES FOR THE VEGAS FONE
June 24th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
No games to download, The phone does not have Java support
July 1st, 2009 at 8:20 pm
is this phone any good and what does the middle button thing do
thanx
J****e
xx
August 7th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
urmm i have got this phone i think is ok but now im lookin to get another one the middle button is 2 select things
Simmy
xxx
September 2nd, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Hi
As the processor appears to be a MT6225, the OS is probably a variant of Nucleus RTOS, produced by Mentor Graphics. Lots of no-name Chinese phones using this processor use variations of Nucleus.
If so, its interesting that the phone doesn’t support Java since the processor it can handle Java byte code.
Of course I could be wrong…
Nice review BTW.
Gareth