T-Mobile Pulse Mini - Review

“Given its sub-£100 price-tag, the Pulse Mini is a good Android smartphone. Some features are a little basic, but the device should appeal to anyone who’d rather not write a large cheque for a higher-spec Android smartphone”

T-Mobile Pulse Mini - Review

A cheap and cheerful smartphone

Many pay-as-you-go (PAYG) mobile users will be familiar with the heartache of wanting the latest Android smartphone, but being forced to pay over the odds because they won’t/can’t sign a monthly contract.

T-Mobile’s Pulse Mini is different because it’s one of the first Android PAYG smartphones sold for under £100 (£99.99 actually).

The low price-tag won’t get you iPhone grade specifications. Although I was pleasantly surprised by the Pulse Mini’s build quality: compact, solid and refreshingly lightweight.

The major cost-saving has came from fitting the Pulse Mini with a cheaper type of touchscreen than you would find on, say, Sony Ericsson’s X10.

Touch Mini’s touchscreen worked well and was responsive. Opening applications (apps) and clicking on website links with my, admittedly, chunky fingers didn’t cause many problems.

However, the onscreen Qwerty keyboard is far too small for anyone to use reliably. A supplied stylus improved my typing accuracy but considerably reduced my typing speed.

The phone’s circular keypad reminded me of the high-tech optical keypad on HTC’s Desire smartphone, which I failed to see the point of in my Desire review. The same’s true of the Pulse Mini’s keypad, even if it did occasionally come in handy for jumping between windows or scrolling through webpages.

Websites loaded quickly over Wi-Fi and 3G connections. Google Maps loaded quickly too – perhaps even faster than the iPhone 3GS, which made using the Pulse Mini a handy navigational tool about town.

PAYG Android

Pulse Mini is also available in black

Android’s online app store – Android Market – is accessible from the Pulse Mini, giving you a taste of what it’s like to have a more-expensive Android phones – rather like dining at the Ritz on a special occasion.

Several unique apps also come pre-installed on the Pulse Mini, the most useful of which was one for viewing Microsoft Office documents and another - RoadSync - for synchronising corporate e-mail, calendar, contacts and attachments with it.

Don’t expect HD video playback on the Pulse Mini because its low-end touchscreen produces reasonably poor resolution video that’s nowhere near as crisp as the Apple iPad’s screen (watch our iPad review).

The 3.2Mp camera on Pulse Mini’s rear produces OK, if a little over-exposed, images. The flash is a nice touch because it really helps brighten up faces in dark settings, such as dimly lit bars.

A mediocre pair of headphones comes with the smartphone. They produced decent enough sounding music, with tracks selected using the bog-standard music interface available on all Android smartphones.

Call quality was always good on the Pulse Mini and its Bluetooth feature let me use the phone with a wireless headset.

Battery life less impressive than I’d have liked: slightly less than one day if used consistently for emailing, watching videos, playing games, etc. Or up to two days if sat in your handbag and only used occasionally.