The T-Mobile Pulse Mini redefined just how cheap budget Android smartphones could be when it burst on to the scene at Mobile World Congress back in February. Now the little critter’s finally made its way to UK shop shelves, and to help you decide whether a small screen and lower specs are worth a few extra notes in your back pocket, we’re here to help. Read our T-Mobile Pulse Mini review and we’ll tell you whether it’s a trade off worth making.
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The T-Mobile Pulse Mini isn’t the first Android handset to be sold on Pay As You Go (Traditionally a payment method not suited to pricey, data hungry smartphones), but priced at a penny under £100, it is the cheapest way to get a Google phone right now without a contract, even undercutting its older, bigger brother the T-Mobile Pulse.
On paper at least, the T-Mobile Pulse Mini ought to represent great value. For your moolah, you get a phone loaded with Android 2.1, the latest Android update, a 3.2 megapixel camera, HSDPA and Wi-Fi for connecting to the web at fast speeds wherever you go, and a 3.5mm audio port for listening to music with your own headphones – something many budget touchscreen phones skip out on. That it’s also made by Huawei, who made the impressively cheap original T-Mobile Pulse, also gives it promise.
The T-Mobile Pulse Mini is certainly sturdy enough for something so little, and while it only weighs 110g, you won’t have any worries about pocket crush failure. Its touch sensitive home, menu and back buttons work without fail, and call quality is more than acceptable for something so titchy. Android 2.1 meanwhile is a delight: you’ve got thousands of apps to run, 15 profile screens you can jump between with little slowdown, and now the option for multiple Gmail accounts.
The inclusion of GPS is also a bonus on something so cheap. T-Mobile didn’t include a-GPS for spot on direction in the original specification list, and we couldn’t get it to work the first time we tested model, but it’s there alright, and locks onto your locale pronto. Since the T-Mobile Pulse Mini runs Android 2.1, that means you can now use Google Maps Navigation for free turn by turn skills – though you’ll have to update to the latest version of Google Maps, 4.1.1, but it’s the job of just a few minutes.
But the T-Mobile Pulse Mini is let down by its screen in a huge way, and not just because it’ll leave you squinting while trying to use it as a satnav. Although it’s no smaller or less pixel packed than the display on the HTC Tattoo, at 2.8-inches and 240×320 QVGA resolution, it still appears much more grainy, and more importantly, unresponsive, even though it’s running Android as well, and sports the same resistive touchscreen technology.
The difference is most glaringly obvious when it comes to the keyboard. The T-Mobile Pulse Mini sports by far the most troublesome, slow, on screen QWERTY keyboard of any Android phone to date. The keys are tiny, and it’s not possible to drag across them, so if you don’t quite hit a letter the first time, you’re going to have to press the delete key, and then suffer the same problems there too. In this light, the inclusion of a stylus isn’t so much a bonus as an admission of failure – especially since it’s quite a pain to pull out in the first place.
It’s difficult to recommend the T-Mobile Pulse Mini, unless you simply must have Android Market access and can’t go over £100 upfront, even with the free satnav skills inside. On Pay As You Go, you’d be much wiser to opt for a Motorola Dext or even the original T-Mobile Pulse, which can both be had for around £150. That extra fifty quid will get you a screen that’s actually usable, the second most crucial feature in a touchscreen phone beyond actually being able to hear a person at the other end of the line speaking. For the same price, we’ll take the messaging speed and prowess of an INQ Chat 3G any day.
Read the rest of our T-Mobile Pulse Mini review
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