July 29th, 2010 by Simon

For a while since it debuted in 2008, Android smartphones means high end phones and priced accordingly. Smartphone makers have been releasing models positioned as mid-priced or entry level Android but even their cheapest Android handset remain too pricey for features you can find in other less expensive non-Android phones.

It was only in the first half of 2010 that many models have really come down to mass market affordability with the likes of HTC taking the lead with its Wildfire and Samsung’s own entry level models in its Galaxy line like the i5500 Galaxy 5.

But wait till to see the new ZTE Racer just released this July.  Also known as the ZTE X850 in other markets, this one has just breached the ₤100 price point to become the most affordable Android phone. Even more so with all the ZTE Racer deals available.

Leave it to the world’s 3^rd largest telecoms equipment manufacturer ZTE of China to further democratize the Android smartphone to a wider market base that both Samsung and HTC have wanted to do.

So what does ₤100 Bring You?

Most mobile phone companies joining the Android bandwagon has released high end Android handsets.  Look at Sony Ericsson, Google and HTC; their first Androids have been their flagships carrying snobbish price tags.  But with the ZTE Racer, amazing is the first word that comes to mind.  Many of its hardware features are found on smartphones costing twice as they are positioned more in the mid-markets.

For starters, its radio and data connectivity options are anything but mid-tier.  It is a 3G phone on the dual band UMTS (900/ 2100) with HSDPA data speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps. That’s just short of the 10.2 Mbps HSDPA speeds you find on flagship smartphones, Android or not.

If there’s a concession to being cheaper, it’s taking out one frequency band to make it a tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (900/ 1800/ 1900) on the 2G network instead of the usual quad band, so you don’t get near seamless roaming ability on the 2G GSM networks worldwide.  You just have to check the country your visiting what GSM band they’re network provider has.

It gets even more amazing as it enjoys WiFi 802.11b/g for hotspot surfing.  That’s not what you expect from an entry level Android smartphone.  For its price, it also has SatNav support with an onboard GPS receiver that supports A-GPS and comes with Google Maps preloaded.   Local high speed data connectivity is typical with options like Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP for wireless data transfers and synching and microUSB v2.0 for the wired option.

What Makes It Affordable

We can stop here to say that the ZTE Racer is already well worth the price you paid for.  But it has more, though the features from hereon no longer stand out at any price point.

• The ZTE Racer comes only in black and sports a monolithic touchscreen form factor on an elegantly styled body that measures 102 x 55 x 14.5 mm. It is one of the lightest touchscreen handsets in the market with a 100g weight, though its all-plastic construction does feel plasticky in your hands but without the creaks to still give it a solid feel. The front fascia is as basic as it is simple with three touch-sensitive buttons below the screen and a single bar button below for start and end calls.  Despite being a 3G phone, there’s no front facing video call camera.
• At the back is a protruding camera assembly dead centered on the vertical axis above the battery cover. It has a 3.2-megapixel resolution with autofocus but no LED flash or other features we’ve come to expect from a camera phone these days. But with autofocus, you can expect sharper and more detailed pictures under normal and day lighting conditions.   There’s basic video capture but the spec sheet is silent on the details though we suspect it to be no more than VGA resolution at 15fps frame rates.
• Just like the Google Nexus One, the ZTE Racer runs on the native Android v2.1 Éclair with its native UI.  This has the advantage of getting immediate OS upgrades once the new iteration becomes available unlike other Android handsets with proprietary UI layered on top like the Sense UI in HTC Androids or the TouchWiz in Samsung Androids.
• New Android versions already out will have to go through some tweaking to run their respective UI layers before they are made available for upgrading your old Android. Not so with handsets running the native UI.   This adds to its affordability as the maker has no need to maintain a programming team to make their own UI.  But for many Android users, the native Android UI just fall short of the Samsung TouchWiz or HTC Sense user experience.
• Mobile entertainment comes with a stereo FM receiver with RDS and the media playback support for audio files in the MP3, WAV and eAAC formats as well as video files in the MP4 and H.263/H.264 codecs.  You also get YouTube app preloaded.
• The ZTE Racer comes with some games and is already preloaded with Google Search and Gmail support as well as a document viewer for PDF and MS Office files. But you can enjoy more from the growing collection of about 70,000 games and application from the Android app store.
• The ZTE Racer smartphone has an onboard memory basically reserved for OS system files and application files with its 256 MB RAM and 256 MB ROM. You do get phonebook capacity for nearly unlimited contact entries and fields per entry but virtually no internal memory for the user.

But no matter, it gets a microSD card slot for external memory expandability for up to 8GB and even comes with a 2GB microSD card in its sales kit.  Talk times are sadly on the low side with 3.5 hours on 2G from its Li-ion battery rated at 1100 mAh when fully charged. You can read more ZTE Racer reviews in the reviews section.

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