Orange Vegas Review

So you quite fancy a touchscreen phone, but frankly they’re too expensive, is that what you’ve been saying? Orange has been listening and released the splashily-named Vegas, the cheapest and smallest touchscreen mobile yet.

Touchscreens are popular, but not until the LG Cookie were they affordable. Even so, the Vegas is much cheaper – perhaps that’s the way the Cookie crumbles?

The Vegas is available on pay as you go for under £50 and it comes in two colours. The eye-catching one in pink is exclusive to Orange, though the demure black one is not.

It’s certainly diddy, measuring just 93x52x16mm and weighing 84g, so it disappears into a pocket or handbag with satisfying ease. And although it’s small, because there’s no need to cover it with actual buttons, it manages to include a 2.4-inch screen. There are real buttons, four of them at the bottom of the display, plus a direction pad.

If that seems curious on a touchscreen, well, it is. It’s almost as though Orange didn’t have complete confidence in having a touchscreen only. Of course, the iPhone only has the one Home button on the front, but touchscreens often have regular Send and End keys, as is the case here. The other two buttons are softkeys whose functions are on the screen just above. And, confusingly, you can tap either the screen or the buttons, which kind of renders them superfluous.

Similarly, the navigation button has a direction ring which  nudges the menu icons across to the right. Though you could just as easily tap the screen. And if those choices weren’t enough, as well as responding to the jabs of your fingers, there’s a tiny, telescopic stylus buried in the corner of the phone which you can use as well.

So there are different roads to the same destination: swipe the home screen with your finger and stylus to reveal the menus, or just press the navigation button.

Covert operation

The operating system is designed for the phone and is straightforward if not particularly elegant. Once you’ve found your way around it, it’s comprehensive enough but at times it can be cumbersome, with several button presses required where one would have sufficed.

This is not a 3G phone, and other elements are basic, too. Like the camera, which at 1.3-megapixels is about as basic as you’ll find these days. And although the screen is big enough for web browsing, the lack of EDGE (a network Orange has invested in, after all) makes it pretty slow. Still, there’s Bluetooth at least, and although onboard memory is limited to 64MB you can add a microSD card.

Where Orange has been very canny, though, is to include a great tariff for social networkers. Top up with £10 on the Dolphin tariff and you get 300 free texts plus access to Bebo, Facebook and MySpace.

VERDICT

It’s cute and little, but a smartphone it ain’t. But while Apple won’t be losing any sleep over its new competitor, the Vegas does have a certain charm. The operating system isn’t flawless and the lack of 3G slows down Internet access, but at least keeps the size down. And let’s not forget, this is a great phone if you want something small and light. But the most important thing about a touchscreen is its responsiveness and here the Vegas turns out to be fiddly and sometimes unresponsive. Its camera is pretty paltry, too, but then again, just think of the money you’re saving.

RATINGS (OUT OF 5)

PERFORMANCE: 3
FEATURES: 3
USABILITY: 2
OVERALL: 3