Orange Monte Carlo review

Following on from the San Francisco, which proved a popular budget handset on its release late last year, Orange has another rebadged Android phone on offer. This one’s called the Monte Carlo (also known as the ZTE Slate), but don’t be fooled – there’s little of the luxury that name might suggest.

For starters, it’s built entirely out of plastic, and it’s noticeably flimsier than anything you’ll find bearing an HTC or Sony Ericsson logo. A fair press with a finger sees the rear panel bending and the sides creaking. Below the screen sit three buttons rather than the usual four – the search function has been omitted – and they’re not touch buttons, rather physical keys that feel rattly.

More pleasingly, the Monte Carlo is one of the lighter phones we’ve tested at 120g, and its dimensions mean it feels good in the hand. It packs in a 4.3in screen, but despite that it doesn’t feel too big and bulky.

It’s a 480 x 800 TFT screen – the budget obviously doesn’t stretch to IPS or AMOLED – but detail is still sharp throughout. Colours won’t trouble the premium smartphones for punch and vibrancy, but they’re okay, and text is legible and clear.

The built-in camera also packs plenty of detail and sharpness, but colours aren’t so good. Shots taken in daylight appeared shallow and washed out; those taken indoors came out quite dark and off-colour. There’s a dearth of settings, too, with few of the macro modes or specialist settings that you’ll find on higher-end handsets.

You expect a few weak points in such a cheap phone, but it’s on the inside that the budget really tells. A processor based on the ARMv6 instruction set – the one that preceded the Snapdragon line used in most premium smartphones – and 512MB of RAM powers the Monte Carlo. It’s single core, it lacks Flash support, and we weren’t able to discern its true speed: while several system specification apps reported it running at 600MHz, ZTE is adamant it’s an 800MHz chip.

Whatever speed it runs at, poor test scores are evidence enough of the Monte Carlo’s limited talents. The phone took 12 seconds to complete the SunSpider test – more than twice as long as the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro – and it scored a paltry 793 in the Quadrant test, where even other single-core phones are now routinely scoring close to double that.

As you’d expect, real-world performance isn’t stellar. The five homescreens – bundled by Orange, complete with a clock and text-messaging widget – skip and judder under the finger, and the app drawer isn’t immune to sluggish loading either. Waking the phone up from its sleep state takes a very noticeable second or two, and while the Adreno 200 GPU ran Angry Birds without a hitch, the 3D graphics of titles such as Reckless Racing induced stuttering. It should also be noted that more advanced games, such as Unity’s Angry Bots, won’t run on the Monte Carlo’s hardware and therefore don’t appear in the Android Market.

While most of the blame can be laid at ZTE’s feet, Orange isn’t entirely innocent. Its own Android front-end adds little of note yet actually slows the phone. We quickly replaced it with LauncherPro, and found our interface gripes largely disappeared. Orange has also loaded the Monte Carlo with plenty of bloatware: there’s a pointless Maps tool, a redundant App Shop and a basic browser alongside a handful of game demos.

Even with all of this removed, our 24-hour battery test – in which we make a half-hour phone call, download and listen to a podcast, lock the screen on for an hour, then leave the phone synching email overnight – showed the Monte Carlo’s lack of stamina. It finished that period with only 40% left, putting it behind the 50% and 60% of most of our favourites.

Whether the Orange Monte Carlo has any appeal to you depends on that screen. Yes, the camera and battery are disappointing, and the lack of processing power may come to annoy you in the long term, but it’s an Android phone with a 4.3in screen for only £15 a month, which very few handsets can match. A bit more cash will get you a better all-rounder, but if you’re on a tight budget the Monte Carlo does have a certain flawed attraction.

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