Orange San Diego review

The Orange San Diego marks a significant milestone in the mobile industry. It's not the biggest, fastest, smallest, slimmest or cheapest phone, but Intel is inside.

It's not even the first handset to sport an Intel chip, that accolade goes to the Lenovo K800, but the San Diego is the first Intel phone to land in Europe.

It's available for $199.99 (about $310) on PAYG and for free on 24 month contracts from $15.50 (about $24) per month, which puts the San Diego in line with the HTC One V and Nokia Lumia 710. However, in terms of specs it challenges the more pricey Sony Xperia P and Nokia Lumia 800.

The San Diego looks to be the replacement for the Orange San Francisco 2, which in turn replaced the excellent San Francisco.

There's no fancy dual- or quad-core action here though, since Intel has stuck its single-core 1.6GHz Atom Z2460 Medfield processor inside the San Diego, along with a 4.03-inch (600 x 1024) display and 16GB of internal memory.

Although not an original design, the San Diego is a decent looking handset, and the rubberised back provides a secure grip in the hand.

The San Diego is a slender device, at 9.99mm in depth, and sits comfortably in the palm. Evenly weighted, without being heavy, it tops the scales at a respectable 117g.

Three physical buttons adorn the Orange San Diego, with a power/lock key located at the top of the handset, next to a 3.5mm headphone jack and volume rocker and dedicated camera shutter buttons on the right-hand side.

The volume rocker is easy to hit, but we found the lock key on top harder to navigate, especially when held in our left hand.

There's a micro HDMI port on the left-hand side and a micro USB port flanked by speakers on the base.

The San Diego also fails to offer expandable storage, meaning you're stuck with the 16GB of internal, which will be plenty for most, but frustrating for those who need more or like to pop in a memory card full of content to consume immediately.

However, this is far more generous than the storage in the One V and Lumia 710, which offer 4GB and 8GB respectively.

If you want to play videos such as AVI, MKV on the phone, you just need Video Converter for Mac to help you. If you are a Mac user, Video Editor for Mac can help you out.