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If you thought Motorola’s new Motosmart was the cheapest option to get into smartphones and Android, think again. Budget phone experts ZTE have struck back with the sub-£50 Kis for Virgin Mobile.
We first met the ZTE Kis earlier in the year, when it was revealed alongside a whole new family of Android and Windows Phone devices at the Mobile World Congress. At a penny under £50 it’s one of the cheapest Android smartphones on the market, and will offer you the basics in all areas.
Android 2.3, also known as Gingerbread, is the operating system of choice for the Kis – come on, you can’t really expect Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean at this price! Thankfully ZTE haven’t added a tacky skin or any extras to the software, so you’ll be getting a nice clean Android experience, along with the Play Store for Apps, Movies and Books.
The screen is a 3.5-inch 480 x 320 pixel variant, with a silver earpiece above but no front-facing camera above it, and four touch buttons below to cater to the Menu, Home, Back, and Search optons. On the back of the device you’ll find a 3.2-megapixel camera which has 2x zoom, and a removable cover to reveal a 1,400 mAh battery, SIM slot and micro SD card slot.
Unfortunately the phone’s memory is rather limited to 512MB, as is the norm with budget phones, but you do have the option to stick in a micro SD card to expand by up to 32GB, depending on the card you use. A 2GB card comes in the box to get the ball rolling.
There’s Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, and tri-band 3G connectivity, and a single-core 800MHz processor to power the whole thing. Virgin Mobile has the handset for sale now online, or if you fancy one you can place a call to them, so we’re told. Top the phone up by £10 and they’ll even throw a respectable 1GB of data per month for the next year.
Let us know your thoughts on our comments below or via our @Gadget_Helpline Twitter page or Official Facebook group.
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