Life with the little Orange San Francisco has been good. It is a delightfully well performing device that completely belies the price tag that accompanies it. If, a while ago, someone had said that I would be able to purchase a fully functioning Android handset for less than £100 I would probably have laughed in their face. But it is true.

Based on the ZTE Blade the Orange mobile network operator offers their branded version, the San Francisco (no, I don't know why either). It is probably the equivalent in terms of specification to the HTC Wildfire, but a whole lot cheaper.

The first thing I did when I got mine was to unlock and take away all of the Orange branding and crippling. This I did by way of the Modaco forum's custom ROM which is as good as any. Saying that I fully realise that there will be those who will cite "better" ROMs. But I wanted something quick, cheerful, that works and is not so Alpha that it barely works. And Modaco's Eclair 2.1 ROM was more than good enough.

Froyo
Ah, but having tasted Froyo on my Nexus One and Dell Streak I really did feel the need to do the San Fran a favour and see if there was a nice helping of Froyo for it. And there was, again the Modaco developers have come to the rescue.

alpha4ss1.png
[Image courtesy of Modaco]



Currently the Modaco Froyo is an Alpha.3 release available here http://android.modaco.com/content/zt...-chinese-leak/

The thing to bear in mind with all Alpha versions is that they are likely to be a bit flaky, a bit experimental even. But the Modaco ROM certainly does not look, feel or behave like an Alpha. Reading through the status log it is plain to see that the developers have been very busy indeed. Even though they have Alpha.4 in the pipeline (for paid-up subscribers) the current "baked" version has more than enough working well to persuade me to make the jump.

Now bear in mind that the San Fran is by no means my primary phone - I got it more to experiment and do some little development on. But I have to say that, even as it is right now, I would not be at all disappointed in using it on a daily basis.