UNBOXING VIDEO Orange San Francisco II / ZTE Crescent 1080p

[Guest glossywhite]

Yeah saw your topic. "Too bad" i already got my SFII. Was in love with the screen immediately though, so I'm glad!

I'm sure the SF2 is an amazing phone, and I plan to take a look some time. The screen resolution benefit of the SF2, vs the numerous benefits of the wt19i, mean that I'd give favour to the wt19i over the SF2 *any* day. I don't care too much whether the screen is lower res on the wt19i - everything else just trounces the SF2... and that's the truth. What's with ZTE *still* using ARM6? Nowhere near as good!

I am glad you made the right decision for yourself. After all, that's what matters - *personal* decision. Too many (most) people get it back to front, because they (wrongly) assume there HAS to be a "winner" and all other devices are "losers", by default. WRONG. There's way too much fanboyism about, and ALL devices have strengths and weaknesses, just like us humans, and that is life.

:)

Edited December 8, 2011 by glossywhite

[Guest richeym]

Hi :) Thinking of buying the San Fran 2 for my brother's birthday tomorrow. He hasn't had a new phone since the awful (but at the time quite well regarded) Motorola e365 about 7 years ago. It cost about the same as the SF2 does now!!

Anyway, most important things (for him) - can anyone answer the following please:

1. What's it like to text on? Reliability? Speed?

2. What's the camera like?

3. What's the video quality like?

Many thanks :)

[Guest glossywhite]

Hi Thinking of buying the San Fran 2 for my brother's birthday tomorrow. He hasn't had a new phone since the awful (but at the time quite well regarded) Motorola e365 about 7 years ago. It cost about the same as the SF2 does now!!

Anyway, most important things (for him) - can anyone answer the following please:

1. What's it like to text on? Reliability? Speed?

2. What's the camera like?

3. What's the video quality like?

Many thanks

You're FAR better off buying the Sony Ericsson "Live with Walkman" (model no: wt19i) from "Three" store. They are £99 + you have to buy £15 data bundle. If you want it unlocked, contact Three who will supply a code within a couple of weeks for £15.32, OR contact "Jinx13" at XDA forums, and he will do it for you, remotely (test point) for £15 (I got mine unlocked with him, last night).

Seriously, feature-wise, I'd definitely urge you to go with the Sony Ericsson; faster (1Ghz) cpu (ARM7), native flash player built in (11.1), 512Mb RAM, 720p recording, lightning fast EVERYTHING, beautiful UI, *MEGA* loud and extremely high quality audio, coming from TWO stereo speakers AND amazing Sony headphones.

The SF 2 may have a better resolution screen... but that is ALL that is better, as far as I can tell. No HD recording, STILL? You must be joking! No ARM7+? What a joke.

Simply my opinion. I am currently uploading a 720p "look around" that I made this afternoon, to YouTube, so that will be available later tonight... I'd say around 10pm.

VIDEO (Live soon):

Edited October 2, 2012 by glossywhite

[Guest PsYcHoKiLLa]

The SFII's camera is "capable" of 720p recording but this hasn't been "unlocked" yet (hopefully this will be done by CM or someone else), the CPU will probably overclock to close to 1GHz (The original Blade had 600MHz stock, I used it O/C'd at 691, the same ratio on the SFII would total 921.33MHz) and it has 512MB too. I'll stick with an android phone instead of one crammed with stuff you're never gonna use. ;)

Edited December 9, 2011 by PsYcHoKiLLa

[Guest glossywhite]

The SFII's camera is "capable" of 720p recording but this hasn't been "unlocked" yet (hopefully this will be done by CM or someone else), the CPU will probably overclock to close to 1GHz (The original Blade had 600MHz stock, I used it O/C'd at 691, the same ratio on the SFII would total 921.33MHz) and it has 512MB too. I'll stick with an android phone instead of one crammed with stuff you're never gonna use. ;)

The Sony Ericsson *is* Android. Why do you think I posted this in the *Android* forum? I don't have to overclock, and even if I did own a SF2, and overclocked it, it still wouldn't be ARM7. I'll let you enjoy telling your friends that "Ah, my phone is *capable* of 720p recording", to which they may reply "Well go on then - show us"... you reply "Ah! hmmm... right, uhmmm..."

Finally... The Sony Ericsson also has 512Mb ram. You do know how to Google, right?

It's your choice, but I'm just sayin... ya know? :)

Edited December 9, 2011 by glossywhite

[Guest richeym]

You're FAR better off buying the Sony Ericsson "Live with Walkman" (model no: wt19i) from "Three" store. They are £99 + you have to buy £15 data bundle. If you want it unlocked, contact Three who will supply a code within a couple of weeks for £15.32, OR contact "Jinx13" at XDA forums, and he will do it for you, remotely (test point) for £15 (I got mine unlocked with him, last night).

Seriously, feature-wise, I'd definitely urge you to go with the Sony Ericsson; faster (1Ghz) cpu (ARM7), native flash player built in (11.1), 512Mb RAM, 720p recording, lightning fast EVERYTHING, beautiful UI, *MEGA* loud and extremely high quality audio, coming from TWO stereo speakers AND amazing Sony headphones.

The SF 2 may have a better resolution screen... but that is ALL that is better, as far as I can tell. No HD recording, STILL? You must be joking! No ARM7+? What a joke.

Simply my opinion. I am currently uploading a 720p "look around" that I made this afternoon, to YouTube, so that will be available later tonight... I'd say around 10pm.

VIDEO (Live soon):

glossy :)

Thanks for your observations. I decided to hang fire for now and maybe get him one for Christmas instead until a proper review is up for SFii and I've properly evaluated the competition. The Walkman Live sounds promising but at the moment it costs a little more than I want to spend. I hear you re the 3 deal but he would want to stay on Orange so the 15quid data bundle would be wasted money and the £15 unlocking via that guy you mentioned or £15 and two weeks via 3 are just too hassley for me. I'm in the middle of watching your video on YouTube, hopefully you'll go on to give some feedback re the ease of texting on the device and the quality of the camera and video.

At the moment, then, I'm looking at these three (plus maybe the Monte Carlo which I've not investigated yet):

1. San Francisco II

2. Sony Ericsson Walkman Live

3. HTC Wildfire S

Oh, another thing, don't really want a massive Galaxy S II type affair. Far too big.

Anyway I'll get back to watching your vid.

Cheers

Richey :)

[Guest glossywhite]

glossy :)

Thanks for your observations. I decided to hang fire for now and maybe get him one for Christmas instead until a proper review is up for SFii and I've properly evaluated the competition. The Walkman Live sounds promising but at the moment it costs a little more than I want to spend. I hear you re the 3 deal but he would want to stay on Orange so the 15quid data bundle would be wasted money and the £15 unlocking via that guy you mentioned or £15 and two weeks via 3 are just too hassley for me. I'm in the middle of watching your video on YouTube, hopefully you'll go on to give some feedback re the ease of texting on the device and the quality of the camera and video.

At the moment, then, I'm looking at these three (plus maybe the Monte Carlo which I've not investigated yet):

1. San Francisco II

2. Sony Ericsson Walkman Live

3. HTC Wildfire S

Oh, another thing, don't really want a massive Galaxy S II type affair. Far too big.

Anyway I'll get back to watching your vid.

Cheers

Richey :)

Wise to make an informed decision, I agree. Oh, I didn't say too much about the camera, so here is another review:

http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_live_with_walkman_review-review-669p6.php

[Guest Snaku]

The SFII's camera is "capable" of 720p recording but this hasn't been "unlocked" yet (hopefully this will be done by CM or someone else), the CPU will probably overclock to close to 1GHz (The original Blade had 600MHz stock, I used it O/C'd at 691, the same ratio on the SFII would total 921.33MHz) and it has 512MB too. I'll stick with an android phone instead of one crammed with stuff you're never gonna use. ;)

Fairly sure the ARMv6 CPU is incapable of encoding anything higher than 800x480 WVGA so not even the CM team or bumping up the speed can achieve 720p. The camera sensor might be "capable" of 720p, but the CPU definitely can't encode a 720p source, for more info look here http://android.modac...ost__p__1859847

I'm not defending any phone here, but you only buy a San Francisco 2 for its higher resolution screen, 266 pixels per inch in comparison the Sony Ericsson has 180 pixels per inch so everything looks sharper on the San Francisco. But if still photo camera shots and camcorder is more important to you, you should definitely not buy a San Francisco 2 it's recording framerate is really subpar with max fps 15 in perfect condition, in dark places fps will be halved to 7.5 fps, also max recording res is 800x480.

The Live Walkman is capturing at 30 fps so in the end the captured movie is more fluid than a movie captured with a SF2.

[Guest glossywhite]

Fairly sure the ARMv6 CPU is incapable of encoding anything higher than 800x480 WVGA so not even the CM team or bumping up the speed can achieve 720p. The camera sensor might be "capable" of 720p, but the CPU definitely can't encode a 720p source, for more info look here http://android.modac...ost__p__1859847

I'm not defending any phone here, but you only buy a San Francisco 2 for its higher resolution screen, 266 pixels per inch in comparison the Sony Ericsson has 180 pixels per inch so everything looks sharper on the San Francisco. But if still photo camera shots and camcorder is more important to you, you should definitely not buy a San Francisco 2 it's recording framerate is really subpar with max fps 15 in perfect condition, in dark places fps will be halved to 7.5 fps, also max recording res is 800x480.

The Live Walkman is capturing at 30 fps so in the end the captured movie is more fluid than a movie captured with a SF2.

Informing the uninformed is a good thing to do. So many people rush to a higher screen resolution, and think that this makes the phone overall "better" than one with a lesser resolution screen. My OMC was wonderful... but boy did it lag!