The new Orange Android phone (San Francisco) £99...but a Question??

3dcandy said:
probably got the best screen of budget handsets, but it appears it's now £120 with top-up
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Yeah, I'm aware of the price increase (don't things normally go down generally?!)but not too bothered by that. Was just wondering what the alternatives on payg were. Did have a samsung tocco lite that I didn't get on with very well, but aside from that...
 
I have just bought a 2nd hand one of these. It was originally bought as a gift on 23/09/11 but was not wanted so is really new. This is my first smart phone so it is all a bit new:D The main thing I am stuck on at the moment is the initial sim card that came with it.

The original purchaser obviously had to buy a sim and £10 credit when buying the phone. He says he put the sim in the phone to check it worked but didn't do anything with it. There is a phone number on the receipts for the phone and top up, however, when I look in settings/About Phone/Status/My Phone No it says 'Unknown'.

I haven't tried calling it or making calls yet but I have connected to the apps store so I assume that must have connected via the 3g. Also the receipts don't say what payg plan it is. Could it be that despite the receipt saying that the sim card was pre-activated that it was left inactivated as it was for a gift? Also is there any way I can find out which plan it is?
 
The San fran, and android in general doesn't do the "My phone Number" bit very well! Well, it's more to do with the simcard not having the number on it, the network supplies that.

If you want your number there, there is an app in the market that will add whatever number for you.

Call Orange to see what plan it's on, or even easier, log onto their website.
 
AFAIK, you need to go onto the orange site to select a plan before the orange thingy wil work.

Been a while since i went near orange though, our SF simcard is in a drawer and i've shifted the phone!
 
Thanks for the replies. The sim card doesn't have anything on it and the bigger card it was popped out from has all the pictures of their animal branded plans. I assume they are generic sims that are then activated to one plan.

I did look at the orange site last night but the logon I found asked for a number plus password which if it was setup I didn't get. I will have another look later but the service is down at the moment.

I did try calling the number on the receipt and the phone rang so I assume the sim is activated.
 
I am trying to decide whether it is worth putting on a new rom or stick with the stock one and deorangifying it. I have been a bit put off by the boards at modaco. There are so many alternatives and they all seem to have reported bugs and constant revision. I don't want to have an unstable phone and constantly upgrading to new roms or versions in the hope of the next one being bug free. I have done enough of that in the earlier days of linux :D

What are the real advantages of upgrading the rom? I have seen people say that the phone is faster and some features like gps and wifi work better. Is this the case and are there many instability or bug problems?

thanks
 
We got the wife a SF to see if she liked using an Android handset, rooted, wiped, new rom, unlocked, sorted. Ran well enough, but wasn't quite as "shiney" as i'd heard, so we got her a better handset (HTC HD2) and she's happy again.

While wiping the phone to sell on i put on one of the newer (think it was CM7) roms and omfg it was sooo much quicker. If i'd put the rom on in the first place, we probably wouldn't have needed another phone.
 
Thanks for the reply. So you did see a significant real improvement. Now I just have to decide which rom to use.

Ideally what I want is a stock rom without added apps that are available from the market free and then be able to add customisation myself if wanted. Most of the roms seem to be heavily customised by the developer with added apps and tweaks.
 
CM7 sounds too buggy and cutting edge for me tbh. Ginger Stir Fry seems to get good reports but the developer has included lots of his own tweaks and additional apps. There is a version of gsf called Simple Stir Fry that is supposedly altered back to be more stock so I am currently leaning towards that but still not sure tbh.
 
freebooter said:
Thanks for the replies. The sim card doesn't have anything on it and the bigger card it was popped out from has all the pictures of their animal branded plans. I assume they are generic sims that are then activated to one plan.

I did look at the orange site last night but the logon I found asked for a number plus password which if it was setup I didn't get. I will have another look later but the service is down at the moment.

I did try calling the number on the receipt and the phone rang so I assume the sim is activated.
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Hi, If you still have issues here's how it works. SIMs are just a way for a phone to have a special number unique to the network (its even written on it) and be able to de-crypt encrypted transmissions as they hold the decoder keys, that's about it. Your telephone number is linked to this SIM but only on the network side, so we can associate the number with a different SIM incase you lose it for example. So for example when someone calls "123" we lookup in our big database which SIM number is associated with phonenumber 123 (lets pretend its 456) and then we forward the call onto the phone that has SIMnumber 456 in it.

The SIM that originally shipped with the handset - to test if it's active, just call something. If it rings it's active. If it's not call CS (there's a guide in the box that explains how to activate your plan if you want to stay on dolphin) and activate your plan (probably dolphin) or alternatively unlock the handset with the free unlocking website and insert any other PAYG SIM.

I'd highly recommend a different ROM - the orange one is mostly for average joe but it's a bit slow in places (launcher especially). Stability is actually pretty good for most roms, even amateur rom makers don't want a bad rep :)
 
Upgrading from my SF to a Desire S today, was a great smart phone but it just proved to fragile for me.. and a little slow with some of the more demanding apps. I would still highly recommend it as the best valued smart phone out there though!
 
TMP said:
Upgrading from my SF to a Desire S today, was a great smart phone but it just proved to fragile for me.. and a little slow with some of the more demanding apps. I would still highly recommend it as the best valued smart phone out there though!
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i think the Monte Carlo will take that place in a couple of months time when better ROM's come out and the price comes down.
 
hi, its time to say goodbye to my faithful san fran
have replaced it with a hd2 and its been tested for a couple of weeks and its ok

so to factory reset my phone, ive formatted the sd card and wiped/reset factory defaults in clockwork mod, anything else i should do?
 
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