ZTE Racer / ZTE X850

First Android under £100 ; Good music player ; Facebook and Twitter syncing with contacts ; Decent build and design ; Google Maps Navigation

Terrible touchscreen ; Typing is a chore ; Battery life not up to scratch ; Poor camera ; Buggy accelerometer in media player

The world is going Android crazy, with Google currently registering 200,000 activations per day. Is that a reflection of the popularity of the operating system or the sheer number of phones now jumping on board?

Compact, lightweight, cheap, Android 2.1

Clunky touchscreen, no stylus, slightly flimsy

Available on Three, the Racer cost £99.99 for PAYG (150MB and text bundle with every top-up), or £15 per month on Internet Talker (5000 Three-to-Three minutes, 500MB, 300 off net minutes). The ZTE Racer certainly has a lot of annoying niggles that...

The ZTE Racer is a value-for-money Android handset, Aimed at occasional users and teenagers, rather than those seeking a business-orientated phone, the ZTE Racer offers most of the functions associated with a smartphone for a fraction of the cost.

Affordable, small and good in the hand

Poor touch-screen and cheap looking display

The ZTE Racer can be summed up in one word, poor. Almost everything performs between adequate and terrible, but don't hold it against the Racer, as I said in the beginning of the article, the ZTE Racer was an experiment in the field of dirt cheap...

The ZTE Racer is a very low cost Android handset. Corners have been cut to keep the price down, notably the use of a small screen and resistive touch technology. But the Android basics are all here, and you have access to that all important Android...

Disappointing touch-screen and cheap-looking display

The Racer is a decent enough handset, but there are other phones on the market that beat it on price or features

The Racer is a decent enough handset, but there are other phones on the market that beat it on price or features

The top of the Racer carries the power button and the 3.5 mm headphone jack. Much of its front end is taken up by a 2.8 inch resistive touch screen that can display up to 256k colours at a maximum resolution of 240 x 320 pixels.