Design
Ever heard of ZTE Corporation? The answer -- unless you happen to have ties of one sort or another to China -- is probably no, as locally they're hardly the equivalent of a Nokia or a Motorola, although they do have an Australian office. According to the ZTE Web site, they're "China's largest listed telecommunications equipment provider specializing in offering customized network solutions for telecom carriers worldwide." A big sentence to essentially say that they make, amongst other things, mobile phones, and in this case, the Telstra F850. We're not sure if it'll be the case with the final retail units, but our review sample of the Telstra F850 still had plenty of ZTE branding upon it; given Telstra's liking of total rebrands this strikes us as a little unusual. In terms of where it sits in the Next G product offerings, this is the entry level model, with a price point and feature set to match.
The F850 itself is a fliptop mobile phone in black plastic, measuring in at 98 by 49 by 18.6mm and weighing in at 125 grams. That practically defines "average" in terms of fliptop phones, and given the market's swing towards making fliptops that are, in one way or another clones of the Motorola RAZR design, it's even arguably a little large. The specifications for the display are rather hard to come by, save for the fact that it's a 262K colour display -- the pixel size would suggest that it's 320x240, but neither the product manual or Telstra's Web site for the phone reveals such details. The one upside to the slightly larger holding size is that the dialling buttons, and especially the selection pads at the top of the phone are slightly larger than normal, which may suit some users very well indeed. A small camera sits in a rotating socket in the middle of the top hinge, just below the screen itself. The power socket sits beneath a rubber flap on the right hand side, and it's irritatingly a custom design; we'd much prefer a mini-USB socket in every phone, if only because it doesn't leave you high and dry if your charger dies. Given the paucity of other ZTE phones on the market, that's a particularly relevant point in the F850's case.
Features
The F850 is a tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900MHz) and WCDMA 850MHz mobile phone, making it suitable for use both on the existing slower GSM network and Telstra's much-hyped Next G network. There's a catch here, however, as while it'll connect to Next G services, it's actually only a 3G-capable data phone. There's no HSDPA data service built into the phone -- and it took us a call to Telstra to confirm this, as both Telstra and ZTE's local sites are a little coy about this particular detail.
Given its budget price point, it's not surprising to see that the feature set of the F850 is rather meagre. It runs on a 146MHz processor with 64MB of internal memory, which can be expanded via microSD memory card. The inbuilt camera is a 1.3-megapixel model with two -- count them! -- additional scene modes, B&W and Sepia. It supports MP3 playback and polyphonic ringtones, and as a Next G branded phone, it's also possible to access Next G services such as Foxtel Digital, video calling and the raft of Telsta add-on services such as email and mobile blogging.
Performance
Telstra (and presumably ZTE) rates the F850 as having up to 200 hours of standby time and 3 hours of talk time from a full charge. In our testing we found the talk time to be reasonably accurate, but the standby time much less so; we tended to have to recharge every two to three days even on very moderate usage patterns.
As you'd expect with a 3G phone, our data rates were decent but hardly on the spectacular side when compared to true HSDPA phones. We're not terribly impressed with the way the phone is promoted by Telstra -- whose site for the phone merely lists it as having "Next G Network Coverage", which is technically correct but potentially a little misleading, especially as they say exactly the same thing for their other HSDPA-enabled phones.
The F850's screen specifications also remained a mystery to us, and that's possibly a deliberate omission because it's not a very good display. This is most evident when firing up the camera, where there's a noticeable motion blur -- not to mention a system slowdown -- but it's also evident when viewing your own photos or watching video clips, where the screen blurs to a level we found distracting. For regular telephony it's perfectly suitable, but if you're a multimedia maven, look elsewhere.
The F850 doesn't pretend to be the top of the line in Next G phones -- for that, you'd need to look at the JASJAM, although there you'd strangely still need to omit mobile Foxtel. Perhaps that's a blessing in disguise. Anyway, the F850 is an inexpensive way to ease into the Next G world, with an outright asking price of $409, some $250 cheaper than the Samsung A701. As such, we've rated it highly based on value alone, but prospective purchasers should be aware of its rather severe shortcomings.
mul
21/06/2008, 02:18 PM
rating
7/10
got this phone for free off my dad. was better than my old phone in the sense it did everything i needed it to do. I was quite happy with its functions as i only really used it for texting. Easy to upload mp3's and use for ringtones. Wasn't happy when the batery stopped charging and now i can't use it.
Pros: Easy to use
Plays mp3 ringtones
Cons: Battery plays up
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lg ku250
09/06/2008, 09:23 PM
rating
8/10
Telstra F850 is best and cheap mobile with good results. I like this phone also because of its fast and efficient features.
Pros: Very light.
Gorgeous color.
Decent talk time.
Cons: Nothing.
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lisa again
01/06/2008, 11:11 PM
rating
2/10
oh, and the weird thing, talking bad dictionary setup... it didn't even have the word 'Telstra' in it. which, I don't care much about really because I thought of other words to represent Telstra... but clearly shows that Telstra didn't do any testing on the phone either.
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lisa
01/06/2008, 10:57 PM
rating
2/10
Terrible phone. Worst I've ever had and I've been using mobiles for a very long time.
The Telstra sales person first sold me this phone by claiming it was the same as the latest Motorolla at the time. It was not even close.
Pros: It's light because it's made of plastic.
The camera phone is not too bad considering all the other bad features.
Cons: - The sound quality is terrible; it muffles your voice and the voice of others. I just hated talking on the phone at all.
- Typos in the text throughout the phone.
- It has broken in half after only 14 month's use.
- The menu systems are terribly designed. The phone book has a section called 'mates', which makes no sense as a different category to 'friends'. Worse, the picture for 'mates' is of someone with a graduation hat on!
- There are very few ways to change the phone eg. You can't change the phone book categories.
- The predictive text function doesn't even look like it's been tested. I have had better predictive text on phones much older!
- I stopped even using the 3G functions within about a month, because the phone itself just could not handle basic web searching.
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vlom
01/06/2008, 05:28 PM
rating
4/10
steph. Hold the red hang up button down. it will require a pin though, so I hope you have that
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steph...telstra...next...g
29/05/2008, 11:16 AM
rating
1/10
i wouldnt have a clue if this phone is good or not, i reasently got it off a friend and its been on charge all morning and it will not turn on. would anyone have any ideas on how to do it?
Pros: ?
Cons: its not on........
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Ruffenuff
19/04/2008, 07:00 AM
rating
6/10
Is there really any phone out there that
someone hasnt had a problem with?
Whatever phone we buy there is usually something wrong with it!! Is anyone really happy in our throw out society?? ie:everything is made to be thrown out and be replaced rather that fix the problem) I have just brought a ZTE 850 updated model ? is it really lol but I have tried motorola, ericsson, nokia, samsung, blueberry and they have all bummed out on me, so i grabbed this phone from ebay $99 & see how i go :)
Pros: None
Cons: None
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iwannaeatchickenburgers
16/04/2008, 07:47 PM
rating
2/10
never had phone, wondering if i should get one.
Pros: looks alright
Cons: apparently, its crap.
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Cindy
11/03/2008, 12:43 AM
rating
5/10
looks alright
Cons: cant add new words to dictionary and can't select numbers to put on a call reject list, doesn't take good photos, first one broke first time I dropped it.
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Mike
13/02/2008, 03:45 PM
rating
8/10
We have a 850 and a 851. The 850 is almost 2years old with no problems the 851 is less than 12 months old has had a couple of batteries but the phone will not hold theie charge if they were both as good as the first one I would be happy to buy another.
Pros: The 850 is great, given no problems at all. A no fuss phone for people who are just happy with a phone that works.
Cons: the 851 has had issues and is not up to scratch. If it is replaced with a good one I have no issues with the company at all.
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