Review: T-Mobile Pulse smartphone

T-Mobile's Pulse touch-screen smartphone is a low-cost handset based on Google's Android platform, and the first to be available on a pay-as-you-go tariff. With a user-friendly interface and built-in access to services such as YouTube plus messaging, the Pulse is aimed at consumers who want to stay in touch with their friends.

Launched in September and available since the end of October, the Pulse is built exclusively for T-Mobile by Huawei and is SIM-locked to that network. It costs £179.99 on pay-as-you-go, but is also available free on a £30 per month contract for 24 months.

Based on Android OS version 1.5, the Pulse is worth considering for anyone who regularly uses Google services such as Google Mail, although we would not recommend it for anyone wanting to do a lot of email or messaging, as the lack of a physical keyboard makes entering text a real pain.

In design, the Pulse looks rather retro to our eyes, resembling a Microsoft Pocket PC from five or six years ago rather than a sleek modern handset. Nevertheless, the Pulse has a capacitive touch-screen and supports HSDPA, Wi-Fi, built-in GPS and Bluetooth, all standard features on current-generation smartphones, and it certainly seems to have decent build quality.

At 130g, the Pulse is slightly lighter than Apple's iPhone but, apart from both having a 3.5in 320 x 480 touch screen, there is little in common between these two devices.

T-Mobile has equipped the Pulse with its Canvas user interface, which basically delivers a workspace consisting of six contiguous screens that you can move between by flicking a finger on the screen or pressing the trackball to zoom out and get a bird's eye overview of the whole workspace.

Like other Android handsets, the screen is customisable, and you can drag applications and other screen furniture anywhere you want. Users can add shortcuts and widgets to the desktop, while a unique feature to the Pulse is Widcards, which provide a kind of live shortcut to calendar entries, emails and the like.

By default the central home screen has a clock, and links to key tools such as phone dialer, email and T-Mobile's web'n'walk for browsing. The screen next to this holds all the Google tools, such as a search bar, Google Maps, Google Mail, Google Talk, and Android Market for downloading further applications to the handset.

The phone's browser provides a fairly good web surfing experience in our opinion, but does not support Flash-based content.

Persistent at the bottom of the screen are two buttons, one linking to a favourites list of most regularly accessed contacts, while the second links to the application menu. Beneath the screen, a menu button brings up a context-sensitive menu on the home screen or inside applications, while a back button takes you back a step.

Like other Android handsets, the Pulse is pretty simple to get started with, as you simply touch the functions on the screen that you want to access, and it feels very natural to just drag around objects and tap the relevant on-screen controls.