Orange San Diego review

The Orange San Diego is the latest in the carrier's legacy of affordable, own-brand Android handsets, building off the success of its San Francisco, San Francisco 2 and Monte Carlo devices.

However, under its case the device actually boasts one key selling point differentiating it not just from its Orange predecessors, but also every other Android phone in Europe - its Intel chip.

The handset is the first Android handset in Europe to be powered by an Intel processor. The company claims the component is "tailor made" for Android and having finally gotten our hands on the device, while we wouldn't call Intel's arrival revolutionary, we were impressed by how well the two have paired up.

Intel chip performance
The San Diego features a 1.6GHz Z2460 single-core processor that Intel claims is optimised for Android - meaning that even though it's single core, it should theoretically match most current dual-core Android handsets' performance.

Testing the device using the Antutu benchmarking app, the San Diego proved this theory, scoring a reasonable 5590, beating the 1GHz dual-core Xperia P, which scored a slightly less impressive 5150.

In terms of real world performance we have to say Antutu's scores mirrored our experience, with the San Diego feeling every bit as quick as most mid-priced dual-core handsets, being able to seamlessly stream video and load web pages in a matter of seconds.

In fact the only time we had any issues with the device's performance was when doing basic actions like organising our homepage, with it occasionally feeling slightly unresponsive. However, it's worth noting that these problems only occurred when using one of Orange's custom apps or widgets, meaning it's likely a software as opposed to hardware problem causing the chug.