Vodafone touts 'new concept' smartphone

Good price, but...

...like other budget Android smartphones it's likely to be a little underpowered. My partner's Wildfire certainly is, and I suspect this handset will use the same 528Mhz ARM CPU. Watching that try to play Angry Birds (which granted isn't the best-programmed bit of software in the world) is painful, even with the background switched off. Similarly, her friend has the budget Samsung Galaxy Whateveritis which she's equally frustrated with.

That said, from the screenshot it looks like Huawei have gone for a mostly stock experience here rather than tonnes of HTC-Sense-style customisation that on a handset like this might slow things down.

But if they don't get the performance right here, first-time smartphone buyers are likely to be put off, especially if they don't realise more expensive phones can be far more usable.

Caution symbol because buyers might want to save up for a phone with a 1GHz+ CPU.

If this is like the Vodafone 845...

And shares the same platform as the Huawei Pulse Mini, it's an okay machine - rooting is simple, it has a 600 Mhz MSN chip that overclocks to 700Mhz, no 3D acceleration or Flash support though. Still faster than a first gen iPhone on general tasks.

Thing is, Huawei can't release kernel source code that actually works out of the box, so expect frustration while waiting for a working custom ROM solution.

Also, likely to come with a resistive screen for that price - what is okay since the screen is small, but it's pretty painfull typing after a while, and not at all like using a modern capacitive smartphone.