Orange - Tokyo

Orange recently launched two own-branded mobiles, the Berlin and the Tokyo, both available on Pay As You Go. At launch the Tokyo cost £159.99, but it has been reduced to £79.99.

At launch I thought this was an overpriced mobile and difficult to recommend. The considerable reduction in price has done it a favour, though, and it is now a more attractive proposition. I'm still not sure I'd recommend it in terms of its features, which are rather thin on the ground, but in terms of its looks this phone has won me over.

There is no doubting the absolute cuteness of this mobile. Its black and silver colour scheme might not be original, but the shiny black buttons and brushed metal finish to the battery cover are attractive.

More significant is that this phone is tiny. At just 92mm tall, 35mm wide and 14mm thick it is one of the smallest mobiles I've ever seen. It is also one of the lightest at just 68g. I found it very easy to slip into the tiniest of pockets when wanting to travel really light.

Of course this means that both the buttons and the screen are small. I had no trouble with the buttons, but then I've got fairly small hands. The screen, at 1.3 inches corner to corner and managing just 128 x 160 pixels, is a bit cramped at times, though. To add to its woes, I found it a bit hard to read outdoors.

The features list is small, to say the least. There is a camera, but it shoots stills at just 1.3 megapixels, making it way below the generally accepted entry level of 2 megapixels for mobile phones. There is a self-portrait mirror but no flash.

There are mobile phone staples like a calendar, to-do list manager, alarms, currency converter and unit converter built in. There's a stopwatch and a sound recorder, and a couple of games.

Also among the phone's features are mobile e-mail and Web and WAP browsing, though I found all three quite a trial on the small screen. It just can't show enough information to make these features viable. The phone also plays music, and a 512MB microSD card comes in the packaging so you can store tunes.

I rather like the ringtone composer which lets you make up tunes using the numberpad to represent different notes. It offers a variety of instrument sounds. None really sound like the instrument they are labelled as, but they are all noticeably different, so I forgive that.(itreviews.co.uk)