T-Mobile Pulse Mini: photos

The Pulse Mini from T-Mobile is an exclusive handset that, rarely for an Android device, is available on Pay As You Go. The Pulse Mini follows the original Pulse, which launched last year, and costs £99.99.

The Pulse Mini is a compact handset measuring 106mm by 57mm by 14mm. It sits comfortably in the hand and fits neatly in the pocket. The screen is relatively small at 2.8in., and the resolution a moderate 320 by 240 pixels.

The small screen size makes this smartphone less than ideal for media-rich activities like web browsing or document creation, although an accelerometer means you can try these activities with the screen in portrait or landscape mode simply by turning the Pulse Mini in your hands.

The Pulse Mini is an Android 2.1 smartphone, but its processor — a Qualcomm MSM 7225 — runs at 528MHz and feels a little underpowered for some tasks.

The Android-2.1 specific live wallpapers — animated background screens — are a case in point: the animations are jerky at times, making them less than satisfactory.

Hardware buttons for Call and End and a large D-pad are supplemented by three touch buttons immediately beneath the screen. These provide the Home, Menu and Back functions. A further menu row on the main screen itself provides shortcuts to people, messaging, apps and multiple home screens.

The Pulse Mini has no fewer than fifteen home screens, which appear in a grid of thumbnails when you tap the Home button. Picking the one you want is a simple matter of tapping it, whereupon it zooms to fill the whole screen area.

With tri-band GSM, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and 300MB of internal memory, the Pulse Mini is reasonably well-specified. The camera resolution is 3.2 megapixels.

The resistive touchscreen is less responsive than capacitive screens, and a stylus is provided for occasions when the screen icons are too small to be tapped at with a fingertip.