ZTE Tania review

The ZTE Tania is Windows Phone 7.5 Mango on a budget. You will find it available for around £210, and for that you get an interesting proposition.

The price cut from the top-end Windows Phone handsets gets you full blown Windows Phone 7.5 in a large screened device with no ZTE-added extra apps or tweaks, so in a very real sense this is a taste of the Windows Phone operating system without bells and whistles.

We liked

Windows Phone 7.5 is full blown with no corners cut and no elements taken away. If you want to try Microsoft's smartphone operating system but are on a budget, it could be a winner for you.

The screen, while lacking in quality, is big, and that means it's better designed for web browsing and media consumption - as long as you don't intend to do either for long periods of time in bright sunlight.

We disliked

The build quality is OK, but a long way from great. But to be honest it is pretty solid, and acceptable for the price. The screen isn't wonderful though, and it can be difficult to view outdoors in bright sunlight.

There's a very measly 4GB of built-in storage and no way to add any more to this. It's probably the single most irritating thing about this handset.

The camera isn't up to a great deal, and video recording very annoyingly resets itself from 720p to 640 x 480 after every shoot.

Final verdict

ZTE has done a brave thing bringing the low-cost ZTE Tania to market, and we're pleased it's taken the leap and produced a complete Windows Phone handset at a relatively low cost and with a large screen.

If nothing else, it proves this is possible. The likes of the Nokia Lumia 610 and 710 are both cheaper but don't offer the same screen size, and the trend towards the massive screen is something that's currently not well provided for in the Windows Phone camp.

However, there are a lot of compromises on offer here for the price, so make sure you give the Tania a test run before deciding to take the plunge.