Basic phones offer so much more these days. While the Virgin Media VM202 may at first glance appear to be just another average candybar device, it boasts home-screen widgets, a 3.5mm audio jack and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

First impressions

The VM202, which is made by Alcatel, may look like one of the early Sony Ericsson or Nokia candybars, with its compact size, rounded styling and comfortable keyboard. But there's an added bonus - a slide-out QWERTY keyboard lurks behind its 2.2-inch display.

Considering it's a basic device, the home screen is pretty sophisticated, offering a widget toolbar, which can be used to customise widgets for social networking, messages, calls, clock, emails and so on. The toolbar can display your latest emails, messages and calls.

While you'll find no dedicated key for the camera or volume, there is a 3.5mm audio jack, so music lovers can plug in their own headphones to listen to their favourite tunes. Memory is basic at 2MB, but thanks to a microSD slot, this can be upped to 8GB.

User-friendliness

A basic phone should work well for voice calls - and this one does. In fact it's better than some smartphones we've used. You can dial the number, or simply type in the first few letters of a contact to call up the number - it's even possible to add a shortcut key for your favourite friend. This is one feature we're very keen on - it's possible to allocate shortcuts to the 2-9 number keys, sending you to either a contact, program or web link.

Texting is also a breeze. Simply type the first few letters of a contact's name into the To: field - if that doesn't equal a match it will automatically be entered as a number. It's a shame though that the standard and QWERTY keyboards were a tad unresponsive, making it tough to type at speed. As this should be an ideal device for texting, it's a shame the keyboards let it down - even inputting punctuation is a bit tiresome, requiring the user to switch back and forth between different menus.

The D-pad is also a touch slow - scrolling through the contacts list proved sluggish.

Added extras

Social networkers have been given a social networking widget - it's not a full app, not that you should expect that on a budget device. This just provides links to the mobile sites of the likes of MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, hi5 and Flickr. Note that Twitter and Facebook are not included - a sign of the young target market this device is aimed at.

What we did like was the bonus preloaded Opera Mini browser, which is the best, quickest choice for any basic handset. It only supports EDGE internet, so you won't be loading any image-heavy sites, but it works just fine for Google searches and mobile-optimised websites.

The camera produced pixelated images, with faded colours - unsurprising for its 0.3 megapixels. Photos can be sent via MMS, email or Bluetooth, and you can also set your snaps as a contact picture or home screen wallpaper. Note you can only take photos in landscape mode, although it is possible to rotate them when you go into the gallery.

Amazingly there is a video camera, but don't get too excited. It's very basic, so you won't be taking much in the way of fast-action shots, and you're limited to minute-long clips, but at least the option is there.

You can also listen to an FM radio, which gave a decent sound through our Sony headphones, and it's easy to save your favourite channels.

The verdict

This is a basic phone, but the widgets and QWERTY keyboard really make it stand out. Other budget phones have tried to introduce these kinds of high-end features and failed - the VM202 does a decent job.