Cheap, Low-spec Android phones out of China

I saw this "The Robot" android phone on Trademe and Googled it. I found it wholesaling on Chinavasion.com for NZ$250-ish (US$170-ish). That's cheap.

The specs are pretty mediocre, with a slowish processor (Samsung 400Mhz), 2.8" screen, no 3G, and only two GSM frequencies (900/1800).  This phone is useless in North America and is targeted for Rest of World (ROW). Almost all web sites talking it up use the same boilerplate text.

The phone will do what it says. In NZ, you can make calls on Vodafone or   2degrees. Telecom's XT network simply will not work as the phone can't even do either UMTS 850 or 2100. On a compatible carrier, you can surf the net via 2G/GPRS only. You can use it like a mini-netbook computer (slowly). I'm tempted to buy one just to see how good (or bad) it really is.

The only mention of an app market urges phone buyers to go to the And App Store. This isn't the Android Market, but if millions of people with cheap phones go there looking for apps, it may well grow quickly.

"The Robot" is just one example. There are others.

Fascinating to see this happening. Feels a bit like the early PC days.....an open platform growing like a weed in every nook and cranny.

Good phone or good camera - or both?

I have a great digital camera. My 7.2 megapixel SONY DSC H5 is now 2 years old. I have a 2GB Memory stick in it. The battery usually goes flat before I'm able to fill it.

My problem is, if I use this camera, I either carry my laptop around with me, or I can't do anything with the images until I get them home. All kitted up, with camera bag and laptop backpack, I look I'm about to make an assault on Everest. I then have to make time to manage / handle / share whatever images I took.The battery life of the big camera is poor. The special SONY AA NiMH batteries last barely 30 minutes if you use the LCD display. As they age, they last a fraction of that. This means you have to carry a camera bag around with plenty of batteries in it. Cumbersome, annoying and awkward in actual use.

Increasingly, I find myself opting, instead, for the 1.3megapixel camera in my very 'inexpensive' Vodafone 715 3G cell phone. With the cell phone, it sits in my pocket, the battery lasts all day and I can send the pics via email or pxt to anyone, anywhere, immediately after taking them. I can upload videos on YouTube and share photos with my 300+ followers on Twitter via Twitpic.com.

For the reasons above, the large SONY H5 digital camera is rarely getting an outing these days even though the picture quality of the cell phone is not very good. In a way, it seems like a challenge to see if I can get something good out of the crappy camera on the cell. The poor quality can even lend a sense of immediacy to the photos distorted as they often are by motion, light artifacts and blurring due to fingerprints on the lens. I think I often succeed there. Have a look for yourself.

There is a growing number of phones that can do WiFi, but from what I can see so far, they tend to be like the SONY DSC-G3, or the Kodak EasyShare camera, tied, at least in part, to the vendor's web site and software.

The advantage of the cell phone cameras is they aren't tied to anyone (as cameras) and I can send whatever I want to anywhere. Of course the downside is crappy lenses and relatively poor image quality. But .....even at 1.3megapixels, 99 times out of 100 lately that has been good enough.
Good enough. Dangerous words in any market for people selling things that aren't....or are too good.

Unless digital camera makes do something amazing in the very near future, like make a camera that can connect to a cell phone or act like one, it looks very much like my next camera will be a high-end smart phone that costs about the same as my last digital camera. A year from now, new product offerings, like the ACER Tempo DX900, Nokia Nseries, HTC Magic and the new iPhones in the mobile market will have a huge impact on the camera market, too. At least for people like me who want their camera in their pocket, a battery that lasts all day and their pics on the Net seconds or minutes after they were taken.

Convergence: The transformation of cell phones

The mobile phone industry seems to be going through a collective intake of breath right now. Very soon, virtually all new phones will be 'smart phones' of one sort or another. The future of phone companies like Motorola are hanging in the balance. They either need to come up with something amazing - or at least competitive - or they won't be around much longer.

Bad enough at any time, but the industry has arrived at this moment in the midst of the worst economic mess since the Great Depression. Only the concerted efforts of the world's central banks is preventing the global financial system from tumbling into ruin as it did in the early 1930s when central banks sat on their hands for two years and let the market decide with disastrous consequences. Now is a tough time in anyone's market, never mind one as competitive and dependent on investment in expensive, fixed capital infrastructure as the mobile phone market.

In New Zealand, the picture is further enhanced (or complicated) by the imminent launch of Telecom New Zealand's own late and long-delayed 3G cellular network. CDMA is almost history.
GSM-based Vodafone have been eating Telecom's lunch for the past several years as Telecom has been unable to offer services like video calling to its users. In order to allow users to take advantage of the functions and services of the new smart phones, Telecom's new network comes not a moment too soon. Fingers crossed for a trouble free launch.

Globally, the next few weeks are probably the last before the mobile world effectively surrenders to handheld convergence. Your phone, your computer, your Internet, your camera - still and video - as well as your music and video collections and contacts and productivity applicatins, will all very soon be accessed via an object that fits easily in the palm of your hand or your shirt pocket.

iPhone users have been leading the way and the iPhone's success has set the benchmark for what is to come. Apple's iPhone has a long lead, but is constrained by Apple's control freak tendencies about the platform and high prices for both the phone and data in many markets. Those expensive places - like New Zealand - are still waiting for the new wave of phones to break on their shores.

My next several blog posts are going to look at the leading known contenders for 3G supremacy and speculate about what elese might be hiding in the pipeline. The new iPhone? The Palm Pre? Blackberry Storm? Maybe the HTC Magic? Something as yet unknown from Nokia, Motorola or perhaps even Sony? Already the list is growing and full of promises of some very cool stuff.

The good news is, there needn't be only one. I'm sure this market is more than big enough for several vendors to carve out solid bases of loyal, happy customers. One things is certain: a year from now the mobile phone / multimedia player / Internet access device / productivity, organiser, games box will be something new and probably VERY cool.

Google "Android" to be cell phone VHS?

Today brings the news that Sony Ericsson and ASUS are joining the "Open Handset Alliance". The (now 11) members of the OHA are promoting the use of Goole's Android operating system for cellphones.

Android is Internet giant Google's offering as an open platform for software development for handsets.

Motorola and others have already bet their cellular future on Android.

I'm looking forward to these offerings. I like Apple's iPhone, but the proprietary nature of it has so far put me off. It's an expensive device from a controlling company and is typically tied to a single cell network provider: AT&T in the US and Vodafone here in New Zealand. So people who want 'cool stuff' have to lock themselves into a device and network that effectively dictates to them what they can do and for how much.

Google's Android promises to bust those doors wide open and offer a rich and constantly growing function set on an open platform that will work on any network compatible with the phone hardware. I'm tired of buying the cheap phones because I need one for each cell provider. I'd like to have one really good (and very cool) phone and use it with any provider competing to offer me services.

This is much more like what I want and would happily pay for......and hopefully soon will.

iPhone? Hmmmm......

Consumer.org.nz have a thorough review of the new Apple iPhone 3G. It's well worth reading.

The iPhone has a lot of very cool features. The touch screen. The ability to rotate the content on the screen to remain "level". The Safari web browser is probably the best on any cell phone to date. The ability to work out where it is via GPS. Total coolness and by themselves great additions to a full-featured 3G phone.

Unfortunately, the iPhone isn't a full-featured phone. There is no video camera. There is no voice-activated calling. You can't move files on and off the phone easily via a memory chip. Photos have to be imported via iTunes.

Setting aside the $80 / month, account-only, two-year contract to buy one for $549, the lack of these features make the iPhone less useful than my current phone.


OK, my $128 Vodafone 715 has a smaller screen and can't do voice commands, but it can make video and check my Internet e-mail and play Flash videos and I can move MP3s photos and any other data on and off it easily via USB. I can make a video and instantly upload it via Vodafone e-mail to YouTube or any of many other video-sharing web sites. I can even recharge the battery via a USB connection to my laptop if I'm caught without access to a power point. Converting vids to 3g2 format and copying them to the Vodafone 715 has been fun for my daughter. She makes videos with her digital camera, edits them and then takes them to school on her phone to play for her friends. The V715 lets you play vids "fullscreen" (rotating the video to play landscape on the screen instead of portrait). This makes the actual video display area on this small phone larger, for example, than the more expensive Samsung a900 or the Motorola Razr phones.

My next phone will have a big screen, 3G, WiFi, Video and still camera, web browser, voice commands, MP3 player, at least 1GB of removable storage, support USB data transfer on and off and be a good phone with reasonable battery life. It will work with a pre-pay SIM if I want it to. There is already a lot of choice out there for these features. I'll be buying my next phone soon. I particularly want the voice-activation for calling in the car, via the bluetooth earpiece I use with the V715 to receive calls.

Given that list, my next phone won't be an iPhone. Besides....cool as it is, I don't really need a touch screen. I don't really need to rotate the content or use GPS to find out where I am. I usually know where I am. If I wanted a true mobile office Smartphone, I'd get a Blackberry.

Sorry, Apple. Almost....but the iPhone's extras aren't extras I need and some of the stuff you left out, I use a lot more and don't want to do without. The proprietary marketing iTunes and other stuff have no value to me. Worse, I'm a Linux user....not an aphid to be stroked for cash. I use tools. They don't use me.