Cheapest 5 Android Phones

While some including me believe that the top-end of mobile phones will live forever and the platforms of the top-end won’t come to the low-end, there are others who believe that open platforms like Android (or the many earlier Linux consortiums – CELF, OSDL) truly provides platform that can work on the high-end and low-end equally well.

But as we’ve quickly seen, instead of the hardware manufacturers, the software industry really has driven what hardware sells. We saw that for the PC market and are quickly seeing that in the mobile phone markets now. How the OS and the applications are making or breaking the success of the mobile phone handsets. Nevertheless, here are the cheapest Android phones in the Indian market, which may probably be global leading in terms of mobile phone growth in the low-end market… And the prices will keep dropping I guess!!

1. Huawei IDEOS U8300 – Rs. 6200/-

Huawei has many handsets in India in the CDMA market. Most of these handsets are serviced by operators that provide these mobile phones along with the plan. The IDEOS is manufactured in China and is sold in many markets around the world. I happened to see this phone is also available in Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia.

This entry-level smartphone was designed with the needs of young, mobile users in mind. This smartphone combines a QWERTY keyboard and a touch-screen in a small, chocolate-bar inspired package. Powered by Android 2.1, it comes with the most popular social networking applications pre-installed, so users can stay in touch anytime, anywhere.

For more information, please visit: www.huaweidevice.com/ideos

The phone has low battery life, but provides excellent features for the price.

2. Acer beTouch E110 – Rs. 6990/-

• Stylish, compact and slim design
• 2.8” (QVGA) resistive screen
• 5-way navi key
• 3G and Bluetooth connectivity

Looks pretty and is light-weight. Doesn’t have very good battery life, but does have some good applications and interfaces built-in like Spinlets and Nemo Player

 

3. Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro – Rs. 8700/-

- 240 x 320 pixels (QVGA)
- 2,6" capacitive touchscreen

- GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
- UMTS/HSPA 900/2100

- 5MP Camera with Flash
- WiFi

Great build quality and excellent software and hardware polish. Great support and service centers. Known brand

4. Samsung I5503 Galaxy 5 – Rs. 8800/-

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 3.6 Mbps HSDPA support
• Smart dialing
• 2.8 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen
• Android OS v2.1 Eclair
• TouchWiz 3.0 UI customization (on both, I5801 has Orange UI too)
• 600 MHz processor
• 2MP camera with geo-tagging
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n support

 

5. Spice Mi300 – Rs. 9400/-

Android 2.1 Ready
Android Market Place
Google Messaging Services with Push Mail
AGPS

Key features

• 3.5G
• Wi- Fi
• 3.2” HVGA Capacitive Touch Screen
• 5 MP Camera

Android Logo Inspired from Atari

Engadget put up an interesting story today, where it shows the Android logo seems to be inspired from a not-so-popular game on Atari, called the Gauntlet: The Third Encounter. Looks to me quite similar and definitely an inspiration when someone was thinking of an Android image. Nevertheless, I do not believe the suing game will start based on the logo alone...

This also reminds me of many other similar inspired logos from popular brands, which once came by email:

 

 

 

$35 Indian Tablet Vs Dell Streak

Sagar, a friend of mine has been pushing me news about the new $35 laptop from the Indian HRD Ministry… And I’ve been saying it’s one of the false promises that politicians are known to make. Nothing good comes out of these news flashes. On the other hand, we also have another device that Dell is preparing to launch known as Dell Streak. These two devices have a lot in common, but are also quite different in the markets they are targeted for and obviously the price.

Now the Indian $35 Laptop:

Processor / Chipset still unknown 7-inch resistive touch screen display Capable of browsing the web 2GB of RAM Wi-Fi connectivity USB port VGA camera on the back

Interestingly the software or the operating systems seem to be different in different demos. Some recent demos are showing an Android operating system, while the initial demos of the device seemed to have Meego installed on it. The device is still a year away from availability, but having seen it run and that too pretty smoothly for such a cheap device on Android, I am very pleasantly surprised. No technology in recent years has blown my imagination like this one… and if it can be mass produced with excellent software, this is the tablet that the world’s poor children were waiting. Understanding some of the challenges of such devices, I do not believe the tablet is still there. But it is definitely a leap forward…

Dell Streak:

The Dell Streak is another tablet device running the Android operating system. The Dell Streak is costing $550 and is available with a contract from AT&T at $300.

1Ghz Snapdragon ARM processor from Qualcomm 5-inch capacitive multi-touch WVGA 5 MP autofocus camera on back VGA camera on the front 512MB RAM 3G + Wi-Fi support GPS Accelerometer

Streak is pretty expensive when you compare it feature-wise to the Indian tablet. Obviously the market and the margins are different, but just goes to show the line between phones and tablets is blurring. As Android becomes more prevalent in the market, the line becomes more blurred. As realized in Meego, the combination of Maemo (Nokia) and Moblin (Intel-Linux) turns out to be very powerful smartphone OS. Although these devices are great, it is the applications that make the user-experience special and make these useful.

As the Indian tablet progresses forward, the acceptance of the device are going to be determined by the applications that run on the device. If they are targeted towards children between the ages (6-12), it is going to be very interesting to build applications for them. Where education and knowledge can be taken to new limits, the true potential of such devices also depend on how they are delivered.

Google to Bring iPhone-like App Store to Android

The iPhone App Store's success for Apple has changed the way Google is thinking content-distribution for the Android platform. According to an announcement yesterday, Google is ready to have an App Store for the Android platform called the Android Market.

Google has been working on the Android platform for over an year now and is about to give a final release by the end of the year. Different handset manufacturers have already vouched their support for the platform and Android is seen as the biggest competitor to Apple's iPhone in the smartphone market. With the roaring initial success of the AppStore for Apple, it makes obvious sense for Google to have a similar content-distribution system for their platform.

Google also has an expertise on web infrastructure and it can surely avoid the mistakes that Apple has done with the reliability and availability of its web services. The details on exact model of operation of Android Market are still unknown, but Google surely will make it open and stable!! They are the "do-no-evil" company!!

Can Developers Decide iPhone Vs Android ??

Its exciting to see the amount of work that is going into mobile phone world. Google wants to be at the helm of things in the future of mobile devices and   Android is its bet to conquer the mobile world. Rich Miner, manager for mobile platforms at Google was speaking at the Emerging Communications Conference and said that Android will Outshine iPhone. Only time will tell if Google's belief in Android will be true, but let us analyse how the competitive environment of Android and iPhone will look like.

Apple's iPhone is a phenomenon. It sold about 4 million units in its first seven months of release and is grabbing market share in the US smartphone market unlike any other previous mobile phone. Even with a closed platform, where installing apps was an issue and developing apps for the iPhone was a reverse-engineering experiment, it still managed to make all those sales. Just goes to show what good design and "Apple sleekness" can do!! The latest release of the iPhone SDK brings in a new paradigm to the iPhone, where developers will be making new apps that can be downloaded from the "Apple App Store". Apple said last week that more than 100,000 downloads of the SDK were done and if this is any indication then we can surely expect some interesting apps for the iPhone.

On the other hand we have Google Android which was announced at 3GSM last year. Google Android is a software platform and there isn't any device in the market that currently implements it. The SDK has been downloaded over 750,000 times and Google is offering $10 million in prizes as part of its "Android Developers Challenge" for innovative applications. The response to the competition and design wins from Motorola, HTC, Samsung and others, may be one reason why Google may be confident about its position that Android may outshine iPhone.

But the question to ask here is whether just having good apps decide the winner?? iPhone has made its sale till date only on the pre-installed apps. This goes to show the mobile phone matters. The iPhone User-Interface has been innovative, but the same can't be said about Android at the moment. How it will be implemented by the handset manufacturers will also be another reason to decide the winner in this battle. Google Android being free, open-source will definitely help keep the price of the handset down compared to the expensive iPhone, but will price be enough to win this battle??

Developers may create great apps, but the users are going to decide the winner of this battle. Lets wait and watch the fun!!

10 Reasons Why Android Will Be Successful

I was always skeptical about the Gphone. I thought the entire idea of Google making a phone seemed silly to me. Google being a software/web company making hardware seemed too big a step. There were obvious comparisons with the iPhone and I was one of the biggest critics of Gphone for my colleagues and friends.

But a few weeks back when I first saw Google's press release about the Android, I got a little more interested. But my doubts were still there... And on 12th Nov, when I downloaded the SDK and saw the presentation videos, I realized this is what programming on mobile phones will be in the near future. I try to present a developer perspective on why programming on Android will be successful. May be the handset manufacturers and operators would want to differ, but for the developers I think Google's done a great job.

1.) Free & Easy Access: Its "free" as in beer as well as "free" as in freedom. Operators and manufacturers will be able to customize and install for free. Thus, it'll be cheaper to build compared to say Windows Mobile, UIQ or Symbian. Also, Google/OHA intends to provide enough support for everyone which will be free or cheaper than anything else in the market.

2.) Promise of JavaME: If you downloaded the SDK, you know that its like JavaME and programmed on Eclipse. JavaME (earlier, J2ME) already has a huge developer base and the learning curve to develop applications for Android is going to be a small one. The porting of already developed application would be easy. You could add new functionality to old JavaME applications very easily.

3.) Good interfaces: The UI parts like Layouts, AdapterViews and using XML to design the UI, make Android what J2ME interfaces should always have been. Its more like J2MEPolish if you think of it as a developer. Something like Matisse (GUI Builder/ WYSIWYG Visual Designer) should have been done by Google for faster & easier GUI design... (I don't mean adding Swing, 'coz not every mobile device would be capable enough. Only a GUI builder).... 3D/2D with the openGL system is also easy to use. Its more like JSR239, so small learning curve again!

4.) Great apps: Being able to use Google's applications like Google maps, Gmail.... and WebKit (not Google's tech) within your application reduces a lot of effort for the developer and helps new innovative features. The use of the notification area across the platform is another exciting feature for developers. It feels like being able to use the system like Symbian development with Java...

5.) Linux based: Being Linux based is not new. Motorola among others already have a few Linux phones. But its worth mention because with Linux you know that there are fewer bugs as its been a few years that Linux is being used for mobiles. A lot of ironing as already been done, which means its stable than anything new Google would have developed.

6.) Hardware requirement: The hardware requirements with Android are not yet to be found. But the promise seems like it'll be available on most devices. If this turns out to be true then it means that our application is available to a larger audience. May be the Optional APIs like LBS (Location-based services), Media API, 3D and Low-level hardware access will be device specific, but other than that, it'll be probably common. For the developer it means you have to think less about which JSRs the device supports

7.) Eclipse & Developer love: Google's "Don't Do Evil" philosophy means that quite a lot of people love them including developers. Google's earlier tools like GWT, Google Gears are examples of excellent tools that developers love. The SDK is Eclipse and this means there are lot of developers who already know to use the IDE and platform.

8.) Publicity: As developers, the added advantage of developing for the Android is the publicity you may be able to get. Being the first apps to be built for Android, its obviously gonna catch the eye of a lot of other developers and consumers.

9.) Cash prize: Its part of publicity as well as getting rich. If money and fame are motivations for you as a developer, then Google has hit it right!

10.) Hype: Like they say, "Any kind of publicity is good publicity". Look at Apple's iPhone and you'll know that the hype created around it helped quite a lot of sales for the product. There so much hype around Android these days. Since Android/Gphones are already so much in the news, its pretty evident that