Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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Friday, December 08, 2006
Low-cost phones from an India perspective
Mobile Phones under 5K (Rupees) presents a number of low-cost phones that are sold in India. Note that prices are without any subsidizing/subscription. Note also that some of the phones are well below 5000 Rupees. Samsung has one for 2000 Rupees!
Currency converter: 5000 Rupees = $112 = €84
No doubt fully functional phones, and some are also stylish, with a feature set that would fit most people, also outside of India.
Most lack a camera. Exceptions are Nokia 6020, Motorola C261 and Sony Ericsson K310i, but only VGA (0.3 megapizels).
Why don't most people in Europe and USA buy such inexpensive phones without a subscription instead of signing up for long subscriptions that are almost impossible to get rid of? Are we too nerdy? Is a high resolution camera and music features that important? As a secondary subscription-less phone these fit nicely.
I tried to check which ones support MIDlets, and some clearly do (either MIDP1 or MIDP2), but I suspect the J2ME Polish site is not complete on "foreign" phones, as other phones in the same series indicate MIDP support, yet some of the evaluated phones are not mentioned at all.
I would guess all have at least SMS, MMS and WAP, but I didn't check that thoroughly.
Currency converter: 5000 Rupees = $112 = €84
No doubt fully functional phones, and some are also stylish, with a feature set that would fit most people, also outside of India.
Most lack a camera. Exceptions are Nokia 6020, Motorola C261 and Sony Ericsson K310i, but only VGA (0.3 megapizels).
Why don't most people in Europe and USA buy such inexpensive phones without a subscription instead of signing up for long subscriptions that are almost impossible to get rid of? Are we too nerdy? Is a high resolution camera and music features that important? As a secondary subscription-less phone these fit nicely.
I tried to check which ones support MIDlets, and some clearly do (either MIDP1 or MIDP2), but I suspect the J2ME Polish site is not complete on "foreign" phones, as other phones in the same series indicate MIDP support, yet some of the evaluated phones are not mentioned at all.
I would guess all have at least SMS, MMS and WAP, but I didn't check that thoroughly.
