desiibond
Keymaster
I have seen many on tech forums asking information or advice in buying new Android smartphones. Well, some start with asking about Symbian smartphone and end up with Android phone. So, to make things simple, I thought of making a proper list of Android running phones available in Indian market (official channels only)
1. Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700
2. Samsung Galaxy i7500
3. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini
4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro
5. HTC Hero
6. HTC Legend
7. HTC Tattoo
8. HTC Wildfire
9. Motorola Milestone
10. Samsung Galaxy S
11. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
12. HTC Desire
13. Motorola Motoroi XT720
14. Motorola Backflip
15. Acer E110
16. Samsung Galaxy 3
17. Samsung Galaxy 5
18. Spice MI-300
In the pipeline:
1) Sony Ericsson Xperia X8
2) Huawei's budget Android handsets
3) Motorola Milestone 2
Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700:
This is the cheapest Android device that was ever available in Indian market. The only problem is that this phone is almost extinct. This was the phone that brought Android to the masses. Available at a retail price of 12.5k-13.5k, this phone broke the price barriers that were built by HTC. Notable features of this phone are
This phone may not stand a chance against the might of Milestone or Galaxy S, but it’s available for less than half their price tag. This phone was a boon to those who wanted to use Android and cannot afford 20k+ rupees. It could do everything that a higher priced andorid phone could do but what it masters is DivX playback. This phone is in an elite league of phones that can play DivX videos out of the box. And most importantly, it was one of the early crop of phones that got Eclair (android 2.1). Rumour says that this phone might even get Froyo.
Not so good:
Status : not available in the market now.
Samsung Galaxy i7500:
This phone can be called as the ugly duckling. Like i5700, this phone is really hard to find these days. Most of the dealers say that Samsung has stopped production of this phone. Hardware wise, this phone is really good. It has got a stunning 3.2†AMOLED display, 11.9mm thin, 5mp camera with LED flash, 8Gb of internal memory, sturdy and sleek design, very good battery life. But it runs Donut (Android 1.6) and has very weak 528 MHz processor. This created serious imbalance between software and hardware. Donut runs slower than Éclair and putting a slower processor is like adding fuel to fire. This phone died a sad death in the market when Samsung announced that they are not interested in releasing any updates for this phone (neglecting updates is an act that Samsung does a lot with their phones).
Status : not available in the market now.
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini:
Probably, the only Android running phone that looks cute, this phone is the smallest Android phone and is kind of a sister of Xperia X10. The second picture shows how tiny this is. I was so much used to 3.2†and 3.5†touch phones that when SE released an android phone with 2.55†touch display, I felt as if they shrunk the phone more than necessary. This phone is currently sold for around 15k rupees. Thanks to the lower resolution and smaller display, even though this phone has 600MHz processor and 128MB RAM, the UI is snappy even with TimeScape UI. But the major problem is that Android is not meant to run on such small devices and you can feel it when you try to browse internet or try to chat with someone. The tiny display just can’t accommodate good keypad in chat window and can be irritating to use the old style num keypad for chatting.
The good:
The bad:
doesn’t come with qwerty keypad. due to small display, only standard numpad is provided and text addicts can struggle a lot with this phone.
really tiny for an Android OS
128MB a deal breaker who install Apps
still runs Android 1.6 (Donut)
low talktime of 4hrs on 2G network
non-replaceable battery.
app compatibility problem. some apps doesn’t support the lower resolution
Who should buy this phone:
Status : available in the market for 15k
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro:
X10 mini pro is nothing but X10 Mini with landscape qwerty keyboard. though the keyboard is a nice addiiton to this phone. And guess what, though the phone is tiny, SE has managed to put in a very vey capable keypad. typing using the keypad felt really good and thanks to SE for making the battery user-replaceable. This phone should cost around 17k-18k which is not so good price given that you can get Samsung wave for same price or few few more bucks, you can get HTC Legend.
The good:
The bad:
Who should buy this:
Status : available in the market for 16k-17k
HTC Hero:
This was the phone that truly lived up to its name. This phone stood apart in the world that was dominated by iphone and symbian phones. This was the first phone that came out with HTC SenseUI, which is still the best custom UI ever designed for Android (YouTube - HTC Hero - Video Preview). For the first time, Android users had experienced something that nobody else had. The amount of customization that was available through SenseUI was never seen before. It has familiar angular chin design, a super accurate trackball, gorgeous display, multitouch, ample amount of RAM and what not. I had a feeling that this was the real beginning of Android era. HTC showed the world the real power of Android. Comparing the earlier video with the video on HTC magic’s UI (YouTube - HTC Magic - New Product Tour) showed the amount of customization that can be done to Android.
The good:
The bad:
Status: Not available in the market now
HTC Legend:
After the huge success of Hero, HTC introduced the successor named Legend (YouTube - Introducing HTC Legend). While Hero turned out to be a great in terms of UI, Legend turned out to be Legen –wait for it- dary, Legendary. From the outerbody to the UI, everything was so impressive that it is really hard to neglect this phone. Made from single sheet of aluminium, Legend is the strongest of all the current gen phones. While HTC Sense UI on Hero was innovative, the improved SenseUI on Legend’s 16M color AMOLED display is truly stunning and looked out of the world. Still, there I no other UI that can match Sense UI in ‘awesomeness’ and ‘customizability’. And the result is that this is one of the top selling phones in the market right now. One thing that I can say is that one who gets used to the SenseUI in this phone will never look at any other UI. It is truly addicting.
The good:
Who should buy:
recommended for everyone with budget less than 25k INR.
Status: available in the market for 22.5k-23k
HTC Tattoo:
This was HTC’s first shot at midrange Android segment and sad to say that it was a failure. The main problem with this phone is that it came with a 240x320 resolution display and not many apps were optimized for this resolution. Add to that the lack of apps for Android 1.5 (was at a time when Android was building up). While it has few good features like good build quality, decent multimedia performance, it was torn to pieces by the Galaxy phones. Spica was available for cheaper price and offered lot more and that resulted in doom for Tattoo.
The good:
The bad:
Status : Avialalble in market for 13.5k to 14k.
Who should buy:
Nobody. this phone is not worth it’s price tag.
HTC Wildfire:
This phone is not yet released in India and is one of the most awaited phones. Set to replace Tattoo at midrange, this should be HTC’s proper entry into midrange phones. But still, am a bit sceptical on the phone’s low resolution TFT display. 240x320 resolution on a 3.2†display can make the display look dull and is non-standard too for Apps. The design of the phone looks strikingly similar to HTC Desire and Nexus One which means that the phone should have very good build quality.
The good:
Status : available for 15.5k-16k price.
Who should buy:
Those looking for midrange Android based phone and okay with lower resolution display
Motorola Milestone:
Motorola, before the release of Milestone was pluging into abyss. Their recent phones failed big time and their operating system was seriously outdated. Thanks to Sanjay Jha, Motorola turned to Android when it needed fresh start and that paid off really well. This phone played major part in turning Motorola’s mobile phone business back into profits. This phone didn’t have a fancy UI like HTC Hero nor it was low priced like Samsung Galaxy Spica. This phone was targeted at a different audience. Sporting a gigantic 3.7†display, this phone was instant hit among those who loved to have hard qwerty. Hardware wise, the phone has powerful ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz CPU and PowerVR SGX530 graphics (same as what N900 has). And if I remember properly, this phone was one of the first to Éclair (android 2.1) update.
The good:
The bad:
Who should buy:
Samsung Galaxy S:
Well, this is without a doubt the best mobile phone that I have ever tried. Even the superb Legend looked like an el-cheapo phone before the might of Galaxy S. While the 4†Super AMOLED is truly stunning, the combination of Cortex A8 Hummingbird CPU and 512MB of RAM makes the phone zippy. Touchwiz UI 3.0, though has impoved a lot, still is behind SenseUI. 720p recording, 16Gb internal memory, 802.11n, wifi access point capability, video call camera, the list is endless. If one had a budget of 30k, this is undoubtedly the phone to get and there is no need to give a second thought. To add fun, Samsung has inbuilt Swype text input which is real fun to use and many report that it is faster to type using swype than the traditional way (Swype | Text Input for Screens)
The good:
Status : Available for 28k
Who should buy:
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10:
Early 2010, this phone was the most anticipated phone of the year. First, It’s an Android phone and it’s SE’s first shot at Android. The initial demos created lot of craze. It has powerful hardware like 4†TFT touch display, 1GHz Snapdgragon, 8mp camera, 384MB RAM. But then it got lost in the barrage of devices like HTC Desire, Nexus One, Moto Milestone. The reason was simple. This phone was still running the slower and older Android 1.6 while everyone else moved to much faster and feature rich 2.1 (Éclair). Even to this day, this phone run 1.6 when Nexus One has moved to Froyo and other brands like HTC have lined up to move their phones to 2.2. SE designed TimeScape UI is a pleasure to use. It’s easy on eyes and looks fresh but because of Donut, there is a lag and a serious thumbs down to SE for not being able to utilize the potential of underlying hardware. Also, the display is stuck at 65k colors even though the LCD is capable of 16M colors and the resulting display quality is nowhere near to what Legend and Galaxy S provides. Now that phones like Galaxy S, Droid 2, Droid X, Evo are coming out, there seems no need to get this phone unless you are after the brand name.
The good:
Status : Available for 26k-27k
Who should buy:
Purely for SE loyals and shutterbugs
HTC Desire:
Till the end of 2009, Android handsets were powered by decent CPU and RAM. Enter 2010 and a new era had begun. The era of Android phones with superpowers. It all started with Google’s Nexus One which was designed by HTC. Then, few months later, HTC released Desire, a phone that looks strikingly similar to N1, running Sense UI. The advantage that Desire had over N1 is that this phone was powered by SenseUI which makes life much easier and the phone was made available in multiple countries. With AMOLED display, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 512MB or RAM, 5mp camera, thin and sturdy build quality, the phone was an instant hit. When released, this phone will go head-on against Galaxy S, Milestone and Xperia X10. The big question here is ‘when will HTC release this phone in India?’ and ‘why HTC is not releasing this phone in India?’. The problem is the shortage of AMOLED display panels (manufactured by Samsung) for this phone and N1. HTC is now looking to replace AMOLED with Sony’s SuperLCD panel and if the decision is made, the phone will be available in Indian market very soon. Also, for those who think that SuperLCD may not match the quality of AMOLED, the answer is NO. Cnet’s recent comparison of the AMOLED AND SuperLCD showed that SuperLCD is on-par with AMOLED in most aspects and the difference is negligible.
I do hope that HTC will soon release this phone because by next month, SGS will be getting Froyo that makes full use of the phones powerful hardware, X10 will be getting Éclair, making it a worthy purchase and Motorola might launch Milestone 2. Once these updates/releases happen, Desire’s sales can suffer.
Status : Not yet released
The good:
with 25k+ budget and looking for the android device with best User Interface.
Motorola Motoroi XT720:
This phone will be released soon at sub30k price point. This is the first Android device from Motorola that is totally focussed on Camera and multimedia. with 8mp camera with Xenon flash, 720p video recording and HDMI out port, this phone has the capability to please the shutterbugs. However, there are some minor issues. The phone looks ugly and there is only 256MB of RAM onboard. This could make the phone a bit slow when multiple apps are opened. Given that there isn’t any proper review on this phone, we have to wait and see how this phone is received by early adopters. I have a feeling that it might get lost in the crowd (X10, SGS, Milestone 2, Nokia N8 etc).
Status: 26k
The Good:
Shutterbugs
HDMI video playback from phone to TV.
Motorola Backflip:
Every now and then Motorola brings out phones with weird and head-scratchable designs and Backflip is one of such phones. The phone is designed in such a way that while the front of the phone houses a 3.1†touch display, the rear has a full qwerty keypad and you need flip the keypad from the back to the front.
Who would believe that the above picture is how rear side of the phone looks like. And notice where the camera is.
And this is the funniest part of the design. There is a trackpad (shown in the above picture) right behind the display. To use the trackpad, one has to flip the keypad out and use the trackpad from behind the display. Thus, you will be using the trackpad without actually looking at it. It’s weird but it actually works.
This is how the phone looks when the keypad is open:
Hardware wise, it’s an okay phone with 3.1†Display, 256MB RAM, a 528MHz processor and this is one the very few phones that use Motoblur UI. Apart from the design, there is nothing much to say about this phone. The ideal price for this phone would be 17k and anything more than that means that the phone can be ignored
Status: 17k.
The Good:
Who should buy:
those who are after phones with weird design
qwerty maniacs
Acer beTouch E110:
An android phone for the masses. Priced inside 10k, this is the phone that is built for the masses. The hardware is balanced. Though the processor runs at 416MHz, it should be able to drive the OS without any problem given the low resolution 2.8†240 x 320 display. One concern that I have is the low amount of RAM, ROM and it runs Donut which is very old OS.
Status : avaialble for 10k
The Good:
The Bad:
Who should buy this:
If the budget is strictly inside 10k and you are after Android based phones.
LG GW620:
There is nothing to discuss about this phone. It’s a pathetic implementation of Android. If you see this phone outside, don’t touch it. And this is how the phone looks like:
Here is a brief comparison of specs of all these phones. I will be updating this post as new phones are added to the Andorid arsenal in India:
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1. Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700
2. Samsung Galaxy i7500
3. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini
4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro
5. HTC Hero
6. HTC Legend
7. HTC Tattoo
8. HTC Wildfire
9. Motorola Milestone
10. Samsung Galaxy S
11. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
12. HTC Desire
13. Motorola Motoroi XT720
14. Motorola Backflip
15. Acer E110
16. Samsung Galaxy 3
17. Samsung Galaxy 5
18. Spice MI-300
In the pipeline:
1) Sony Ericsson Xperia X8
2) Huawei's budget Android handsets
3) Motorola Milestone 2
Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700:
This is the cheapest Android device that was ever available in Indian market. The only problem is that this phone is almost extinct. This was the phone that brought Android to the masses. Available at a retail price of 12.5k-13.5k, this phone broke the price barriers that were built by HTC. Notable features of this phone are
- price
- Android 2.1 (Éclair)
- 3.2†TFT LCD with resolution of 320x480
- 800MHz processor
- great build quality
- out-of-the-box DivX playback
This phone may not stand a chance against the might of Milestone or Galaxy S, but it’s available for less than half their price tag. This phone was a boon to those who wanted to use Android and cannot afford 20k+ rupees. It could do everything that a higher priced andorid phone could do but what it masters is DivX playback. This phone is in an elite league of phones that can play DivX videos out of the box. And most importantly, it was one of the early crop of phones that got Eclair (android 2.1). Rumour says that this phone might even get Froyo.
Not so good:
- weak camera
- 128MB RAM only
- not so great aesthetics
- immature Samsung customer service.
- no multi-touch
Status : not available in the market now.
Samsung Galaxy i7500:
This phone can be called as the ugly duckling. Like i5700, this phone is really hard to find these days. Most of the dealers say that Samsung has stopped production of this phone. Hardware wise, this phone is really good. It has got a stunning 3.2†AMOLED display, 11.9mm thin, 5mp camera with LED flash, 8Gb of internal memory, sturdy and sleek design, very good battery life. But it runs Donut (Android 1.6) and has very weak 528 MHz processor. This created serious imbalance between software and hardware. Donut runs slower than Éclair and putting a slower processor is like adding fuel to fire. This phone died a sad death in the market when Samsung announced that they are not interested in releasing any updates for this phone (neglecting updates is an act that Samsung does a lot with their phones).
Status : not available in the market now.
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini:
Probably, the only Android running phone that looks cute, this phone is the smallest Android phone and is kind of a sister of Xperia X10. The second picture shows how tiny this is. I was so much used to 3.2†and 3.5†touch phones that when SE released an android phone with 2.55†touch display, I felt as if they shrunk the phone more than necessary. This phone is currently sold for around 15k rupees. Thanks to the lower resolution and smaller display, even though this phone has 600MHz processor and 128MB RAM, the UI is snappy even with TimeScape UI. But the major problem is that Android is not meant to run on such small devices and you can feel it when you try to browse internet or try to chat with someone. The tiny display just can’t accommodate good keypad in chat window and can be irritating to use the old style num keypad for chatting.
The good:
- TimeScape UI
- extremely cute looking design
- sturdy build quality
- fluid UI with no lag
- 88gms weight
- 5mp camera with LED flash
- 600MHz processor
The bad:
doesn’t come with qwerty keypad. due to small display, only standard numpad is provided and text addicts can struggle a lot with this phone.
really tiny for an Android OS
128MB a deal breaker who install Apps
still runs Android 1.6 (Donut)
low talktime of 4hrs on 2G network
non-replaceable battery.
app compatibility problem. some apps doesn’t support the lower resolution
Who should buy this phone:
- strictly for females
- those who are not interested in huge display but still need a capable OS
Status : available in the market for 15k
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro:
X10 mini pro is nothing but X10 Mini with landscape qwerty keyboard. though the keyboard is a nice addiiton to this phone. And guess what, though the phone is tiny, SE has managed to put in a very vey capable keypad. typing using the keypad felt really good and thanks to SE for making the battery user-replaceable. This phone should cost around 17k-18k which is not so good price given that you can get Samsung wave for same price or few few more bucks, you can get HTC Legend.
The good:
- TimeScape UI
- extremely cute looking design
- sturdy build quality
- fluid UI with no lag
- 88gms weight
- 5mp camera with LED flash
- 600MHz processor
- highly capable landscape keypad
The bad:
- really tiny for an Android OS
- 128MB a deal breaker who install Apps
- still runs Android 1.6 (Donut)
- low talktime of 4hrs on 2G network
- app compatibility problem. some apps doesn’t support the lower resolution
Who should buy this:
- texting addicts who doesn’t care what the OS is
- female users
- SE lovers
Status : available in the market for 16k-17k
HTC Hero:
This was the phone that truly lived up to its name. This phone stood apart in the world that was dominated by iphone and symbian phones. This was the first phone that came out with HTC SenseUI, which is still the best custom UI ever designed for Android (YouTube - HTC Hero - Video Preview). For the first time, Android users had experienced something that nobody else had. The amount of customization that was available through SenseUI was never seen before. It has familiar angular chin design, a super accurate trackball, gorgeous display, multitouch, ample amount of RAM and what not. I had a feeling that this was the real beginning of Android era. HTC showed the world the real power of Android. Comparing the earlier video with the video on HTC magic’s UI (YouTube - HTC Magic - New Product Tour) showed the amount of customization that can be done to Android.
The good:
- Sense UI
- Gorgeious diplay
- trackball
- breathtaking design
- Updated to Éclair
- Decent Qualcomm 7200A processor @528Mhz and 288MB of RAM
The bad:
- no camera flash, no FM.
- not good in multimedia.
Status: Not available in the market now
HTC Legend:
After the huge success of Hero, HTC introduced the successor named Legend (YouTube - Introducing HTC Legend). While Hero turned out to be a great in terms of UI, Legend turned out to be Legen –wait for it- dary, Legendary. From the outerbody to the UI, everything was so impressive that it is really hard to neglect this phone. Made from single sheet of aluminium, Legend is the strongest of all the current gen phones. While HTC Sense UI on Hero was innovative, the improved SenseUI on Legend’s 16M color AMOLED display is truly stunning and looked out of the world. Still, there I no other UI that can match Sense UI in ‘awesomeness’ and ‘customizability’. And the result is that this is one of the top selling phones in the market right now. One thing that I can say is that one who gets used to the SenseUI in this phone will never look at any other UI. It is truly addicting.
The good:
- Rock solid and stunning aluminium unibody design
- Gorgeious AMOLED diplay that can take your breath away
- Improved Sense UI
- Éclair
- 384MB of RAM and 600MHz Qualcomm 7227 processor
- great multimedia features. videos look stunning while audio is crisp
- USB tethering without the need of PC client
- average talktime
- metal body tends to get hot causing irritation to the ear while on call for long time
- No video calling
- No dedicated camera key
- average FM radio reception
Who should buy:
recommended for everyone with budget less than 25k INR.
Status: available in the market for 22.5k-23k
HTC Tattoo:
This was HTC’s first shot at midrange Android segment and sad to say that it was a failure. The main problem with this phone is that it came with a 240x320 resolution display and not many apps were optimized for this resolution. Add to that the lack of apps for Android 1.5 (was at a time when Android was building up). While it has few good features like good build quality, decent multimedia performance, it was torn to pieces by the Galaxy phones. Spica was available for cheaper price and offered lot more and that resulted in doom for Tattoo.
The good:
- decent build quality
The bad:
- average talktime
- nonstandard resolution
- slow UI
- No dedicated camera key
- average FM radio reception
- bad multimedia performance
- bad camera and no flash
Status : Avialalble in market for 13.5k to 14k.
Who should buy:
Nobody. this phone is not worth it’s price tag.
HTC Wildfire:
This phone is not yet released in India and is one of the most awaited phones. Set to replace Tattoo at midrange, this should be HTC’s proper entry into midrange phones. But still, am a bit sceptical on the phone’s low resolution TFT display. 240x320 resolution on a 3.2†display can make the display look dull and is non-standard too for Apps. The design of the phone looks strikingly similar to HTC Desire and Nexus One which means that the phone should have very good build quality.
The good:
- Strong bulid quality
- 384MB RAM and Qualcomm 7225 528MHz processor.
- Decent multimedia options
- average talktime
- nonstandard resolution
- no wireless N
Status : available for 15.5k-16k price.
Who should buy:
Those looking for midrange Android based phone and okay with lower resolution display
Motorola Milestone:
Motorola, before the release of Milestone was pluging into abyss. Their recent phones failed big time and their operating system was seriously outdated. Thanks to Sanjay Jha, Motorola turned to Android when it needed fresh start and that paid off really well. This phone played major part in turning Motorola’s mobile phone business back into profits. This phone didn’t have a fancy UI like HTC Hero nor it was low priced like Samsung Galaxy Spica. This phone was targeted at a different audience. Sporting a gigantic 3.7†display, this phone was instant hit among those who loved to have hard qwerty. Hardware wise, the phone has powerful ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz CPU and PowerVR SGX530 graphics (same as what N900 has). And if I remember properly, this phone was one of the first to Éclair (android 2.1) update.
The good:
- Superb bulid quality
- Very slim taken into account the landscape qwerty
- powerful CPU and GPU
- Very good 3.7†TFT display
- Great camera
- Landscape qwerty
- great multimedia performance
The bad:
- average talktime
- Motoblur not so good
- no FM
- flat qwerty keys not everyone’s cup of tea
- no video calling
- only 256MB of RAM
Who should buy:
- heavy users of keypad
- big screen lovers
- Multimedia (movie watching is a pleasure)
Samsung Galaxy S:
Well, this is without a doubt the best mobile phone that I have ever tried. Even the superb Legend looked like an el-cheapo phone before the might of Galaxy S. While the 4†Super AMOLED is truly stunning, the combination of Cortex A8 Hummingbird CPU and 512MB of RAM makes the phone zippy. Touchwiz UI 3.0, though has impoved a lot, still is behind SenseUI. 720p recording, 16Gb internal memory, 802.11n, wifi access point capability, video call camera, the list is endless. If one had a budget of 30k, this is undoubtedly the phone to get and there is no need to give a second thought. To add fun, Samsung has inbuilt Swype text input which is real fun to use and many report that it is faster to type using swype than the traditional way (Swype | Text Input for Screens)
The good:
- Stunningly beautiful Super AMOLED display
- 4†of real estate
- Touchwiz 3.0
- DivX/Xvid/MKV supported out of the box
- 1Ghz Hummingbird CPU (ARM Cortex A8)
- 512MB RAM, 16Gb user memory
- Great multimedia performance (superb video quality, great audio quality, good FM reception)
- it’s just 9.9mm thin
- Swype text input
- decent camera with 720p recording
- great talktime
- super light yet grips well.
- body is fingerprint magnet
- no camera flash
- Kies PC sync application is really bad, doesn’t work on mac and linux.
- buggy PC sync drivers on windows 7
- Should’ve come with Froyo preinstalled
- phone lags a bit due to the slower flash memory. Fix is available online already.
Status : Available for 28k
Who should buy:
- looking for the best android device
- big screen lovers
- Multimedia
- can make iphone owner’s cry with envy
- heavy multitasking
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10:
Early 2010, this phone was the most anticipated phone of the year. First, It’s an Android phone and it’s SE’s first shot at Android. The initial demos created lot of craze. It has powerful hardware like 4†TFT touch display, 1GHz Snapdgragon, 8mp camera, 384MB RAM. But then it got lost in the barrage of devices like HTC Desire, Nexus One, Moto Milestone. The reason was simple. This phone was still running the slower and older Android 1.6 while everyone else moved to much faster and feature rich 2.1 (Éclair). Even to this day, this phone run 1.6 when Nexus One has moved to Froyo and other brands like HTC have lined up to move their phones to 2.2. SE designed TimeScape UI is a pleasure to use. It’s easy on eyes and looks fresh but because of Donut, there is a lag and a serious thumbs down to SE for not being able to utilize the potential of underlying hardware. Also, the display is stuck at 65k colors even though the LCD is capable of 16M colors and the resulting display quality is nowhere near to what Legend and Galaxy S provides. Now that phones like Galaxy S, Droid 2, Droid X, Evo are coming out, there seems no need to get this phone unless you are after the brand name.
The good:
- Timescape UI
- 4†of real estate
- great talktime
- 8mp camera
- 1Ghz Snapdragon CPU
- very good build quality
- superb audio quality
- Still on outdated Android 1.6
- No FM
- no video calling
- no multi touch yet
Status : Available for 26k-27k
Who should buy:
Purely for SE loyals and shutterbugs
HTC Desire:
Till the end of 2009, Android handsets were powered by decent CPU and RAM. Enter 2010 and a new era had begun. The era of Android phones with superpowers. It all started with Google’s Nexus One which was designed by HTC. Then, few months later, HTC released Desire, a phone that looks strikingly similar to N1, running Sense UI. The advantage that Desire had over N1 is that this phone was powered by SenseUI which makes life much easier and the phone was made available in multiple countries. With AMOLED display, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 512MB or RAM, 5mp camera, thin and sturdy build quality, the phone was an instant hit. When released, this phone will go head-on against Galaxy S, Milestone and Xperia X10. The big question here is ‘when will HTC release this phone in India?’ and ‘why HTC is not releasing this phone in India?’. The problem is the shortage of AMOLED display panels (manufactured by Samsung) for this phone and N1. HTC is now looking to replace AMOLED with Sony’s SuperLCD panel and if the decision is made, the phone will be available in Indian market very soon. Also, for those who think that SuperLCD may not match the quality of AMOLED, the answer is NO. Cnet’s recent comparison of the AMOLED AND SuperLCD showed that SuperLCD is on-par with AMOLED in most aspects and the difference is negligible.
I do hope that HTC will soon release this phone because by next month, SGS will be getting Froyo that makes full use of the phones powerful hardware, X10 will be getting Éclair, making it a worthy purchase and Motorola might launch Milestone 2. Once these updates/releases happen, Desire’s sales can suffer.
Status : Not yet released
The good:
- Sense UI
- 3.7†AMOLED or SuperLCD
- superb build quality
- 1Ghz Snapdragon CPU
- thin profile
- 5mp camera with autofocus
- no proper release date from HTC
- not many are comfortable with optical trackpad
- average battery life
- not the best when it comes to multimedia.
with 25k+ budget and looking for the android device with best User Interface.
Motorola Motoroi XT720:
This phone will be released soon at sub30k price point. This is the first Android device from Motorola that is totally focussed on Camera and multimedia. with 8mp camera with Xenon flash, 720p video recording and HDMI out port, this phone has the capability to please the shutterbugs. However, there are some minor issues. The phone looks ugly and there is only 256MB of RAM onboard. This could make the phone a bit slow when multiple apps are opened. Given that there isn’t any proper review on this phone, we have to wait and see how this phone is received by early adopters. I have a feeling that it might get lost in the crowd (X10, SGS, Milestone 2, Nokia N8 etc).
Status: 26k
The Good:
- 3.7†display
- 8mp camera with Xenon flash, image stabilization
- 720p video recording
- TV-out via HDMI port
- Active noise cancellation
- ARM Cortex A8 720 MHz
- very good batery life (on paper)
- ugly looking design
- 256MB RAM
Shutterbugs
HDMI video playback from phone to TV.
Motorola Backflip:
Every now and then Motorola brings out phones with weird and head-scratchable designs and Backflip is one of such phones. The phone is designed in such a way that while the front of the phone houses a 3.1†touch display, the rear has a full qwerty keypad and you need flip the keypad from the back to the front.
Who would believe that the above picture is how rear side of the phone looks like. And notice where the camera is.
And this is the funniest part of the design. There is a trackpad (shown in the above picture) right behind the display. To use the trackpad, one has to flip the keypad out and use the trackpad from behind the display. Thus, you will be using the trackpad without actually looking at it. It’s weird but it actually works.
This is how the phone looks when the keypad is open:
Hardware wise, it’s an okay phone with 3.1†Display, 256MB RAM, a 528MHz processor and this is one the very few phones that use Motoblur UI. Apart from the design, there is nothing much to say about this phone. The ideal price for this phone would be 17k and anything more than that means that the phone can be ignored
Status: 17k.
The Good:
- unique design
- full size qwerty
- Noise cancellation
- awkward design
- 256k color display
- below par battery backup
- inferior processing power
- Motorblur needs lot of improvement
- poor multimedia capabilites
Who should buy:
those who are after phones with weird design
qwerty maniacs
Acer beTouch E110:
An android phone for the masses. Priced inside 10k, this is the phone that is built for the masses. The hardware is balanced. Though the processor runs at 416MHz, it should be able to drive the OS without any problem given the low resolution 2.8†240 x 320 display. One concern that I have is the low amount of RAM, ROM and it runs Donut which is very old OS.
Status : avaialble for 10k
The Good:
- Price
The Bad:
- display quality
- low RAM and ROM
- service and updates still a question mark for Acer phones
Who should buy this:
If the budget is strictly inside 10k and you are after Android based phones.
LG GW620:
There is nothing to discuss about this phone. It’s a pathetic implementation of Android. If you see this phone outside, don’t touch it. And this is how the phone looks like:
Here is a brief comparison of specs of all these phones. I will be updating this post as new phones are added to the Andorid arsenal in India:
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