Australian technology firm Kogan has announced a dual-sim 5-inch Android-powered smartphone during CES, the Agora.
Running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the device sports a 5-inch screen with a 800 x 480 resolution and is powered by a dual core 1GHz Cortex A9 processor, as well as boasting 4 GB of internal memory. It also houses 512 MB of RAM and a 2000 mAh battery
A 5-megapixel camera is situated on the device's rear, accompanied by a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera. Integrated FM Radio and support for the 850, 900, 1900 and 2100MHz 3G frequencies are also included.
"Up until now, full feature smartphones have only been for the rich. We want to make technology more affordable for everyone," said Kogan founder and CEO Ruslan Kogan. "Before today, a decent smartphone would set you back over $500. For most people, that's more than a week's salary. We think everyone should be able to afford a great smartphone that has all the main features people want. We spoke to thousands of customers and they all said they want a phone with a large screen, that looks stylish, and has access to the latest apps."
Priced at $149, Kogan will be selling the phone exclusively through their website from mid-February. It'll ship to 11 countries, including Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
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Zak Islam is a freelance writer focusing on security, networking, and general computing. His work also appears at Digital Trends and Tom's Guide.
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kawininjazx Not a bad phone for people who want a cheapo pre-paid plan and don't want to spend $500. I know it doesn't match the S3 or iPhone 5, but it's not too bad.Reply -
pspman1313 For the price I would actually get it and pair it with straight talk or tmobile's prepaid plansReply -
deksman "Up until now, full feature smartphones have only been for the rich. We want to make technology more affordable for everyone,"Reply
Intriguing.
Wouldn't in that case be better to produce high-end hardware for everyone?
I mean seriously, we already had the ability to do it in abundance for each person on the planet a long time ago... oh but wait... Capitalism - it cares about profits - and chucks science/logic/reason out the window.
On the other hand, the above phone could be considered a good 'budget' phone if anything...
However...
ICS?
Seriously?
My ZTE Blade with Armv6 600MhZ single-core cpu and 512MB RAM has Jelly bean 4.2.1 installed (cyanogenmod).
Its rather odd that manufacturers don't have the decency to put the latest Android on their phones (unless they want to reserve the 'latest' for the 'high end' hardware).
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razzb3d "For most people, that's more than a week's salary" - for the rest of us (eastern europe, africa and asia) it's almost a month's pay.Reply -
xpeh kryzzayPretty sure only 512mb of ram would make this phone struggle a lot.Reply
My almost 3 year old Droid X lets me play 3D and listen to music at the same time with only 512MB of RAM