Moore’s Law observes that over the history of computing, processing speeds have doubled every two years. Whether such an exponential rate of growth is permanently sustainable is subject to some doubt, but what is irrefutable is that the pace of technological change that anyone alive today has seen has never before been observed in the course of human history. Almost everyone over the age of 30 in an advanced economy remembers when they got their first mobile phone.
Driving the growth of smartphones is, of course, China from where brands less sophisticated and less well known than Huawei and Xiaomi are driving sales “frugal but feature-rich”, according to The Economist) and, in Myanmar at least, are both pervasive and available for as little as US$30.
Chinese manufacturers are not the only kids on the block when it comes to the cheaper smart phones, however. To much fanfare, Google launched the Android One device in India, though sales have been somewhat disappointing. Samsung recently launched the “Galaxy Grand Max”, a lower-end smartphone, though one that is initially only available in the company’s South Korean home market, in what is seen as an effort to reverse the decline in its market share, largely at the hands of the aforementioned Chinese manufacturers.
WP-android-one-01We’ve been taking a look at laudable recent developments in mobile device hardware such as the launch of low-cost Android One devices in India this past year, and it got us to thinking. What’s the use of a cheap smartphone if mobile data is still complex, confusing and expensive?
Helping low-income people in developing markets migrate from a life without digital connectivity to one in which high-quality smartphones are easily affordable is akin to compressing dozens of years of technological progress into one very short timeframe.
Android One followed the launch at the end of August by Mozilla, the non-profit behind the Firefox browser, of its own low-cost smartphone for the Indian mobile market.
Showing posts with label cheaper smart phones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cheaper smart phones. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Monday, March 30, 2015
The Rise of the Cheap Smart phone
Cheaper smart phones hold out the potential for market leading MNOs to expand their market share, but will also create space for traditional financial institutions and third party over-the-top players to enter into the digital finance space. This sort of increased competition will undoubtedly be a good thing for consumers, offering choice and an enhanced user experience.
Xiaomi, pronounced Shiao-Me, is one of those underrated, under-promoted but quite advanced cellphones that will keep your budget safe from unnecessary waste. Some say this brand is the Apple of china, offering a pretty good level of quality not for a burden of a price.
Xiaomi’s high end model is now the Mi4, but before that we had the Mi3 which offers specs similar to those of most of 2013’s Android flagship models. Xiaomi comes with a 13MP camera, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and a 5-inch 1080p resolution display.
Huawei G520 3G Android smartphone is a pretty good looking one and it also has a 4.5 inch screen, which is a reasonable dimension for the good price you get. Huawei G520 comes packed with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean so if you’re not that technology geek who knows all about the yet unknown great upgrades in technology, Jelly Bean 4.1 will do a fabulous job for you.
The phone uses a touch screen keypad to capture user input, which is standard on most modern smartphones. Huawei G520 comes with a CPU which runs at 1.2 GHz and it has 512 MB of RAM. You can also benefit from a 0.3 megapixel front camera and a 5 megapixel primary camera.
The cellphones market is bursting out with cool, vanguard and pretty expensive devices that make us sacrifice a good deal of our finances for a taste of high technology. There’s no good news without the bad one too, so you shouldn’t fool yourself into believing you’ll get the same quality and advanced features for a bargain price. On the whole, there are nevertheless some good choices you are invited to take into account, if you plan on spending some money on a good cellphone.
Monday, March 23, 2015
The Cheap Smart phone Revolution
Similarly cheaper smart phones have been around for a while, but Android One represents a concerted effort from Google to put its stamp on the user experience. These phones will all run close-to-stock Android without heavy manufacturer customizations, and Google will be able to push software updates itself. This should avoid the situation that arose a few years ago in other parts of the world, where low-powered phones were stuck on early versions of Android without any hope of an update, leaving customers unable to access new apps and services.
As Business Insider reported from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, the buzz was about a Chinese manufacturer showcasing a $35 smartphone and about Firefox’s flirting with selling one for $25. My contacts in China report similar prices.
First, dirt-cheap smartphones will have astonishing implications for the global economy: Smartphones are a productivity platform for wealth creation. Americans may waste days playing Piano Tiles or Clash of Clans, but the developing world can build lives with a $35 smartphone. Roughly 20% of the world population earns less than $2 a day, and the cost of a smartphone just dropped from a year’s earnings to three weeks’ pay. Now that’s an antipoverty program.
Google has launched Project Loon, bringing the Internet to rural and developing areas through high-altitude balloons. Facebook and Google are rushing to invest in drones to loop around and provide mobile connectivity. Poor villages and townships will finally have a platform to escape despair. Now we need applications to use $5-a-day workers to eyeball documents, photos, blueprints and anything that requires human cognitive skills, things that can’t yet and may never be coded into artificial-intelligence algorithms.
As Business Insider reported from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, the buzz was about a Chinese manufacturer showcasing a $35 smartphone and about Firefox’s flirting with selling one for $25. My contacts in China report similar prices.
First, dirt-cheap smartphones will have astonishing implications for the global economy: Smartphones are a productivity platform for wealth creation. Americans may waste days playing Piano Tiles or Clash of Clans, but the developing world can build lives with a $35 smartphone. Roughly 20% of the world population earns less than $2 a day, and the cost of a smartphone just dropped from a year’s earnings to three weeks’ pay. Now that’s an antipoverty program.
Google has launched Project Loon, bringing the Internet to rural and developing areas through high-altitude balloons. Facebook and Google are rushing to invest in drones to loop around and provide mobile connectivity. Poor villages and townships will finally have a platform to escape despair. Now we need applications to use $5-a-day workers to eyeball documents, photos, blueprints and anything that requires human cognitive skills, things that can’t yet and may never be coded into artificial-intelligence algorithms.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)