Vodafone has announced that it will launch an Android phone in Europe for just 80 Pounds (Rs 5,800). The phone, to be called as 858 Smart, will be based on Android Froyo 2.2 operating system with a 2.8 inch resistive touch screen.
Though there is no plan as of now to launch the phone in India, a company spokesperson did not rule out the possibility of the launch at a later date and said to The Mobile Indian “may be couple of months later we might launch it in India.”
The device will be launch in the UK, Germany and Italy first. It will come with regular features of Android such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, Facebook and Twitter. It will additionally have Prepay Manager App for topping up prepaid accounts.
The device weighing 100 grams will be manufactured by Huawei and will feature a 2MP zoom camera, 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth. It will use a 528MHz Qualcomm Processor and have 130 MB of memory besides a SD card slot supporting up to 32GB memory.
The handset will initially be available in black or white, followed by other colours. Vodafone said it plans to offer an online customisation feature allowing users to choose their own colour and add an image to the back cover.
The handset is very similar (in specification) to the Huawei Ideos, which is already available in India and is selling at Rs 7,500. This means that for Vodafone it will be a tight squeeze if they decide to bring the device to our shores, especially given the Ideos has slightly better specs with a 3.2 Megapixel camera.
With MTS having announced a high-end bundled device with HTC Pulse being available for Rs 1,500 per month bundle, it might not be wrong to expect a similar deal from Vodafone (but this hope is a bit high).
Going by what they have done in the past, the device might just come to India, but not as a much subsidised version but rather a bundling with little bit of freebies like free data plan and some value added service subscription.