Chinese mobile phones have been on my radar for a while now, and recently I got to take a closer look at them.
Some brands like Karbonn are gaining mainstream ground, but there are really lots & lots of brands on the market. Chinese phones are probably best known for being inexpensive, but are also known for making cheap knock-offs of popular mainstream models.
The case for buying cheap mobile phones is that phones, being small electronic items, are easily lost or damaged, making huge investments in them unwise. That said, I personally have a distaste for knock-offs. I can't explain it, but so it is. I don't mind a cheap, original design, but knock-offs and public-deceiving replicas I find distasteful.
Danny, being both ham-handed & forgetful, has wisely avoided the blackberry / iphone traps so far. His phone needs are basic, but his long bus rides to work make an entertainment device useful - a music player, but more importantly, a gaming device or best still, a video player on which he can watch his awful horror flicks.
A couple of months of research, and we landed on the Rocker Sure Diamond (no avoiding tacky names) - a touch phone that is turning out to be quite a delight. Its 3-page screen and reasonably good touch sensitivity make it fun & easy like any touch phone, but is longer & heavier, with a track ball for good measure. The weight might be a con for most, but we don't mind the extra grams.
A lot of the features like the gravity & shake response have been "inspired" by the iphone, but the makers have actually taken nice features from a lot of phone models to put into this one. The feature-ridden still/video camera is nice enough, the video / music players are terrific. The dual sim feature is a blessing, there are also games, mail / FB clients and what-have-you, an antenna set up for FM radio, and a stylus for those who have trouble with the touch feature - if you've got big fingers and have tried typing on an iphone, you'll appreciate the stylus. All for under Rs. 3000.
It remains to be seen how long the phone will last - I'll be happy if it runs a year, and at that price, you don't have to worry so much about losing / breaking it. (It was hard to see someone drop an Iphone 4 from a car the other day. Rs. 45K. Ouch.)
Brands like Rocker & G-five have blackberry-type phones too - I saw one the other day that had a trackpad & full blackberry menu & functionality AND a pull-out antenna to watch TV!! (OK, public broadcast doordarshan, but still..)
Pros:
- Ridiculously feature rich - often the best features from several phones are integrated into one.
- No proprietary software / manipulative BS
- always dual sim, allowing you to blend plans from two providers (talk on one, text on another)
- Very cheap
Fun features: I was very tickled to see that these phones have no qualms about throwing in cheeky features like fake calls and background noises that let you lie to the caller about you location. No I don't find THAT ethically distasteful. There is a place for righteous lying. Like when the boss man calls. Or your mother.
Cons:
- the phones will most probably not have a long life.
- I hear reports that some Chinese mobiles actually exploded while in use!
- The ethical issues about Knock-off / look-alikes (between you and your god)
Do your research!
Even if you aren't looking for a look-alike (eesh), a lot of these phones do seem to offer great value for money.
Some brands like Karbonn are gaining mainstream ground, but there are really lots & lots of brands on the market. Chinese phones are probably best known for being inexpensive, but are also known for making cheap knock-offs of popular mainstream models.
The case for buying cheap mobile phones is that phones, being small electronic items, are easily lost or damaged, making huge investments in them unwise. That said, I personally have a distaste for knock-offs. I can't explain it, but so it is. I don't mind a cheap, original design, but knock-offs and public-deceiving replicas I find distasteful.
Danny, being both ham-handed & forgetful, has wisely avoided the blackberry / iphone traps so far. His phone needs are basic, but his long bus rides to work make an entertainment device useful - a music player, but more importantly, a gaming device or best still, a video player on which he can watch his awful horror flicks.
A couple of months of research, and we landed on the Rocker Sure Diamond (no avoiding tacky names) - a touch phone that is turning out to be quite a delight. Its 3-page screen and reasonably good touch sensitivity make it fun & easy like any touch phone, but is longer & heavier, with a track ball for good measure. The weight might be a con for most, but we don't mind the extra grams.A lot of the features like the gravity & shake response have been "inspired" by the iphone, but the makers have actually taken nice features from a lot of phone models to put into this one. The feature-ridden still/video camera is nice enough, the video / music players are terrific. The dual sim feature is a blessing, there are also games, mail / FB clients and what-have-you, an antenna set up for FM radio, and a stylus for those who have trouble with the touch feature - if you've got big fingers and have tried typing on an iphone, you'll appreciate the stylus. All for under Rs. 3000.
It remains to be seen how long the phone will last - I'll be happy if it runs a year, and at that price, you don't have to worry so much about losing / breaking it. (It was hard to see someone drop an Iphone 4 from a car the other day. Rs. 45K. Ouch.)
Brands like Rocker & G-five have blackberry-type phones too - I saw one the other day that had a trackpad & full blackberry menu & functionality AND a pull-out antenna to watch TV!! (OK, public broadcast doordarshan, but still..)
Pros:
- Ridiculously feature rich - often the best features from several phones are integrated into one.
- No proprietary software / manipulative BS
- always dual sim, allowing you to blend plans from two providers (talk on one, text on another)
- Very cheap
Fun features: I was very tickled to see that these phones have no qualms about throwing in cheeky features like fake calls and background noises that let you lie to the caller about you location. No I don't find THAT ethically distasteful. There is a place for righteous lying. Like when the boss man calls. Or your mother.
Cons:
- the phones will most probably not have a long life.
- I hear reports that some Chinese mobiles actually exploded while in use!
- The ethical issues about Knock-off / look-alikes (between you and your god)
Do your research!
Even if you aren't looking for a look-alike (eesh), a lot of these phones do seem to offer great value for money.
While the whole Chinese mobile revolution is making these really cheap (i.e. beyond affordable), it definitely does not last long. And this is a definite no-no option for me because of the following reasons:
ReplyDelete1) http://www.globalissues.org/article/442/guns-money-and-cell-phones.
2) Why fuel more consumerism? The surge in income among the poor, lower middle class India are anyway being idiotic with their current consumption patterns. Why be part of it?
3) None of these gizmos excite me anyway. I want long life in any commodity I buy (mobile phones included). I would rather pay a few extra cash to buy a cell phone that lasts as long as possible than a buy-throw cycle (my current phone is 4 years old and still doing things it was originally designed for).
4) Environmental issues - Remember the trouble plastics are causing now? Used electronic equipments are going to be the next garbage menace!
5) And last but not the least, at some point I plan to stop using mobile phones because that lets me control my time, which is the biggest freedom -really!
I agree with you on the larger question of mobile phone use. This post restricts itself to a world where cell phones are still necessary - I am talking about value for money here, not minimalism per se :-)
ReplyDeleteThat said, in the larger context, I agree that there is nothing minimalist about mobile phones:
- They are one more gadget that add to the clutter
- They cost money to buy and to maintain
- The cancer connect is now official
- Do you really want to be reachable all the bloody time??
By the way, I've been thinking about this last point a lot lately. I am going off all social sites (facebook/orkut) over this month :)
But more about that in a separate post.
Thanks for the comment!
just happened to read my 2nd point and that reads ridiculous. It is funny how my brain processes stuff!
ReplyDeleteBeing reachable all the time is just another case of OCD. Which is again exactly the case with social sites. Mobile phone apps+social networking sites, you get to read 'headlines' from others as silly as "I am in the loo right now and I am enjoying the experience!" - Seriously what's up with these lunatics?
I have been considering to delete my orkut for a while now. May be we can do a group dump of networking sites ;-)
Ha ha !! I can revel on my wisdom of not having entered any social networking site, so no question of exiting.
ReplyDeleteIn 99.5% situations, synchronous two-way real-time communication is a luxury. The minimalist need is to send a message across and get a response in reasonably quick time with reasonable reliability. Why not someone make minimalist cellphone that can do only SMS service and sell the instrument and service for a "throw-away" price (Suvarna may like this "throw-away")
@Narayanan
ReplyDelete"synchronous two-way real-time communication is a luxury"
Well said!
I'm totally with you on the sms device. All that we need.