Phonemakers Samsung and Huawei were represented at this week's Etisalat Android Forum in a big way, with the South Korean Samsung - currently the world's largest smartphone seller, having just overtaken the iPhone in the most recent quarter - mostly demoing (demonstrating) its Android offerings currently sold in the local market, including the Galaxy Tab [GT P1000] tablet PC and the recently launched Galaxy Y. The latter is a low cost smartphone which Etisalat will go on 'special offer' in a week or so. It is currently priced at about Rs. 20,000. Also noteworthy, Sri Lanka was said to be the first market in Southwest Asia to receive the Y.
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| A tab being displayed by an exhibitor. Pic by Hasitha Kulasekera |
Samsung Galaxy Tab [GT P1000]
7" tablet PC running Android 2.2 (Froyo) on a 1.0Ghz ARM Cortex processor, with 512MB RAM,and two cameras (3MP rear and 1.3MP front). It is 11.9mm thick, and weighs 385g.
Samsung Galaxy Y
Smartphone with a 3" TFT capacitive touchscreen running Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) on a 832Mhz processor. It has one 2MP rear camera, is 11.5mm thick and weighs 97.5g.
At the same time, Tariq Makeen, the Regional Sales Manager for Samsung at its local agent, John Keells Office Automation, revealed that a new smartphone, the Galaxy Note (not demoed), would be available in the market by end-November 2011.
Just having been approved for sale by the country's Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, this product will be priced at about Rs. 95,000.
Mr. Makeen also suggested that the next big launch would be the Nexus, which will feature a quad core processors along with the next iteration of the Android mobile operating system. This product, already sold in many major markets worldwide, would only become available in Sri Lanka during the first quarter of next year.
Meanwhile, Chinese Huawei, which already sells its Ideos S7 tablet PC (at Rs. 25,000) locally, along with a number of smartphones, in conjunction with Etisalat, debuted two new Android products: The MediaPad tablet PC and the Honour smartphone, both of which these will be available locally in December.
Huawei MediaPad
A 7" tablet running Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) on 1.2Ghz Qualcomm processor, it has rear 5MP and 1.3MP front-facing cameras. It is 10.5mm thick and weighs 390g, and also features HSPA+ 3G and an HDMI port, along with the WiFi which comes standard in virtualy all devices available today.
Huawei Honour
A smartphone with a 4" capacitive touchscreen that runs Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) on top of a 1.4GHz processor, it is 10.9mm thick and weighs 0.03lbs. The device also comes with 8MP rear and 2MP front-facing cameras as well as 512MB RAM and 4GB ROM. |
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