VelocityMobile pitches cheap smartphones
Written by admin on April 3rd, 2008 in Gadgets.
New player VelocityMobile have been getting themselves some publicity from CTIA 2008 by announcing two new phones - the Velocity 103 and Velocity 111. Both phones are smartphones, but although they undoubtedly look good (particularly the 103), they’re not exactly innovative. You get the same features you’d expect on even mid-range phones these days, so I’m not sure how Velocity are defining ’smart’.
However, where they aim to differentiate themselves from the competition is through price. According to Velocity Mobile president, David Hayes, “Velocity Mobile was created …[to] bring leading-edge smartphones to the mass consumer market.”
Apparently they aim to do that by combining Western design philosophy with Eastern manufacturing efficiencies, although how they think they’re going to undercut someone like Nokia, whose size leads to economies of scale that even small countries couldn’t compete with, is anyone’s guess.
Mind you, they’re backed up by laptop manufacturer Inventec, who posted revenues of $8 billion in 2007, so they’re not short of a few bob. I still don’t see them taking on the likes of Nokia and Samsung, though, particularly in Europe where our network operators already subsidize our handsets heavily. The price of the phone is never the issue over here - it’s the price of the contract that we focus on, as nearly all handsets are virtually free anyway!
As for the phones, the Velocity 103 gives you the following:
- Windows Mobile 6.1
- GSM/EDGE
- UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA
- 2.8-inch touchscreen display with a 640×480 resolution
- 256MB ROM
- 126MB RAM
- Bluetooth
- 2.0-megapixel camera on the back with a 0.3-megapixel cam on the front
- TV/VGA output and microSD expansion slot.
That’s not a smartphone - that’s not even a mid-range phone any more!
The Velocity Mobile 111 gives you the same features plus a full QWERTY keyboard and 2.46-inch touchscreen display with a 320×240 resolution.
I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t expect to be hearing much more from Velocity Mobile!
[Source: Gadgetell, VelocityMobile]
Tags: high definition TV, plasma, PDA, lcd
