Even as our resident Android specialist Ricky Droid highlighted rumours that some manufacturers are sidestepping the Android 2.3 update and heading straight to version 2.4, Olive Telecom has released India’s first phone running Android 2.3, or Gingerbread as it is popularly known. And it packs in some very impressive specs to go with that OS – it is the first Indian smartphone to support high-speed HSPA+, runs on a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 processor with an Adreno 205 graphics engine, has a 4.1 inch LCD capacitive touchscreen, a 5MP camera capable of 720p HD video recording, an HDMI port, and just about every connectivity option you would want on a smartphone. And all this for a price that is, according to the release, “less than Rs 20,000.”
And it looks rather nice too. We had a look at it at the launch conference – although the samples there were running Android 2.2 (commercial units will run 2.3, we have been assured) – and it looked rather sleek with its 122 x 66 x 9.9 mm frame (one of the slimmest Android phones around, we think), which was mainly made of plastic but had a metal plate on the back. And well, it certainly seemed to work well. Just how well it does over a longer period of time and how it tackles Android’s battery-draining tendencies will be known when we get a review unit. Watch this space.
