Just to add to the flurry of Android launches happing of late, telecom operator MTS, a subsidiary of Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL) has announced the launch of two new Android powered smartphones in India today. The devices, made by MTS’ partners Huawei and ZTE are all aimed at the low end loving, non smartphone toting crowd with an offer to upgrade them to a smartphone – while keeping the costs minimal.
The two handsets unveiled by the company earlier today are the MTag 3.1 and the MTS Livewire. The best part? Both these handsets are priced under the psychologically significant Rs.5000 mark. While this is certainly not the first time a low cost Android handset has landed here in India, it remains to be seen if the association with a network operator with 12 million people in its network does have an effect on the sales of these devices. Note that both devices are based on CDMA EV-DO Rev A Technology and would not work on your normal GSM networks. Let’s see what features you get for a sub 5k budget on an Android handset.
We start with the MTS Mtag. This device gets a 2.8 inch QVGA (240*320) pixel display. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 Class SoC (the exact model has not been revealed). The phone gets a 3.2 megapixel camera at the back and has decent support for playing back multimedia content. The 3.5mm jack should make the music junkie on a budget in you happy. The most important factor is that the display is capacitive in nature – unlike what has been seen thus far in the case of most affordable Android handsets. It also gets a proprietary Live TV application and an OnDemand video playback service.
As for the MTS Live wire, this one is made by ZTE and also gets a 2.8 inch display like on the MTag. The processor too remains the same. In fact, most other features of the LiveWire match that of the MTag. The camera on this one is a 3megapixel unit which should keep you happy for the price you pay for this device.
Both devices run on Android 2.2 (Froyo). The exact prices of these two have not been revealed although we know that it would be under Rs.5000.
