Writing for The Telegraph, Matthew Sparkes tells us of the phone that’s so cheap, you can’t afford to not buy it! Unless you want a phone that’s not a complete piece of crap. That would be the one drawback to this phone. Being a complete piece of crap.
“Should the £26 Indian smartphone worry Apple?” (tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody).
Oh, here, let the Macalope help you with that:
NO.
There. Is it clear now?
Officially, the A50S is only on sale in India …
Where Apple’s sales grew around 50 percent last quarter.
… but Britons can buy it online and have it shipped to the UK for a small charge.
Which means about 14 people are going to do this. Which, the Macalope believes, is called a fortnight of people in the UK.
It’s far from the most powerful smartphone on the market …
Well, gosh, then it sure seems perfectly positioned to take on Apple!
… with a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor from MediaTek and 256MB RAM, but that specification can easily handle most modern apps.
If by “handle” you mean “launch and run like a no-legged dog that is also dead and is in fact not even a dog but a soaking wet throw rug.”
In terms of storage you get 512MB on an internal chip and support for SD cards up to 32GB, which these days can be bought for just a couple of pounds.
I’m not going to add shipping and the price of the SD card into the cost though. I still consider it £26.
That cheap upgrade would make it able to store thousands of MP3s or dozens of films, although they may not look particularly cinematic on the 480 by 320 pixel screen.
Why would anyone get an iPhone?! It’s a mystery!
Disappointingly there is only a 2mp camera on the rear …
Did I mention it was £26?!
… and there is no camera on the front of the case at all …
But mirrors are all around us in our daily life! Who even needs a front-facing camera?!
And, while most people are starting to think of migrating over to speedy 4G networks, the A50S is not even capable of latching-on to 3G signals …
But, OK, look, other than the capacity and the screen and the processor and the RAM and the camera and the networking IT’S JUST AS GOOD AS AN IPHONE.
But the real draw of the handset is its unprecedentedly low cost – at just £26 you could buy 21 of them for the cost of even the cheapest iPhone 5S from Apple.
Well, yes, but here’s the thing: Nobody does that. Nobody buys 21 phones. Of course, Apple sells cheaper phones, but we’re already comparing things that should not be compared, so …
Yes, maybe this phone is appealing to certain consumers, but they were never going to be Apple customers anyway. Apple customers would never consider this phone. These circles in this Venn diagram you’re doodling do not coincide.
That makes its shortcomings seem rather insignificant.
No! No, it doesn’t! This phone is incredibly flawed by today’s standards. That’s why it’s incredibly cheap.
Although devices like the A50S are designed to appeal to developing markets, they will also offer a tempting choice for users in the UK who want a smartphone but have no need for high-end specifications.
3G is high end?! A 4-megapixel camera is high end?!
And, to be honest, not many of us actually have use for the latest and greatest smartphone features.
Like 3G. EDGE 4 LIFE. WAP APPS RULE.
The Macalope actually felt he had to put a link to WAP in there because he was afraid most people today wouldn’t know what it was. That’s how woefully behind the times this phone is. This is a phone so outdated it doesn’t even realize that saying “2008 called and it wants its specs back” is to employ a tired cliché.
So, should Apple be worried about this phone? No. There. Glad we cleared that up.