“The telephone has too many shortcomings, to be seriously considered as a means of communication“, “A rocket will never leave the Earth’s atmosphere“, and the most absurd one, “640k ought to be enough for anybody” as populated to be said by Bill Gates, were some of the predictions done in the last century. The beliefs that shattered to the ground in later years, spectacularly.
The appetite for power never stops. People want to be more efficient everyday. The processing power is increasing, whereas the size of silicon chips is reducing. Thanks to Moore’s law, gadgets are all set to become smaller but smarter.
A smartphone is a perfect example of something which could never have been conceived of, say, 20 years ago. Yet the future looks promising for this category of phones. It would not be long before we see phones surpassing speeds more than 2.4 GHz, due to the developments in processors like the next gen Qualcomm. But as they say, technology won’t stop growing and so people have to start somewhere.
It was many years ago, that I had tried a phone that was smart. I had a Sony Walkman, aka, w550i which was basically a feature phone, with multimedia features, to be precise. It used to take good pics with its 1.3 megapixel camera, and could also sync contacts with a PC. But, today, I need something better than a feature phone. Precisely, an Entry Level Android.
Android today has become synonymous to be “the best mobile OS” today. With the biggest Internet company Google, backing up the OS, it has grown to be the second most used mobile OS today, and that too in a very short period of time. The main reason for the popularity of Android is the fact that it’s based on Linux Kernel with libraries and API’s written in one of the most popular languages, C, C++ and Java, and because most of the codes of the OS is Free and Open Source.
My budget for the phone was Rs. 10,000. With this budget I didn’t have a lot of options including non-Android ones. Some of them were,
- Motorola EX109
- Motorola EX115
- Nokia C2-03
- Nokia C2-06
- Samsung Chat 350
- LG X 330
- Samsung Star II S5263
- Micromax Q6
- Sony Ericsson txt pro
- LG Vortex
- Android v2.2 (Froyo), Upgradeable to v2.3 Gingerbread
- Capacitive screen
- 600 MHz ARM 11 processor
- Adreno 200 graphics
- 3 mega-pixel camera with the ability to shoot videos at 640 x 480 @ 18 fps
- Accelerometer, Proximity Sensor and so on….
In a very short amount of time that I gave to the research of O1. I fell in love with it. It’s amazing at the budget I have, and a cool smartphone to title as “My First Android”. The sheer beauty of O1 from any angle has captured my imagination. It’s 3.2″ capacitive touch screen coupled with state of the art design makes it look classy. Processing speed of 600 Mhz, and graphics capability provided by Adreno GPU, makes sure games can be played at decent frame rates.