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Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

I think there was a quad core 1080p Chinese phone for $160, too. Considering these are running Symbian, that's a lot less value for buck compared to an Android one, even if the price is "low".

EDIT: This one iOcean X7 - quad core 1.2 Cortex A7, 1080p screen, PowerVR 5XT (1080p video support), 2 GB of RAM, 13 MP camera. Now that's impressive. And it doesn't look too bad either:

http://android-sale.com/iocean-x7-phone.html

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These are not running Symbian. From the article:

> Nokia Asha 501 represents the first fruit after Nokia bought Smarterphone, back in November 2012. And maybe thanks to the Smarterphone software, Nokia has managed to pack so much inside a tiny, 3inch touchscreen device.

As for the iOcean, I can't find a review about it anywhere on the web in English. Kind of risky.

Indeed, it is running on a modified version of the S40 platform.

That's correct. That means the "app" runtime on Asha is J2ME plus some Nokia-specific classes. Only pre-installed software can access the S40 OS directly.

That's not competitive with Android, Sailfish, or Firefox OS, all of which are already or will soon be in comparably priced devices in the developing world markets.

Nokia should have kept Meego and/or Meltemi to remain competitive in this segment. They also could have sold Android alongside Windows Phone, as other OEMs do.

+1 to that. And, you won't be paying 100$. This is that type of phone you'll get for free on your carrier with a basic plan

The markets that are targeted by Asha and Chinese shanzhai white labels don't have phone subsidies, mostly. China doesn't, I assume India doesn't either.

You're right. Other than iPhone and some BB, I haven't seen anything coming with subsidies. Also, in India, almost of the connections are pre-paid. As per a Nielsen study, 97% of the youth (age 15 to 24) in India are on a pre-paid connection.

http://trak.in/tags/business/2011/02/24/indian-youth-mobile-...

of course, there are a lot of them, but what about the quality of them ... ?

I used a pirate Chinese phone for a year. It worked just like any other Android phone and the quality was great considering the price tag of 100€.

would you buy it? :P

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