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Gigabyte aren’t really known for their phones, but that won’t stop them from trying their hand at the smartphone game. They’ve created the GSmart Rola, an Android 2.2 phone that doesn’t come close to blowing me away, but is sure to be a popular item with budget-conscious folks. For 175 euros, you get a 528 MHz processor, a 3.2-inch WQVGA touchscreen, 256MB of RAM, 512 MB of ROM, a 3-megapixel camera without autofocus, and your usual host of connectivity options. Like I said, you can’t expect much for the price, but if I had to go for a low-end Android, I’d be willing to give this more than a couple of looks. [via GSM Arena]
Everything about that is awful.
Sounds just like my MyTouch 3G but I still don’t have 2.2
Stick to motheroards
motherboards*
Really? Release that with all that is going on with android now. Crap!
Thats horrible. And its made me sad actually.
Has Gigabyte been stuck in a cave for the last 12mths? Have they not noticed the how fast this tech has moved? They might find it difficult to give those handsets away …. too little much too late!
wow fail no one is going to buy that
@Petros and everyone else who is obsessed with having the ULTRA-SUPER-FAST MEGA-AWESOME CURRENT PHONE.
Check how successful the X10 mini series and HTC Wildfire have been. Then come back and tell me that a phone of this price and power has no place.
Not everyone has the same e-penor requirements as you guys, and Android has to branch out from the Linux loving virgins who initially jumped on the bandwagon in order to remain successful.
You guys have missed the point on this one – it is a DUAL SIM phone – that is the important distinction. Sure, the features are lackluster, and the fact that it has a RESISTIVE touchscreen (which you also failed to mention) blows, but as a dual SIM Android it is one of a rare breed, and that should have been the real focus of this article.
G8D, no need to be so harsh – just look at what you can get for just an extra 15 euro or so from LG – the Optimus one is also on Froyo, but all of its specs are better and the price is almost the same. So this phone fails before it is even out.
“Rola” in Brazil is a nickname for penis…. Kkkk
As a G2 owner I’m pretty happy by the flood of low end devices for a couple reasons:
1. Low end devices means more users which means more attention from software developers.
2. Developers will need to make their apps run well on the low end yet still current(ish) devices which will result in better (more efficiently) coded apps.
I’m pleased to see a few budget phones like the suprisingly nice 600Mhz 3.5″ capacitive ZTE Blade/Orange San Francisco letting the wider population join in with the app-world, but super-budget could start to become a problem for developers. Notable mentions to the Wildfire and the now sub-£100 GBP X10 mini for doing a good job along with the Blade.
I’m already pushing the limits of optimisation to get an app working smoothly on ~550Mhz phones like the Hero, this is partly down to it not running 2.X which really speeds things up.
At some point we will have to cut off older phones of course, but if people are only just buying these slow phones now we could see some one-star ratings when they try out newer apps, else apps become limited (e.g. design impacted by bitmap resources) by the low end. My hope is that they’ve done a ZTE here, with the Blade being a really fast phone for even less than the price of the phone in this article.
Lars (#10) seems the only guy to have understood the point
And apart from being a dual sim android phone, it has HSDPA which makes it unique! HSDPA in combination with dual sim is not available in the wild. For android lovers wanting dual sim, this phone (and its sister models) is manna from heaven!