Written by Peter Murphy on Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Aussie GPhone to be launched by Christmas, pull the other one it plays jingle bells!


android_kogan_wideweb__470x256,0 Colour me skeptical, but an article I found over at Android Guys, about an Aussie entrepreneur, who says he can produce an Android based phone by Christmas. For a ridiculously low price, say $199, as compared to around a thousand dollars on eBay.

Considering a recent post at Engadget that really opened my eyes to the cost of the components that make up, even the latest and greatest mobile device, I find myself wondering if it is actually this simple.

Google has made the Android software open-source, meaning virtually anyone can build phones based around the platform without obtaining permission from Google.

So far the Google phones have been launched only in the US, but Australians can already buy them on eBay for about $1000.

Let me just clarify this, I’ve tried to contact the company and am getting bounced emails, I’ve tried to comment on the post from the blog that showcases the claims, no banana, I’ve used the contact address, and I hope to have some news for you soon.

If a device is open source OS powered is it that easy to produce? 

Aussie Google phone launch by Christmas – Smart Phone – Digital Life

More in Android | 2 Comments


« • »

2 Comments

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.


iphitus
Nov 4, 2008

It’s probably not too difficult.

Getting it running is the easy bit. There’s not a great deal of variety in basic hardware between the various devices out there. They’re all ARM based (Blackberry, iPhone, WM5+). Complications begin once you try to get extra hardware working like wireless, GPS, bluetooth. However once that works on one device, there’s a whole range of other devices that use the same hardware.

As Android is Linux based, there’s already a large base of developers out there capable of driver development and there’s a strong base of existing driver support.

If you take a look at XDA-developers, there’s already copies of Android running on various HTC devices.

Realistically, you could order a pile of chinese Pocket PC clones (and there’s heaps to choose from), spend some time getting android working well on them, and sell them for a decent AUD profit.

EDIT: I read the article just after posting this… and that’s exactly what this guy is doing, buying cheap chinese clones, configuring android for them, and selling them.

Careful though, the quality of some of the clones isn’t great. My friend bought a chinese pocket pc clone off Ebay and has had terrible troubles with battery life.


Peter Murphy
Nov 4, 2008

@ iphitus
You have just voiced all of the things I was thinking,
Quality,
Acceptance,
Comparability with the app store?

I have many questions

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.