zzzPhone, makers of the zzzPhone, have announced that their latest version now supports Android, making it what appears to the second Android phone in existence. The company has two of them in China right now and is taking orders for their $119 base model. You can add Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, pico-projectors, television tuners, and a Hell’s Angel and his lady.
If you’ll recall, zzzPhone is offering “customized cellphones” straight from China with touchscreens and dual facing cameras. In short, these are bargain basement phones with some capacity for upgrade – the base model has been circulating in Asia and Africa for a few years now – and it was running some sort of mad Linux hybrid when we last left off.
Now, however, that the world is looking at Android the company is promising Android phones by November along with a few odd additions like a $225,000 gold model studded with beautiful diamonds. The more I look at the website, the more dubious I am. As Sascha at Gearlog points out:
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I just got back from checking out the zzzPhone and I can say without a doubt that it’s real. It’s definitely not a scam, but the first generation ran into some problems with the manufacturer and they don’t work stateside. I’m told the newest generation is on its way very soon. Maybe within a month. The OS is still uncertain and could be Symbian or Windows CE. Android is also in the works as well as Skype for the upcoming model. An interesting tid bit on the zzzPhone is that there are eight different motherboards to accommodate the customization that’s making the zzzPhone so enticing. Another really cool feature, at least, on the old model is the inclusion of a 20-minute internal backup battery. That’s right, it works without the removable battery for up to 20-minutes. We should be getting a demo unit in the coming weeks of the US-compatible version. Stay tuned.
I just got out of a meeting with EcoCarrier.com, of whom I’ll post in the next few days. One thing that struck me immediately, however, is that these guys had a working 3-SIM cellphone with touchscreen and keypad called the Eco123 which looks surprisingly like a rebadged zzzPhone. While I wish neither of these companies any ill-will, it’s nice to see the hardware and I can report that the OS isn’t Windows Mobile or Symbian and is, in fact, a proprietary amalgam Java and whatever touchscreen magic the client wants to implement. Think of this as the first “white box” phone and leave it at that, friends, and if zzzPhone promises a cool phone for not much money, believe them. The folks at EcoCarrier told me these things cost $108 each in bulk.
I did a piece for the NYT on the zzzPhone, an a la carte manufacturer that lets you pick and choose your functionality online and then makes your cellphone to order. I talked to the folks for the story and discovered that the phone doesn’t run Win Mo or Windows CE but a “windows-compatible” operating system that some are calling Symbian but which I suspect is a Linux-based OS with Java compatibility. They also sent some images of the final hardware.
Would I send my money to these guys? Probably not. Their story is compelling but the product looks a little half-baked right now — the hardware isn’t even finalized. Maybe in a year, once they iron out the kinks, but by then Dell or someone will be offering the same thing. Hopefully they’ve got a patent.
From China, Cellphone à la Carte [NYT]
Now this is an interesting concept we can’t believe we haven’t seen before. Well, we have a little bit, but not like this. USA’s zzzPhone lets you customize your next mobile phone like you might customize a computer: you choose a base model, then add the screen, camera, and other features as you see fit.
The dual-SIM, GSM handsets can accomidate cameras up to 7-Megapixels, 4GB of internal memory, TV tuners, Skype, and other hotness that you won’t find on most phones. They can run Windows Mobile or “equivalent” operating systems, whatever that means.
They start at $150, and are available for configuration now.
zzzPhone [Product page, via Computer World]
