Google to station Wi-Fi equipped trucks in more than 600 locations.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BANGALORE: Senior Vice President of Android, Chrome and Apps, Sundar Pichai, launched Android One smartphones priced at a range of Rs 6,399- Rs. 6,999 on Monday, in New Delhi.
The launch event marked the global unveiling of Android One smartphones that are expected to gear up the sales of smartphones in developing countries like India where multitude of people prefer buying budget level smartphones rather than premium phones.
Google has currently teamed up with Indian smartphone manufactures Micromax, Karbon and Spice to bring Android One in India. Three Android One smartphones from these Indian manufactures will be available starting from Monday through e-commerce websites Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal, and also via Reliance Digital offline stores.
As per the contracts signed by Google and the Indian manufactures, the tech giants will provide essential hardware and software support for the manufacturers to sell the Android One smartphones.
Talking to NDTV, Pichai said,”For us Android One was a journey to try and reach the next 5 billion people. And India accounts for a substantial portion of the share. Android One was conceived deeply with India in mind.”
Each Android One smartphone will be powered by a 1.3 GHz Quad-core MediaTek processor with 400 MP Mali Graphics coupled with 1GB RAM. Android One phones will support 3G, WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth connectivity. The phone has an internal storage capacity of 4GB and can be expandable up to 32 GB using MicroSD slot. In addition to this Google will also provide free 35 GB space in Google Drive.
One of the added features of the Android One smartphones is the latest Android KitKat 4.4.4 which gets automatic upgrades directly from Google like the Google Nexus smartphones.
The Android One smartphones will feature a 1700mAh battery, but considering the 4.5-inch IPS FWVGA (480x854p) display of the phone the battery can barely last up to one day.
Android One phone sports a 5 MP rear camera with LED flash capable of recording HD videos and 2 MP front camera for selfies and video calling.
Google also announced that it will station Wi-Fi equipped trucks in more than 600 locations in 20 cities to demonstrate the Android One Phones to the potential customers in India. Adding to this Google has also appointed 30,000 Android One ambassadors to reach out to people living in smaller quarters of the country.
Pichai also said that Google will soon launch Android One phones from brands like Acer, Alcatel, Asus, HTC, Intex, Lava, Panasonic, Lenovo, Xolo and Qualcomm.
The three phones launched under the Android One category are Spice Android One Dream UNO Mi-498, Karbonn Sparkle V and Micromax Canvas A1.
Even as Google refused to pay any subsidy for free 3G, Airtel has come up with an offer of 200 MB free data every month for app download and update via Play Store. Google hopes that more telecom operators will come forward with similar offers in the coming days.
Google has also announced that it will soon launch the Google News Stand for Indian readers with more than 30 Indian news publications providing live feeds.
(This story was updated on 16-09-2014)