We'll be totally honest -- we pretty much blew Ruslan Kogan off when he
proclaimed that he was about to push out a $199
Android phone by the year's end. And truthfully, the guy still hasn't
totally delivered, but you won't find us kvetching about more Googlephones, regardless of MSRP. The Agora (AU$299; US$192) and Agora Pro (AU$399; US$256) are available for pre-order as we speak, though neither one is scheduled to ship out until the end of January. For those unfamiliar with
Kogan, it's an online-only enterprise that has wares built specifically to its dimensions in China, and so far as we can tell, it's as legit as they come. As for specs, the Agora packs a 2.5-inch touchscreen (320 x 240), 3G networking, a backlit QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth 2.0 and a microSD card slot; the Pro adds in GPS, 2-megapixel camera and WiFi. So, with unsubsidized prices this low, are you willing to take a chance?
[Via
iTWire]
posted Dec 3rd 2008 10:23PM
$192 and no camera WTF? is up with that
2-MP camera,. right in the text and viewable on the article.
it says that the pro version has that not the basic one
People who work for defense contractors will love that (if the phone ever comes here). They're not allowed phones with cameras at work and it's nearly impossible to find a decent phone that doesn't have a camera.
@DBrim - I'm assuming you don't know anyone at a defense contractor. I know several and that rule isn't enforced too well......
I did for a period. The rule was enforced, but even if it was I wouldn't want to risk, you know, getting fired.
Even if it *wasn't, rather.
(I apologize in advance if this comment shows up twice... it didn't show up when I posted it five minutes ago)
For future reference, put the punctuation at the end of the sentence.
It's nice to see more Android phones finally, but...will there be A2DP? Or at least a 3.5mm headphone jack?
Anyway, what I would really like to see is an Android-powered response to the N97. *That* would be some truly breaking news.
Looking more at the phones, especially the Agora Pro, it definitely seems to be stepping on the unlocked QWERTY candybar territory currently dominated by the Nokia E71. Unfortunately, it costs more than the E71 and has a lesser feature set even though it is larger than the E71.
It is a pretty phone though.
Hey who wants to hang out in the reply section of the first comment?
it has a headphone jack
I'll show you my Kogan if you show me your Agora.
I just wanted to hang out, I didn't say anything about trading really bad euphemisms...
The Bluetooth stack in Android doesn't have A2DP yet; Google thought about adding it, but decided that it was better to push out a limited feature stack that they were happy with, than rush out extra components that, later down the line, they'd realise they should have done differently. So, Android is supposed to get it A2DP eventually, but, as with most things google, who knows when that'll be?
*sits uncomfortably close to noodle while resting his hands on noodle's legs* Sup?
I'm not seeing where the E71 costs less. Google shopping says they're all over US$300 unsubsidized.
And I might be interested in one, if I was on ATT or they had T-Mobile 3G...
"AU$299 AU$399"
oh Engadget... uv come so far.
Australian dollars? THANK YOU!!!~!
I agree with eggothewaffle. What's this phone got that would make me want to swap it for my Nokia E71?
Looks? No. Features? No. Better 3rd party software? No. Battery life? Probably not.
Isn't the G1 already a direct competitor with the N97?
N97 has sexiest hardware and G1 has sexiest OS, but I want both for my phone...
What about R2D2? Will it be R2D2, or C3PO, or Sonny, or even Johnny Five?
Cool.
Android is the future.
Open Source FTW.
ok :)
This or the G1
What do you think
So thats $258 vs $399 USD without a contract right? Is the price correlated to the quality of phone or not?
Well, obviously I don't know about the quality of this phone, but my roommate just got a G1. Before then, I was very much against its design, and it looked cheap in pictures. Let me just say, this is absolutely not the case, and the G1 is very much a high quality product. My only problem is that with my smaller hands, the nub on the right of the keyboard gets in the way when I want to hit the spacebar.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Motorola Q1!
How come all of the Android pictures show an analog clock that is clearly out of sync with the digital clock in the upper right-hand corner?
Same reason Apple-haters get wood off of Linux.
"Look! Our OS has cool glossy widgety-things too!"
It's too cutting edge. That thing is intended predict what will happen to your watch 2 hours and 15 minutes later.
Glad I'm not the only one who thinks the clock on Android's front page is ugly and unesceary. Whilst I'm sure you can get rid of it, it'd just look so much better if they did the screenshots without it.
That's what happens when you design-by-committee an entire mobile handset OS with way more google engineers than necessary.
I hate to link it, but here it is: http://gizmodo.com/5053734/how-many-google-phone-engineers-does-it-take-to-tell-the-time
It's truly incredible that this is still the case in all their promotional photos. Unless it's a world clock or something, there's just something so absurd about this that is emblematic of the entire Android experience so far. It'll eventually grow out of it, but the UI feels far more scattered than it should.
They should just choose one specific time for all their promotional photos, just like blackberry phones:
I don't know if you notice, all blackberry promotional photos are set to 12:21pm.
examples:
http://www.mobileguerilla.com/images/blackberry-8700g.jpg
http://www.removeblackberrypolicy.com/resources/blackberry.gif
http://www.mobilewhack.com/AT-T-BLACKBERRY-CURVE.jpg
www.gadgettastic.com/wp-content/2008/08/rim-blackberry-bold-smartphone.jpg
www.navigadget.com/wp-content/postimages/2008/03/blackberry-8820-gps.jpg
etc...
ALL 12:21pm
I wonder if it's a meaningful time?
The clock isn't circular. Either the clock is designed by Salvador Dalí's cousin or the screen is just a badly fitted image plastered on the promo-pic.
@gaelg
I can't find a reference to it online, but it is probably like how when analog clocks were photographed they were usually set to ~10:18. This usually put the hands out of the way of any face logos and it looked the best in that position; balanced and inviting. 12:21 is probably chosen becase on a digital clock that lights up the ten's place for the hour, and has pleasing semetry, but it isn't 10:01 which would look strange since it isn't on an hour but oh so close, and it looks better than 11:11 which looks like a bunch of vertical lines. 13:31 is right out.
/Ryan
@Ryan How about 13:37?
who. the. fuck. cares?
Ryan- high five for the Monty Python "right out" reference. =]
Yes, Yes I am.... Willing to take the chance
If anyone wants to take the plunge, enter KGNBUCK as a coupon code upon check-out for 5% off.
This isn't the second one. The zzzPhone is the second Android phone.
Fair enough, however this is the second REAL Android phone.
Wow! I never thought they'd reach the $200 mark... guess I was wrong...
That's a really nice phone for the price.
I wish we had a demo or actual images.. this is a Treo's lovers dream.. ! I've been waiting for a Treo-like Android phone. I think I found my answer. Do you think I should pull the trigger? I can't seem to us the 5% for international.
oh, me likey.
Oh likey likey
I do you like a truck
The $192 Agora phone doesnt have GPS or Wi Fi that makes it a lame duck right off the bat.
Also both are QVGA, which sucks.
"Also both are QVGA, which sucks."
So I've seen (eyeroll).
Oh, that wasn't bait for a rant about anything, if you're that type. Just commenting on the redundancy. :P
Add GPS and that's a killer phone. With subsidy that'll probably be a free phone or close to it.
I'm surprised at the lack of "Agoraphobia" based puns here in the comments...
i glanced at the title, headed to the comment section and ctrl+f ed for "phob."
Fortunately, you had already covered the only bases i was concerned about.
I thought the same thing! :D
I read the article too late,
Agora Pro-bia, there are you happy?
I did it.. I ordered a pro. I got the 5% off too -
Oh man I am going to write a review on this!
Your welcome! Curious - why wasn't it working for you before? Does the code only work on the domestic version of the site?
mmm I tried to buy one and apparently, currently it only ships in Australia? and dang, shipping to my home in Australia is ~$40 + ~30 Aussie tax...
Sigh, wonder if they'll make shipping avaliable for US.
You can click the link that says "international shippers click here" on the front page for the phone.. it's not on the checkout page.
Agoraphone... Doesn't that mean it's scared of going out in public?
Jokes aside, it looks a hell of a lot better than the G1.
No. That would be agoraPHOBIAphone.
Well i would buy one but considering the 4 month wait when i ordered my tv through them...
They were (and probably still are) the most unorganised company i have ever dealt with. They told me i would receive my 26" lcd on a certain date, the date came and so did an e-mail explaining that their shipment had not arrived and i would have to wait another month. A month later and another e-mail explaining that once again the shipment had been delayed and i would be stuck waiting another 3-4 weeks or i could upgrade to a 32" lcd which would arrive in 2 weeks. You can only guess what happened 2 weeks later... Another delay.
Kogan sell some really dodgy products too, there is a forum post from a guy whose TV set literally caught fire and Kogan refused to replace it. From what I recall he had contacted the Office of Fair Trading and his dispute was ongoing..
I think agora is a pretty cool guy. eh runs android and doesnt afraid of anything.
That touchscreen looks way too small to be of any use. For that matter, so does the QWERTY keypad. I mean, look at that! You'd need to use your fingernails to hit those tiny keys, with how squashed together they are! Also (and this is a comparatively minor complaint), the number layout is kinda funky; the 0 is off to the right of the 9 for no good reason. Am I the only one who gets the impression they put next to no R&D into this thing? It looks as though the designers just took one look at a typical smartphone, and then proceeded to draw up a lousy copycat design, toss in a touchscreen that's too small to be of any value, and then, as if they hadn't made enough of a mockery of the smartphone world, decided to include Android, which is probably useless in such a piece of crap.
It looks to be the size of the original Moto Q or Samsung Blackjack....hated that keyboard.
So this Agora is still a touchcreen? Seems a little useless to me.
It's not too small to use with a stylus... does it come with a stylus? But they really need to up the pixel density.
At least it's a triband 3g phone!
Why are there two ")" right bracket keys?
one is for smileys :)
One is a comma. Not sure why my first reply wasn't posted.
Nope, not a comma. Look in the bottom row, looks like:
( ) spacebar ? )
With two rightparens. The weirdness of mockups...
Trying to copy the MacBook Pro
Interesting company though. Very good prices on everything, perhaps not absouletly pull your pants down great, but very good. And quite stylish too. Can we have more comments about quality of their other products? I wonder why there aren't other companies doing the same as they do - there probably are, just not doing it as well or with as dramatic pricing. Being a small company and shipping the 2nd Google phone, and at a bargain price is a bit of a boon - they fully deserve to be front page on www.smh.com.au several hours prior to Engadgets post
Rogers should pick up this phone, although I would think it would kill all other smartphone sales
You're kidding, right? It looks like a piece of crap!
Built-in keyboard and touchscreen together are pretty good deal. Is it just me or that icons and widgets are a bit stretched?
I don't know a thing about this company, but I'll give them this much, their Android device is a hell of a lot nicer and professional looking than the G1.
Now if some enterprising company can come up with an Android phone with the form factor of Nokia's N97 at a reasonable price, well I'll be first in line!
(that'"first in line" stuff is just hyperbole of course, but I would buy one)
The Pro is a perfect phone for AT&T subscribers since it has WCDMA 850/1900/2100. I would try one if it comes with T-Mobile AWS.
Is it just me, or does it bear a similar resemblance to the Samsung Blackjack?
The APC has an article on this and the phone sports a RIM style menu button. The article is here: http://apcmag.com/breaking_first_australian_android_phone_revealed.htm
so agora going to be anygood?
Thanks for the useful post
I've been waiting to win that iPod Shuffle for a while...
I would like to point out that the openmoko freerunner had support for android about 3 weeks after the g1 did...
I like it. The published dimensions are 108x64x14.8 mm/130 g, which puts it squarely in iPhone/Storm territory while smaller and lighter than the G1
No shift key on the keyboard? No 'home' button? This isn't going to work very well for Android as displayed!
http://www.kogan.com.au/media/products/2008/12/MAIN_copy__.jpg
Shift is lower left, next to the 0, and home is in the upper-left just below where it says "Kogan"
This is great! I'd really give this a serious look once I saw it being delivered to hands. I like Android, but the G1 is just gross looking, and the proprietary usb thing makes it a throw away.
If these guys can pull it off, I'm in.
Well it's all good ... only thing i noticed is that this phone bears a striking resemblence to the [url=http://www.cnet.co.uk/i/c/blg/cat/mobiles/samsungbm/i780.jpg]Samsung i780[/url]
http://www.cnet.co.uk/i/c/blg/cat/mobiles/samsungbm/i780.jpg ... soryy .. all i see is html lately
Wasn't the second Android phone the one made by QiGi from China?
Am I the only one who was really excited about this announcement?!?
AU$299 and AU$399 are currently equal to US$192 and US$256 respectfully. That plays perfectly into my base 2 view of the world. It just feels right somehow.
as an aussie that has bought from kogan before, they are legit and the stuff they make is awesome... it is not top of the line stuff, but for the price it is amazing...
for an unlocked phone that is a great price... a GREAT price...
So anyone wondering if it is worth buying Kogan's stuff.... yes, yes it is!
nice, but andriod still has alot of bugs, it need a better memory allocation software... it lags too much
I was anxious to see the G1 in person. I went to see it as soon as my local Tmob retailer had it. And I was, for a lack of better terms... VERY SADLY DISAPPOINTED! Honestly, maybe its a sweet OS, but the hardware is a piece of crap...
I'm getting an E71 in the next week or so to run on AT&T. My girlfriend is all googlie eyed about this Kogan now just as she was about the G1...
My advice to all of you... don't let your panties get moist over pure speculation. Until I see one in person and have a chance to play with it ,it doesn't exist.
i like the blackjack-like layout
I was unable to use the 5% discount. How did you get it to work?
Is that a Blackjack
THIS GUY IS A FRAUD! BROKEN PROMISES ARE BAD FOR BUSINESS!