Banglalink, Symphony to launch low-cost Google smartphone
Banglalink is set to launch a Google One smartphone in partnership with the country's largest handset vendor Symphony, while customers can pre-book handsets with the telecom operator starting today. The handset priced at Tk 8,700 will be available from mid-January, and Banglalink customers will get additional perks.
The operator will offer special data packs to buyers of the 'A50' 3G-enabled handsets, a Banglalink official said.
Prepaid customers of Banglalink will also get 1 gigabyte of free data on the purchase of a handset, along with an additional free 300 megabytes of data to upgrade and download applications for six months. Users will also get free upgrades for the next two years, according to Android.com.
Earlier in September, local handset vendor Symphony launched another smartphone with Mozilla's Firefox operating system at a retail price of Tk 4,650, in partnership with the largest mobile operator Grameenphone.
Indian handset vendor Micromax Informatics launched another Google smartphone -- Canvas A1 -- in Bangladesh on December 19. The Tk 10,000 device was available in the market from the day it was launched.
Google launched their Android One initiative in the beginning of this year to spearhead the budget smartphone market, according to a report of India's International Business Times.
As part of the initiative, the search engine giant signed a contract with three Indian mobile phone manufacturers --Micromax, Spice and Karbonn -- to bring out low-cost Android-based handsets.
All three companies launched an Android handset each with similar hardware specifications bundled with the stock Google experience.
Google is launching the Android One series of handsets for the “price-conscious” consumers in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. It will also be launched soon in Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan, it said.
All the quad-core handsets under this initiative feature similar 4.5-inch displays, 1GB RAM, dual SIM support and stock Android Kitkat 4.4.4, according to the report.
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