TAIPEI, Taiwan — The Asian biggest chips maker MediaTek teamed up with Google to roll out an entry-level smartphone Uno Mi-498. It is the first smartphone from Spice to be a part of Google's Android One initiative.
The new Spice Dream Uno is now on sale at an India website, e-retailer Flipkart.com for INR 6,299 (USD$ 103), which is exclusively going to sell the smartphone in India for the time being.
Tsai Ming-kai, Chairperson of MediaTek, used to said that if the price of a smartphone would below USD$ 100, it would be easy to penetrate the mass market of the emerging countries.
In 2010, Tsai Ming-kai stated that except TV, the price of all the other end products have to go below USD$ 100 per unit to be popularized.
Now Tsai Ming-kai cooperated with the Internet giant Google to realize his dream.
The Spice UNO Mi-498 comes with entry level specifications. The phone is powered by a MediaTek SoC with a 1.3GHz quad-core processor and Mali 400 GPU paired with 1GB of RAM. Android One phones all come with a dual-SIM configuration, so the Spice UNO Mi-498 also has dual-SIM.
On the screen front, Uno Mi-498 has a 4.5-inch screen with FWVGA (854 x 480 Pixels) IPS LCD display. The phone is expected to run on Android 4.4.4 KitKat. The rear camera is a 5MP shooter complete with an LED flash unit and ability to shoot full HD videos. The front camera is a 2MP one.
The Uno Mi-498 comes with 4GB internal storage with the option of adding a microSD card of upto 32GB capacity. The phone is powered by a 1700mAh Li-ion battery. The company claims the battery will offer 10 hours of talk time and 160 hours of standby time. According to TechPP, the Android One phones will comes with 35GB of free Google Drive storage.
The smartphone market in India is boosting and expanding than any other country in Asia, according to the research firm IDC, from first quarter in 2014 India has become the fastest growing market in Asia, the revenue is expected to grow 40 percent per year in the coming five years.
